The Flash Review: Lose Yourself (Season 4 Episode 18)

Barry and friends attempt to take the fight to The Thinker on an episode of The Flash that does its level best to shake up the status quo as we head toward Season 4’s endgame.

Is it successful? Yes, from a strictly technical standpoint. From a storytelling one? Well, your mileage may vary a bit more on that.

The Flash Season 4 Episode 18, “Lose Yourself,” is a fast-paced, action-packed installment. (The story definitely isn’t spinning its wheels anymore!) It contains many surprises, including several big plot twists, long-awaited face-offs, and solid character moments.

That said, the episode also features some serious plot holes, and turns on an emotional twist that doesn’t feel entirely earned.

“Lose Yourself” is primarily about two key plots: The search for the final bus meta, and Ralph’s determination to take out DeVoe, in a more permanent kind of way than Team Flash is generally comfortable with.

Ralph, quite rightly, I think, wants to know why Barry and company aren’t seriously discussing any and all available options to defeat DeVoe. That includes killing him.

Yet, rather than have a serious talk about the situation, Barry just hits Ralph with another patented Hero Lecture about how good guys just don’t do that sort of thing. And, on paper, he’s right.

Killing people is hardly ideal, and not something to be done on a whim. We all know that.

But DeVoe is also the most powerful villain Team Flash has ever faced, and the only one that they can’t ever seem to get ahead of. The idea that the only way to beat him is to kill him might at least deserve some discussion.

Instead, Barry just gives Ralph yet another speech about how heroes can always find another way, which honestly seems wildly naïve given that Barry’s “other ways” have included rewriting all of time more than once. But you do you, dude.

The final bus meta is a guy named Edwin Gauss who possesses the ability to open pocket universes. This is, of course, a highly specific and very weird ability. It’s also extremely convenient that he just happens to have it right in time to transport Team Flash to the Thinker’s lair.

But, whatever, let’s just go with it.

Edwin is about as much of a real character as any of the other bus metas we’ve seen this season. Which is to say, not at all. He’s basically another human plot point, there to give the team a path to DeVoe, and memorable only because he’s a walking Dazed and Confused joke.

His death, when it comes, isn’t particularly surprising or meaningful. Poor Edwin, we hardly knew you. Not that it matters, in the end.

As per usual, DeVoe and Marlize remain as on top of things as ever. The evil duo is once again a step ahead of Team Flash, and it’s maddening that Barry and friends seem to keep making the same mistakes in this way.

When was the last time they made any actual progress against him?

Ralph’s speech about how much Team Flash means to him is certainly emotional, and Hartley Sawyer sells the heck out of it. But it still doesn’t entirely ring true for me, in large part because Ralph’s spent the bulk of the season being rude, dismissive or downright creepy toward his teammates, running away from his problems and immediately forgetting the (many) lessons everyone else tried to teach him.

In short: It’s hard to believe his talk when he hasn’t exactly walked the walk.

However, there’s a certain tragedy in having Ralph finally choose to do the right thing, only to die for it in the end. He finally internalized one of the lessons Barry taught him, and it was absolutely the worst moment for him to do so.

Yet as a viewer, it’s hard not to feel that The Flash is playing with our feelings a bit here. Tragic circumstances, after all, do not make a meaningful loss. Over the course of the season, Ralph has been written with so little consistency, it’s a bit difficult to feel as emotional about his death as the show would clearly like us to.

Who did we lose after all? The nice guy who made balloon animals out of his appendages for little kids? The misogynist who referred to women by their measurements? Someone in between?

It’s difficult to say for sure, because the show could never seem to settle on who they wanted Ralph to be. A loveable loser? A roguish hero? A jerk, but one with the opportunity for growth?

In other DeVoe-related casualties, Caitlin loses her Killer Frost abilities during the fight with him. Which, of course she does, since “Lose Yourself” made a particular point to underline the fact that Caitlin’s relationship with her alter ego was somehow growing closer.

(Of course this newfound friendship is occurring entirely offscreen, because The Flash seems incredibly uninterested in actually showing us any aspect of the Killer Frost story. Sigh.)

Personally, I’m assuming Caitlin will get her powers back at some point before the end of the season. If only because it makes no sense that The Flash would completely erase the most interesting story Caitlin’s ever been part of without even really telling it.

So, you know, cross your fingers there.

As for Ralph, it’s hard to believe that he’s really most sincerely dead, if only because this is The Flash and not Arrow. Dour consequences that stick aren’t something this show really does too often, if at all.

Maybe the show will have figured out who they want him to be by then, too.

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Congrats to the entire internet for predicting that DeVoe wanted Ralph’s body in some degree so he could look like himself again. Neil Sandilands is still the best version of The Thinker, so that’s a happy twist.
• The final battle sequence at STAR Labs was amazing to watch.
• Sure it was kind of ridiculous that she acted as though she had nothing worse than a paper cut afterward, but Iris stabbing herself to defeat Marlize was straight up incredible.
• Speaking of ridiculous things that I’m still somehow largely okay with, how in the world did Joe defeat the Samurai robot?
• Where did dedicated scientist Marlize learn to fight with a sword like that? Is she secretly a Jedi?
  It is Episode 18 and we still don’t know what The Thinker’s plan is. How is that possible??

What did you think of this episode of The Flash? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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