Naturally, the mid-season finale is a holiday episode with the big bad of the particular season enacting the first part of their plans. It's happened every year in pretty much every mid-season finale for each Arrowverse show. The Thinker certainly enacted a plan, I'm just not sure how on board I am with it. After an episode and a half getting to know the real DeVoe and becoming a different type of threat that Barry has never faced, the show decided to remove Neil Sandilands from the role entirely, and have DeVoe's body be transported to a new character, Dominic Lanse's body instead. Why? I know it was revealed that his body is deteriorating or just on the verge of dying, but is this really the route to go? I just started to like Sandilands' take on the character and now that's removed from the equation altogether. Granted, Kendrick Sampson was perfectly fine as Lanse/Brainstorm, but I don't think this is the route I would prefer the show take.
With that out of the way, the rest of the episode felt a bit anticlimactic to me. With the exception of the final few shots, which were obviously compelling, it didn't feel like there was a whole lot of mid-season finale type moments tonight. Amunet returned and kidnapped Caitlin to work on Lanse's dying body, but that felt like a complete waste of time. As much as I love Katee Sackhoff, her performance is just too over-the-top for my liking.
Iris was given an unnecessary ultimatum, having to choose between looking for Caitlin and Barry. Why was this a plot point? I don't ever recall having the team struggle with finding a missing person and the whole "Iris as a leader" thing still feels forced. What did she do to ever get the go-ahead to make the final decisions for Team Flash? I know Barry was gone but doesn't it seem like something Joe would do? I appreciate the writers attempting to give Iris more to do than be Barry's love interest but I think there are better ways to go about doing that.
So in all, the only great thing this mid-season finale brought us is Barry being arrested for the "murder" of DeVoe. That is an undeniably intriguing development, and could even echo what Arrow is doing with Oliver Queen's identity, I just hope that it's handle with consequences. You can't have something like this go on without something of consequence happening to Barry. That's the only way I can begin to go along with this DeVoe switcharoo that is apparently going to happen.
7.0/10
