Team Flash find the last bus meta. Harry goes too far. Cailtin finds some peace. Ralph has his finest hour.

It’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised by a superhero TV show. We know these stories so well, have seen the origins of these characters far too often that it settles into a well known rhythm. These are the songs we can all sing. Great power and great responsibility. In brightest day. The fastest man alive.

This week, the song changes. It’s shocking and discordant and absolutely surprising. And it works brilliantly.

Ralph Dibny has been one of the keys to the success of this year of The Flash. Hartley Sawyer’s take on the character has been fractious, squalid and delightful. Ralph’s a fundamentally good man, more so than he knows, and Sawyer has shown us that. This episode really brings that to the fore and does so through an old superhero trope ‘Do we kill?’. The answer is, of course, no. Unless you’re Ralph.

A lesser show would have played up his desire to just end DeVoe as a mark of cowardice or immaturity, a chance to dive into the darkness that superhero stories are too fond of. But here, it’s anything but. In a season highlight, Ralph explains he’s frightened for everyone else, not him. Team Flash are his family he’ll do anything to protect them, even something that will alienate him from them forever. Sawyer’s delivery, on ‘He cannot have them. They are mine’ in particular is just heartwrending.

And it’s not enough.

After a season of struggling to rescue the bus metas, Team Flash…fail. Worse still, they don’t just fail to save the Bus metas, they’re two members down by the end of the episode. DeVoe has taken every bus meta. Killer Frost is essentially dead after the dark matter is ripped from Caitlin’s system. Harry is an addict to his Thinking Cap, Cisco is pushed to the edge and Barry has to watch his friend die. All of which takes place in the same episode Joe fights a Samuroid, Ralph punches a dinosaur and we get the best shapechanging powers gag ever. Every character gets a moment to shine, every character gets something to do. And all of it comes down to the last fight against the villain who has beaten them at every turn. They should be thrown into the darkness by all this.

Instead, they’re pressing on. Because that’s what Ralph did. That’s what heroes do. That’s not just the tough call. It’s the right call.

Verdict: This is a fantastic hour of TV. It’s easily in the best five Flash episodes to date and I have no idea how they’re getting out of this one or if Ralph can be saved. What I do is the next episode cannot come fast enough. Funny, heartbreaking superhero TV at its best. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart