After a very long hiatus (as usual), The Flash is finally back with this season four premiere, entitled “The Flash Reborn”. In it, the fight between team flash and the bad guys continued, as Barry returned.

Six months after the events of last season, team Flash (or Team Kid Flash, or even Team Vibe), kept on taking down bad guys, and I was so glad Iris finally started to do something. It feels like she really doesn’t do many good things to help the team, but in this episode, it was like she was almost a different character. The episode started with the team successfully catching Peek-a-Boo, which was a great choice, in contrary to bringing a whole new meta-human they weren’t going to develop.

Meanwhile, we saw how life was without Barry. It was good to see that everyone moved on, instead of just falling apart and drowning in self-pity like the people Barry saw when he traveled to the future in the previous season. Joe continued dating Cecile, and they were even going to move in together. Everyone really seemed happy (or at least as happy as they could be without Barry). It was just a shame we didn’t get to see Harry, or Doctor Wells, or whatever you want to call him, but I am sure Tom Cavanagh will be back real soon.

It was after this that the real trouble started: a samurai showed up demanding the Flash. The real flash. He said they had a day to get him back or he would destroy Central City, and he definitely showed he could do it. Nothing like desperation and pressure of having everyone killed to get a job done, so Cisco revealed he had been working on a way to bring Barry back. With Caitlin’s help (she turned to a bartender, which is definitely weird), they managed to do it, but it really did not go as expected. Barry did come back but he had totally lost his mind.

After trying to find ways to actually bring Barry back from that miserable state of his (and failing), the team was really starting to give up. It is really fair to say Barry completely lost it. Of course it did make sense, because even though I don’t fully understand what the “Speed Force” is, they said maybe he knew the secrets of the universe, or something, , not to mention he was tortured for who knows how many time (since time may move differently in the Speed Force). In a total leap of faith, Iris surrendered herself to the samurai, hoping that would make Barry come back. Call her crazy but it did work. Barry put all of his personal trouble aside and literally ran after his fiancé, faster than anyone on this planet ever ran.

After doing what the Flash does, Barry found out the samurai was a robot. They went back to Star Labs and the episode almost had a happy ending, if it wasn’t for 2 things: Caitlin didn’t really succeed in keeping Killer Frost at bay, since she still pops up every now and then, when she gets mad; and we saw the new villain of the season: The Thinker.

I was really glad when I found out the new villain wasn’t going to be a speedster again. It was cool seeing Barry had to fight someone with a similar gift than him, meaning he had to always outrun them, but this idea doesn’t last forever and, in my opinion, season 3 was proof of that, since it is definitely my least favorite season up until this point. Now with The Thinker, I really hope things will take a much different turn for the better and this show starts to get back on its feet.

We only had a small glance of him, so we don’t really know what to expect yet, but seeing that robot was simply one of his minions, he will totally be a very dangerous foe, I am really can’t wait to see more of this Thinker.

This was a good start for this season. There wasn’t much about it that was surprising, since I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we totally knew the Flash was going to be back, but it is just the beginning, so let’s give it a chance. I am giving this episode an 8.3/10.

The second episode of this forth season is entitled “Mixed Signals”, and in it we will be introduced to another meta-human, while Barry will adjust to a life he left behind six month before, so don’t miss it.