Spoilers The Flash - Season 4

[Romulan_spy]

My first thought when it was revealed that Cecile can read minds was: why not use that power to read The Thinker's mind and find out his secret plan? Now I realize that the Thinker could also read Cecile's mind but at least it would be an even playing field now.

At first, I thought that The Thinker framing Barry for murder was just to get Barry out of the picture so he could continue his plan unhindered. But now I wonder if maybe The Thinker wanted Barry in prison so that he could be caught by Warden Wolfe? So I wonder if Warden Wolfe taking Barry and planning to sell him to Amunet was part of The Thinker's plan all along?

 

[Ovation]

It’s ALL about “The Thinker’s Plan”. MWAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!!!!

 

[SAndrews10]

This is going to turnout to be something along the line of Habib Marwan's plan on 24. Which several times called for his plans at the time to fail so that Jack could escape or something in the off hope that the real plan would continue.

 

[Romulan_spy]

This is going to turnout to be something along the line of Habib Marwan's plan on 24. Which several times called for his plans at the time to fail so that Jack could escape or something in the off hope that the real plan would continue.

Probably.

So far we got:
Step 1: orchestrate Team Flash getting Barry released from the Speed Force in a way that creates a bunch of new random metas.
Step 2: Switch bodies with one of the new metas to gain his telepathic ability and to prolong his own life since his body was dying.
Step 3: Frame Barry for murder so he goes to prison.
Step 4: Barry is discovered by Warden Wolfe and sold to Amunet?
Step 5: ???

Is it possible that The Thinker is trying to take down Amunet's black market operation and is using the Flash to do it?

 

[Christopher]

I think Amunet is the broker the Thinker is using to collect metas for his own purposes.

Spoiler: Preview for next week

The preview appears to show Barry imprisoned with several of the bus metas and working with them to escape from somewhere -- somewhere other than Iron Heights. So I think Wolfe has sold the metas to Amunet and the DeVoes have then bought them from her, as they did with Dominic. And they're gathering them as a metahuman fighting force or some such thing.

 

[Romulan_spy]

I think Amunet is the broker the Thinker is using to collect metas for his own purposes.

Spoiler: Preview for next week

The preview appears to show Barry imprisoned with several of the bus metas and working with them to escape from somewhere -- somewhere other than Iron Heights. So I think Wolfe has sold the metas to Amunet and the DeVoes have then bought them from her, as they did with Dominic. And they're gathering them as a metahuman fighting force or some such thing.

I thought of that. On the surface, it seems to make sense based on previous episodes like where the thinker gets Dominic from Amunet. But then why did the Thinker let Barry escape? It seems rather convoluted to let him escape, frame him for murder so he goes to prison, so Wolfe can sell him to Amunet, so Amunet can gift Flash back to the Thinker along with the other metas she has. From the promo, Barry seems to succeed in rescuing the metas Amunet had, so I would surmise that the Thinker must want Barry to rescue them from Amunet. That would explain why he orchestrated for Barry to go to prison where he knew that Wolfe would send Barry to the other metas. Maybe the thinker is raising an army of metas to fight something and he is preparing Flash to help with that fight? Honestly, we probably just have to wait and see, because I am not sure it really makes any sense yet.

 

[Finn]

One thing I kept thinking....if Barry gets out legally and goes back to being Flash immediately, one person who notices will be Captain Singh...even if Barry doesn't return to the CCPD. He'd notice through Joe West. At this point, there should have been enough clues for Singh to suspect something. Though he might already suspect something but they haven't showed any hint of it.

 

[Tuskin38]

So my DVR crapped out and I missed how Cecile got her powers.. how did it happen?

Also 'Shrinking the space between their subatomic particles' wasn't that the same explanation in DS9's shrink the cast episode?

 

[Romulan_spy]

So my DVR crapped out and I missed how Cecile got her powers.. how did it happen?

Caitlyn hypothesizes that Cecile got a small amount of latent dark matter in her brain, probably from the 1st particle accelerator explosion, and her latest phase in her pregnancy triggered the latent dark matter to activate the powers.

Also 'Shrinking the space between their subatomic particles' wasn't that the same explanation in DS9's shrink the cast episode?

I think so. Honestly, I always hated that explanation because it is so physically absurd. Oh well.

 

[Christopher]

I think so. Honestly, I always hated that explanation because it is so physically absurd. Oh well.

Shrinking is always physically absurd. Reducing the number of particles would make the body and brain unable to function, and reducing the separation between the particles would not only make the body impossibly dense (enough to fall through any floor or table) but would alter the biochemistry too much to continue to work. The "reduce the distance" explanation is actually the one from TAS: "The Terratin Incident" rather than DS9's "One Little Ship."

The "One Little Ship" explanation was actually the only one that even vaguely made sense, and was basically the one Isaac Asimov used in his more-scientifically-savvy novelization of the movie Fantastic Voyage: They haven't really shrunk at all, they've just been through a topological spacetime distortion that alters their apparent size relative to the universe around them, sort of like how an object moving near the speed of light appears to be compressed front-to-back to an outside observer even though there's no physical change to the object itself. I think that's sort of what the Flash writers here were vaguely flailing toward as their explanation, but they phrased it badly.

Honestly, this show desperately needs a science consultant. Sure, the science is always going to be fanciful, but at least they could get someone who could help them come up with explanations that sound less incoherent. (Too bad Zack Stentz didn't stay on staff beyond season 3. He's pretty good with science stuff.)

 

[The Old Mixer]

Step 1: orchestrate Team Flash getting Barry released from the Speed Force in a way that creates a bunch of new random metas.
Step 2: Switch bodies with one of the new metas to gain his telepathic ability and to prolong his own life since his body was dying.
Step 3: Frame Barry for murder so he goes to prison.
Step 4: Barry is discovered by Warden Wolfe and sold to Amunet?
Step 5:

PROFIT!!!

 

[Finn]

As DeVoe believes he’s doing all this for a noble goal, I’d guess taking down Amunet.

 

[The Old Mixer]

There are 11 episodes left in the season...I think DeVoe's plan will be a bit more convoluted than the answer to everything being whatever's in the next episode. And it all seems like a lot of trouble to bring down one meta who can control a bucket of shrapnel.

 

[Romulan_spy]

And it all seems like a lot of trouble to bring down one meta who can control a bucket of shrapnel.

True but when have villains ever had simple, straightforward plans? LOL.

 

[Christopher]

As DeVoe believes he’s doing all this for a noble goal, I’d guess taking down Amunet.

Nothing so small. He said in "Therefore I Am" that his goal was nothing less than to change the way people think, to convey his brilliant thoughts directly to other people's minds and change them so that they'd be able to understand. I'm thinking the DeVoes' endgame is some kind of planetwide mind control, mentally imposing the Thinker's "better" solutions on other people around the world.

 

[Scout101]

Yeah, definitely a 24-style plan. Guarantee that when we see the end plan, most of the middle steps will have been pointless. Probably could have done steps 1, 2, End and had same result. This is mostly just trying to fill in the episodes between the first couple and the big fight at the end...

 

[Romulan_spy]

I'm thinking the DeVoes' endgame is some kind of planetwide mind control, mentally imposing the Thinker's "better" solutions on other people around the world.

That is my thought as well. Maybe the Thinker's plan is to harvest the speed force energy from all the metas in order to power a brain device that will expand his telepathy to the whole world and that is how he plans to achieve global mind control?

Yeah, definitely a 24-style plan. Guarantee that when we see the end plan, most of the middle steps will have been pointless. Probably could have done steps 1, 2, End and had same result. This is mostly just trying to fill in the episodes between the first couple and the big fight at the end...

Agreed.

 

[Ovation]

Yeah, definitely a 24-style plan. Guarantee that when we see the end plan, most of the middle steps will have been pointless. Probably could have done steps 1, 2, End and had same result. This is mostly just trying to fill in the episodes between the first couple and the big fight at the end...

Well, if everyone had simply listened to Jack and followed instructions, the show would have been called 12.

 

[Christopher]

That is my thought as well. Maybe the Thinker's plan is to harvest the speed force energy from all the metas in order to power a brain device that will expand his telepathy to the whole world and that is how he plans to achieve global mind control?

I don't see how he could possibly have predicted which exact powers the bus passengers would get, but he's been shown to predict other seemingly unguessable things (like exactly where and when the breach would open), so I've been wondering if there's some way their various powers could work in combination. Let's see, we've got:

Kilg%re: control over computers
Hazard: probability manipulation
Elongated Man: shapeshifting
The Weeper: psychoactive drug secretion
Black Bison: telekinetic control of inanimate objects
Brainstorm: telepathy
Fallout: nuclear energy generation
Dwarfstar: size alteration
4 other passengers: ??

Yeah, I could see a number of those working in concert. The ability to control minds, computers, inanimate objects, and probability all at once would pretty much cover all the bases. The Weeper's tears could be part of the mind control effect. Fallout could power some massive device that channels the others' powers, maybe. Dwarfstar could shrink it down for delivery to where it's needed. Hard to see where Ralph fits in, though.

 

[Scout101]

Well, if everyone had simply listened to Jack and followed instructions, the show would have been called 12.

My favorite part of how Rube-Goldbergian that plan was (Season 4) was that almost all of the distractions and sub-plots were more devastating than the actual 'goal' of the attack. Also, most of them were random luck/chance, and could have failed easily, so having set up so many moving parts that all are mandatory to make the last step work is nutso.

Literally could have stopped about 45 minutes into the season and claimed success. They crashed a train, stole an override device that could make nuclear power plants melt down all over the country. Mission Accomplished! Nope, after like a dozen OTHER distractions (like kidnapping the SecDef, setting off an EMP in LA, stealing a fighter jet, shooting down Air Force One and gravely injuring the POTUS, firefight in the Chinese Embassy), the end goal was to fire a nuclear missile at LA. Success in every previous plan was required for that one to work, and it would have been less devastating than just focusing on having success with the meltdown device in the first place. *sigh*