The Flash 6x13 : Grodd Friended Me review

Be warned there will be *SPOILERS* involved in this review. With that being said let's get into it. 

Oddly enough this week's episode of The Flash opens with Barry Allen walking along Central City with a bunch of flowers in hand. He drops them in a hurry as he gets an alert that a meta-human is attack Central City. Upon arrival to the location he is met with none other than Hartley Rathaway aka the Pied Piper. Who can now not only use his gauntlets to shoot out energy but he can now fly too. Oh but that's not the only bizarre thing to begin this episode. Even more odd is that in his ear The Flash can hear both Chester from the season 6 premiere and Kamilla Cisco's girlfriend and fellow reporter with Iris. They're manning the comms from Star Labs in almost like a twilight zone beginning to the episode. Everything was all out of whack. Back in the speed lab we see Barry tinkering with Gideon in a bid to find out more about the changes that he's seen. It turns out there has been trillions of changes to the timeline thanks to Crisis. Chester walks into the speed lab and tinkers with Gideon's interface turning up the frequency in a bid to help Barry. He does so but soon gets stopped by Barry who tells him not to touch anything as it's all sensitive and he needs it all just right. We then see Iris who is still stuck in the mirror dimension with Eva. Stuck and struggling to find any sort of way out. They come up with a way out but Eva seems oddly afraid of what they plan to do even going as far as to show Iris. She puts both hands through the glass and on the outside world her arms get badly burned instantly. This would end up playing into the ending of the episode. 

Back to Barry now and unknown to him Chester's tinkering with Gideon's interface does a lot more damage than good as when he goes to turn her on around his earpiece he gets shocked before collapsing to the floor in the speed lab. He awakens in a cell where we see Caitlin walk up to him then the one and only Eobard Thawne wearing his Harrison Wells disguise. The two talk odd to him almost like he's some sort of caged animal. Well he is. Upon looking at his reflection in a bowl in the corner of the cage he is Gorilla Grodd or at least a part of his mind. Barry yells at Caitlin to not trust Wells as immediately I got season 1 vibes from this entire interaction. It was a really nice throwback honestly as Caitlin even mentioned that Ronnie is working on something named the pipeline. Barry is soon greeted by Grodd in his mind who tells him that he is stuck in ARGUS in a coma thanks to what he and Team Flash did to him last time out during his fight with King Shark. He has somehow managed to trap Barry inside of his mind thanks in part to Chester's tinkering with Gideon's AI. Grodd tries to convince Barry that he has changed. He even turns up outside of his cage and lets out Barry so that he can go and find someone called the Gatekeeper who beyond lies the exit back to the real world. Barry goes but knocks out Grodd in the process stating that he is right where he belongs in a cage. Cold..Barry real cold. The Flash races to this Gatekeeper person and it is none other than Solovar Gorilla Grodd's rival from Gorilla City. The same Solovar who The Flash fought inside of a giant Gladiator style arena way back in season 3. The Flash doesn't defeat Solovar rather he pummels The Flash into retreating where back outside of his cage Grodd has now taken on the form of Joe who actually somehow manages to convince Barry that he has changed. He tells him that power led to nothing but sadness and regret. That Gorilla City is his home and now thanks to Crisis it is on Earth-Prime. Barry sees the light and agrees to work with Grodd as they both set off to defeat Solovar.

Back at Star Labs Killer Frost enters the room and sees how Barry is. Both his mind and Grodd's have somehow merged together which if not fixed will end up killing them both once they escape. It's Chester to the rescue as he again reworks and tinkers around and after Grodd and The Flash who merge together like Firestorm defeat Solovar Barry and Grodd are separated from their mind states and return to the land of the living. A bit earlier in the episode Nash Wells was seen again working with Alegra which again only posed more questions. Not only did he end up seeing Sherloque Wells this time around instead of Harry Wells it also gets revealed that Alegra is not his daughter rather a doppleganger of an ex employee's of Nash. It doesn't sit too well with Alegra and even Frost who call Nash out on it. The episode ends with two final things to discuss and the first is Eva who earlier like I mentioned had her skin burned when she put her two arms through the reflective surface. While Iris is not in the room with her we see the other bad version of Iris walk up to the mirror as her and Eva share a moment. Iris asks what did you do to us as Eva somehow wipes away the burns on Iris before walking away. What could this mean?? is this Eva in Iris's form on the outside?? it's a little bit confusing right now but in time all will be revealed I'm sure. The final thing I wanna talk about is Nash Wells again sees Sherloque Wells but this time things get a lot more interesting as Wells gets closer to Nash his eyes turn Red as he says ''He is coming'' referencing the imminent return of one Eobard Thawne The Reverse Flash. Things are about to get a whole lot more interesting going forward as not only is Eva got something suspicious going on but Reverse Flash returning is always a good thing. He is after all the best villain this show has ever produced in my opinion. I really did like this episode a lot. Grodd and Barry's interactions were spot on and the sight of a fully speed force infused Grodd was epic on so many levels. Everything else going on in the outside world did weigh things down but not enough to make this a bad episode by any means. The Flash much like Legends Of Tomorrow goes on a week hiatus and will return on March 10th. Until then Team Flash!

★★★