The Flash season 3, episode 5, “Monster,” put our heroes at odds with both literal and figurative monsters.
On the surface, “Monsters” is about Team Flash and the CCPD facing an actual monster — one that looks like a Godzilla-sized White Martian from Supergirl. For much of the episode, Team Flash and Julian are a loss as to what the monster is or why it’s acting the way it is. Things become clear, however, when The Flash discovers the monster is nothing but a hologram. The strange behaviors the monster exhibited — disappearing, staying within a 10-block radius, stealing power from transformers — suddenly made sense.
However, someone had to be controlling that monster. And that someone wasn’t a criminal mastermind; it was a 15-year-old kid who was dealing with the monstrosity that is being an odd kid in high school. He felt powerless and afraid, and that helplessness brought out the monster in him, as he wanted to make others feel what he did. I think we can all relate to what this kid was going through, though most of us didn’t create giant, holographic monsters to terrorize others in retaliation.
It just goes to show that even decent people can be pushed to do terrible things when they lose all sense of hope. There is a dark side to each of us, and this kid created a representation of that dark side to terrorize Central City.
Speaking of having a dark side, another character facing their inner monster was Caitlin. Afraid of the ice powers she’s been developing, she goes to her mother, a renowned scientist named Dr. Tannhauser. Though Dr. Tannhauser clears her schedule to look after her daughter, it quickly becomes clear that the relationship between the two women isn’t a close one — which we first heard when Caitlin met Earth-2’s Killer Frost.
It sounds like Caitlin’s father was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and Dr. Tannhauser distanced herself from her loved ones as a coping mechanism. So while she tried to save her husband using science, she eventually lost both her husband and her daughter, as Caitlin left home for Central City. We’ve had so little about Caitlin’s background other than her romantic attachments, so seeing her with a storyline that is all about her is refreshing.
Anyway, Caitlin’s inner monster comes out to play when Dr. Tannhauser’s assistant tries to keep her in the lab against her will as a test subject. Caitlin, her eyes flashing a neon blue — very similar to the way Frankie’s eyes flashed pink as Magenta — attacked the assistant and was prepared to kill him; she looked and acted very much like Killer Frost. Dr. Tannhauser, however, was able to talk her down by apologizing for being a terrible mother. Because this was what Caitlin so desperately wanted to hear, it worked temporarily.
But now we’re starting to see why Caitlin has been keeping her powers a secret from her team. She can’t control herself if she uses her powers too much. She doesn’t seem to be developing a different personality since she continued to refer to herself in the first person — unlike Magenta, who saw Frankie as someone completely separate — while in Killer Frost mode, but she does seem to lose the warmth (pun intended) that makes Caitlin who she is.
Dr. Tannhauser says Caitlin’s powers are changing her body chemistry in unusual ways, and I wonder if that includes her brain chemistry. That would explain the personality change. The more she uses her powers, the less chance there is of reversing them, but Killer Frost doesn’t want to reverse them.
It’s interesting to me that Caitlin is being paralleled to Magenta, though the latter received her powers from Doctor Alchemy while the former likely got hers from the particle accelerator. The changing eye colors and complete change in personality that comes from using their powers is not coincidental, however. Frankie was able to overcome her darker half, but I doubt it will be that simple for Caitlin. And the longer she keeps this from the team, the less likely they’ll be able to help her.
Finally, the third monster the episode explored was Julian — or more precisely, what has pushed Julian to be the way he is. In a shocking turn of events, Julian, in fact, is Draco Malfoy; he’s the son of a wealthy British family who didn’t quite fit. He eventually rebelled against his family and became a scientist.
But just as he reached the pinnacle of his field, metahumans arrived on the scene, rendering his skills obsolete. He had to adapt, and that has made him bitter. Moreover, he’s bitter that so many people who became metahumans are wasting their powers when they could be improving the world.
For Julian, loneliness and emptiness have created something of a monster within him — making him more similar to the kid who created the monster hologram than he’d probably like to admit. And when The Flash stops him from killing the kid, who he thought was an evil metahuman when he pulled the trigger, he realizes his bitterness toward The Flash was misplaced. This leads him to give Barry another chance as well, and the two head out for a drink at the end of the episode.
Julian is doing what Caitlin is unable to do with his inner struggles: share. Reaching out to Barry allowed him to unburden himself and possibly have a new friend where there was an enemy. Caitlin, on the other hand, is unable to share her struggles with her friends, and that will undoubtedly lead to continued struggles for her.
Oh, and the new Wells is a phony; he was not a scientist but a novelist. The less said about this incarnation of the character the better, as far as I’m concerned.
Watch a promo for the next episode
