The Flash Review: O Come, All Ye Thankful (Season 5 Episode 7)

The Flash Season 5 Episode 7, “O Come, All Ye Thankful,” celebrates Thanksgiving a week late with an episode that is nevertheless full of family.

Besides Team Flash’s (frankly adorable) holiday dinner, there are three separate plots revolving around father/daughter relationships, in case you somehow didn’t pick up on what this season’s big theme is.

There are flashbacks detailing Cicada’s — or Orlin Dwyer, as he was known then –relationship with the young girl, Grace Gibbons. She’s his niece, though; not his daughter and she was injured during DeVoe’s Enlightenment after giving him a reason to turn his life around.

All told, this isn’t a particularly groundbreaking origin story as such things go, but at least it explains Orlin’s deep-seated hatred of metas. (A meta also killed his sister in a car accident, it turns out.)

It’s not an explanation that anyone’s going to be surprised by, sure, but at least it’s something.

Leaving Cicada a faceless Jack the Ripper-style serial killer might have made for a more compelling enemy, but with something like 16 episodes still to go, The Flash is probably looking for ways to pad this story a bit.

Not that anyone asked me, but: If Grace were to somehow wake up and become the real Season 5 Big Bad, I wouldn’t be mad about it. And this episode’s villain — the enjoyably over the top Weather Witch — is an example of how such a story could be told really effectively.

After all, Jocelyn Jackam shows up in Central City with her meta tech weather staff looking to punish her deadbeat father, Weather Wizard. (She even drops a truck on him. Literally.)

Wouldn’t it be interesting to watch Grace play out a similar story against a father who is senselessly killing people in her name? At least that feels like something fresh.

The third member of our father/daughter story trio this week is — who else? — Barry and Nora. We’ve spent so many weeks watching Nora treat her mother like crap that it’s nice to watch someone other than Iris on the receiving end of her attitude.

To be fair, Nora’s emotions are all completely understandable, and The Flash actually deserves some praise for allowing her to realistically be selfish and petulant without judging her for it.

She’s spent her whole life without her father, so it makes sense that the thought of losing him now, after she’s finally gotten to know him, is obviously hard for her.

And at least we only got one episode of her being angry with Barry, rather than the weeks of it that Iris had to endure.

But much like Ralph’s constant hero education last season, this is starting to all feel just the tiniest bit repetitive. I like Nora much more than I did Ralph in Season 4, so it’s easier to deal with, but still.

Unlike Ralph, however, Nora at least does seem to display some growth, realizing that she’s been projecting her anger at Barry onto literally everyone else around her, and verbalizing it in a constructive way.

By the end of the hour, she even seems to realize that she was wrong to ask her father to give up being the Flash, not just because the request was selfish, but because his superhero identity wasn’t a costume he could just take off and shove in storage.

Elsewhere, the gang prepares to celebrate Thanksgiving together, and it’s a nice reminder that The Flash should do smaller, quieter moments between the main cast more often. They’re the heart of the show. 

For example, the episode’s opening sequence, in which Caitlin and Barry make pies together and discuss their lives like actual friends did set a lovely heartwarming tone for the rest of the episode, one which most of “O Come All Ye Thankful” lives up to.

Unfortunately, Caitlin and Cisco are generally wasted for the most of the episode, thanks to The Flash’s current weakest link: Sherloque Wells. The two are basically squandered trying to convince Sherloque that he should celebrate Thanksgiving with the rest of the team and, as per usual, he ruins everything.

Happily, Killer Frost swaps places with her alter ego just in time to give both Sherloque and Cisco a reminder of the importance of being with people who care about you. And not to put too fine a point on it, but the most shocking development of the week is definitely the revelation that Killer Frost is a Thanksgiving enthusiast.

Anything really is possible at the holidays, I guess?

Stray Thoughts and Observations

• Hurrah, Caitlin got to name Weather Witch!
• I kind of hate myself but I kind of loved Weather Witch’s Party City Mad Max: Fury Road knockoff costume? The staff was so extra and so
• Still think the whole idea of “meta technology” is kind of dumb.
• Did anyone even mention where Ralph was this week?
• I will never ever understand how their dual identity in a single body thing works ever but wow I’m glad to see Killer Frost back.
• All I want for Christmas is to Barry to come back from the Elseworlds crossover alternate reality with a new Flash suit. Calling this thing a Party City knockoff is too kind.

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

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The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8pm on the CW

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