‘The Flash’ 3.11 Recap: “May the Best Vibe Win”

That bounty hunter teased at the end of last week’s episode of ‘The Flash’ gets a proper introduction this week, and Cisco is instantly besotted with her. This poor guy always falls for the girls he can never have.

Her name is Gypsy (Jessica Camacho from ‘Sleepy Hollow’) and she’s come from Earth-19 to collect H.R. Wells. She claims that he’s a fugitive for the crime of interdimensional travel, which is apparently the worst thing someone from Earth-19 can do. (Wouldn’t her interdimensional traveling after him also be equally bad?) It’s a little weird that she actually calls her world “Earth-19,” as if everyone who lives there considers their universe the nineteenth and this one where Barry and the gang live to be the first. She’s also a meta-human who coincidentally has the exact same powers that Cisco does, and even calls them “vibing,” but she’s much more skilled at using them. She busts into S.T.A.R. Labs and quickly subdues everyone on the team who tries to stop her by blasting them with vibrations and hopping around through portals. She even somehow negates Wally’s speedster powers and freezes him in place – which is something Cisco didn’t even realize he could do.

As mentioned, Cisco falls for her fast. Realizing that the jig is up, H.R. surrenders himself and agrees to be taken back to Earth-19 for trial and eventual execution. (You’d think that exiling him to a completely different universe would be punishment enough, but I guess the people of Earth-19 take this stuff super-seriously.) However, when Wells mentions that the only alternative is trial-by-combat (for which he’s obviously unqualified), Cisco steps up and offers to be his champion. He’s grown to like H.R. – and also he may think that acting gallant and macho like this would impress the girl. She’s not impressed, and points out to him that trial-by-combat means a fight to the death. She gives him 24 hours to prepare.

Of course, Cisco is woefully unprepared for a serious fight. His attempts to train for it with the team aren’t very promising. Barry tries to help by tracking down Gypsy and fighting her before the trial, but she even kicks his butt.

Fortunately, in reviewing video footage of Gypsy, Julian spots a potential weakness. Every time she leaps through a portal, her feet leave the ground for a couple seconds, during which she may be vulnerable. It looks like Julian is proving his worth to Team Flash already.

Cisco meets Gypsy at a park at the designated hour and begins the battle. She toys with him a bit and pushes him through portals, first to the CatCo building on Supergirl’s Earth-38 (Kara’s not around, only Miss Teschmacher) and then to a volcano planet. When they return to the park, Cisco remembers what Julian told him and successfully knocks Gypsy off balance. He declares victory, even though “fight to the death” typically implies that he needs to finish her off.

Gypsy concedes defeat and agrees to leave H.R. in this universe. The tradeoff to this is that she’ll have to tell her superiors that she killed him here – which means that H.R. can never return home to Earth-19. This storyline ends with lots of flirting between Cisco and Gypsy. She teases him with a kiss but steps through a portal back to her world at the last second.

Other Business

Iris has become very fatalistic about her death that Barry foresaw. If she’s to die in a few month’s time, she takes this to mean that whatever she does right now won’t kill her. As such, she decides to write an investigative journalism piece on some dangerous arms dealers. She thinks this story could make a lasting mark for her in case, you know, she never gets another chance.

Because he’s not busy with the Gypsy situation, Iris asks Wally to help her. Then she very stupidly sends him away when she needs him the most and breaks into the gun-runners’ warehouse hideout all on her own. No surprise, she gets caught, but Wally is able to race in and rescue her in time.

Barry worries that Iris may have a death wish. He’s also come to the conclusion that, at the current rate he’s improving his speed, he still won’t be fast enough to save Iris from Savitar when the night comes. He believes that Wally may be able to save her, though.

Episode Verdict

Here’s a question: If Iris believes that Savitar will kill her exactly as Barry saw it, why not leave Central City before that date and fly to Hawaii or something? This seems like an obvious solution to the problem, yet nobody on the show has thought of it.

The Gypsy storyline in this episode is kind of fun, but it’s also a time-waster that ultimately has no impact on the season. Will we see her again? Probably not anytime soon.

2 comments

  1. Guy

    This week’s Legends of Tomorrow:
    The main characters weren’t the focus of the A-plot, definitely my favorite episode of the show ever.

    The week’s Flash:
    The main character wasn’t the focus of the A-plot, definitely one of my favorite episodes in the show’s history.

    Interesting week in that way. Here, that fact is a compliment to Cisco, the writing of the episode and the performances of Valdes and Camacho. No knock on Barry or any other characters. The magical mystery tour through the multiverse ending up in James’ office was a particularly fun bit. This was simply Flash being the best version of itself as it does a few times per season.

    With this week’s focus on the villain perspective on Legends, it just highlighted how annoying the writing for the main cast normally is. Here, I enjoyed following two villains I was never all that wild about during their Arrow runs, whereas I’m normally some degree miffed about what I’m seeing the Legends do and they’re mostly made up of characters I did enjoy on their original shows. The recipe for the entree is off in the writer’s kitchen, but they prepared a helluva palette cleanser.

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