The final season of The Flash takes a weird detour as they move towards the finale. The show is usually about bright colors and big heroics. This episode is more Ocean’s Eleven than Superman: The Movie. I’m a little disturbed by how often Barry seems to be taking the “I know better than you do,” tack lately. He’s at it again as he decides to take some extraordinary measures to keep something “safe.” By the way, Barry, how many times has STAR Labs been broken into? At any rate, he needs a different kind of help, so he turns to “The Rogues of War.”

While there are a lot of characters with varying shades of morality throughout the episode, we start off with the bad guys. Captain Boomerang II, Fiddler II (or maybe III, it’s hard to keep track), and Murmur have a fun night out of larceny and homicide. While they go on their little crime spree, Barry and Iris are ticking another item off their bucket list. In a slight variation on the usual, they manage to get their task finished before being summoned by an alarm.

Back at STAR, there’s some kind of weird tension between Allegra and Chester, at least on her end of things. Chester and Khinoe, the newest incarnation of Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost, get there and Allegra tries to avoid them. Khione does a lot of talking about plants, and seems to be able to talk to them. I kind of wonder if this is a nod to something from way back. Danielle Panabaker, who has played Caitlin and her alternates, also played Layla in Sky High, a one-off movie about a high school for kids with powers. Layla’s power was controlling plants, which, of the possible powers out there, seems like a big coincidence.

While Khione and Chester try and sort through the awkwardness, Barry and Iris get a briefing about recent crimes from Captain Kramer. I know just about everyone in the city seems to know Barry’s “secret,” but really, how are they going to explain to the assorted officers why the captain is talking to a CSI tech and his wife, owner of a major news company, in her office? They talk about various elements of the recent meta-crimes, and Barry figures out the bad guys might be trying to build something that’s a big piece of Silver Age Flash lore, and has appeared once or twice in the Arorwverse. It’s definitely bad news, and Barry decides to go consult with someone.

Since when an actor leaves a show, their character more or less ceases to exist, Barry doesn’t go see Cisco, or even call him. Instead, he consults with former villain turned not-quite good guy Hartley Rathaway, the Pied Piper. Hartley has a lot of intel to share, and then makes an interesting suggestion for how to keep the next component out of the hands of the current group of villains. Like any good heist story, what follows is a briefing, some special circumstances meaning they have to go do this thing pretty much now, and the beginning of recruitment phase. We also see more of the optimism/naivety of Khione.

Iris, Allegra, Chester, and Cecile are assigned to try and figure out why the bad guy might be building this potential doomsday (or at least really bad news) gadget. While Allegra keeps avoiding Chester, Barry goes around and recruits his assorted specialists. They range from someone he’s helped to assorted villains. It’s an interesting choice for a team, and there are so many potential conflicts just getting things set up that I’m really not sure how anyone expects this to work. While the team is being put together, the bad guys are listening in and getting their own motivational speech/ugly threats from the shadowy figure behind all this.

Right off the bat, the new group starts bickering in a fairly predictable fashion. As the others dig into their research, Chester hits a few dead ends, and Iris goes on an odd rant that leaves Chester very confused. Barry tries to get his group in gear, but the briefing falls apart. Everyone has their own ideas about what should happen to the gadget they’re after, trust issues emerge, and everyone walks out. Barry has a lot of fine qualities, but when I think of great leaders in the Arrowverse, he’s really not anywhere near the top of the list. Sorry, Barry. Barry and Iris talk about their respective problems, and each comes to some new conclusions.

Chester finds Iris, and shares a new lead. It seems they’re going to need to talk to one of the other hero teams out there to find out what they need to know. Khione and Allegra talk about why Allegra is acting so oddly, which is amusing to watch. Barry reunites with the group that walked away from him, who were somehow going to do this without him in some unclear fashion. Confidences are shared, and the one who is probably easiest to dismiss as the dumb one shares a deduction he made a while ago, which speaks to a recurring problem one of the other characters has. They all go in, split up, get the slow-mo cool walk effect, and then meet up with various bad guys. There are fights, a betrayal, and some unexpected attraction along the way.

After an initial defeat, the team regroups and attacks again, with some actual teamwork. The big bad makes an actual appearance, and takes everyone by surprise. Things go badly, and the bad guys seem to have won everything they were after. There’s some talk after the fight, vague promises of help down the road, and some sharing of intelligence. Chester makes a call, and comes back with some disturbing news about one of the Flash’s allies. The episode ends with the bad guys mocking a new ally, the big bad appearing, and more threats, as well as a big reveal that probably caught no one by surprise, although it borrowed from a great line by a related character.

What I Liked: It was nice seeing some of these characters come back. The interplay between a few of them was very entertaining (book club being high up there). Setting the team of researchers on a specific task made sense, and they put the right ones on that job, at least mostly. The flirting during the fight was unexpected and kind of funny.

What I Didn’t: This plan didn’t seem like it was going to work from the very beginning, and I don’t know why anyone was surprised it didn’t. This is another example of the shared world problem, as there were a lot of characters throughout the Arrowverse that made more sense to recruit than this group. Allegra is making problems where none exist, and they don’t need to.

This wasn’t one of their better episodes. I’ll give it a low 3 out of 5. I hope the rest of this final season is better.