Barry and Team Flash have finally found DeVoe. But he’s not necessarily what they expected. While the audience has seen DeVoe/The Thinker portrayed as a genius mastermind, Team Flash sees him and his assistant as nothing more than a wheelchair-bound man with a wife. Arriving at DeVoe’s door, Barry and Joe were hard-pressed to believe that the man that they met was actually the arch-nemesis they had feared.
And yet, Barry is inclined to believe DeVoe might be putting up a front here, according to Grant Gustin.
“Barry’s taking [the situation] pretty seriously right away. Before anybody else on the team knows for sure that this is our guy, [Barry] starts to become a little bit obsessed with getting him, because he doesn’t want things to get out of hand again, as they always do. We start to see him become unravel[ed] slightly for the first time all season, because he’s been pretty put together this year, [and faily] positive. He starts to become a little obsessed with finding this guy and getting everyone to see and be on the same page as him and see that this our guy for sure. But everyone else has their doubts for a while.”
How will DeVoe/The Thinker compare to THE FLASH’s past villains? According to Gustin, “The Thinker is less about Barry and more about his vision of Central City and how he thinks he can make it better and make the world better….We also has a bigger picture in mind that the team isn’t aware of. So I don’t even know necessarily where they’re going with DeVoe because he’s obviously our big bad of the year. There’s things I don’t necessarily know, [including] what he knows about the team. But he’s more all-knowing than any big bad we’ve had before. Every time we think we’re ahead of him, we realize he’s still three steps ahead.”
But Barry’s mounting frustration with the DeVoe situation could become a problem. “It kind of ends up driving Barry crazy, because he thinks he knows more about this guy, that’s he’s not all that he’s cracked up to be, or that’s he’s portraying himself to be. It pushes Barry to do some things that could possibly get him in trouble,” Danielle Panabaker (Dr. Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost) warned. And Candice Patton (Iris West) added that the situation is “troubling for Iris. I think she thinks Barry’s gotta take a step back or you could end up in a lot of trouble. You can’t go after people like that. There’s laws and things. There’s going to be a little tension there. Iris is gonna be a little worked about how serious he’s taking this DeVoe character.
Jesse L. Martin (Joe West) said “suddenly we all have to jump up to [DeVeo’s] level of intellect if we can. Joe’s pretty simple when it comes to things like that but suddenly I’m like ‘I’ve got to be smarter than this guy’. Our interactions are like cat and mouse, teasing each other and playing very witty games with each other but there’s a dark undertone to it.”
Carlos Valdes (Cisco Ramon/Vibe) hinted that “basically, DeVoe has this overarching plan that involves all sorts of circumstantial minutia. Whether the team knows it or not, they’re already conducting actions that are part of DeVoe’s plan and sort of falling for his trap. So it’s really more a matter of Team Flash sort of discovering their place within what his plan. Just when you think that the team is getting close to figuring out what DeVoe’s intentions are, it goes beyond that, exponentially. I think viewers can expect to go on the ride of their lives”
Meanwhile, while Dibny embraced his opportunity to become a superhero in the most recent episode, we will see the character — who is known as one of the world’s greatest detectives — return to his roots in the future. “It becomes kind of a longer term thing for him to kind of get into that,” Hartley Sawyer (Ralph Dibny) said. “Because when we meet him he’s doing this really scummy, low-brow detective work. Add he’s above and beyond that and we’ll get there.” Martin explained that it’s Dibny’s past that will actually help bridge the gap between Dibny and Joe: “Joe West — he knows Ralph. He knew Ralph and Barry knew Ralph, so he knows Ralph is not a total dirtbag and that he is a very, very talented cop. And that there’s something there that is very valuable, potentially, to the team and to Barry and to Joe.”
Be warned, however, because as Sawyer reminded us: “I’ll put it this way: DeVoe hired me to investigate the Mayor so I’m ensnared in this web of lies that he has constructed.”
THE FLASH airs Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
