The final season of The Flash (it’s the final season of a lot of hero shows, unfortunately) has been a bit uneven. I’m not really enjoying some of their ongoing plots, and this one has a few holes in it. Still, they do a few interesting things in “Mask of the Red Death, Part One.” The title, obviously, is a nod to the classic Edgar Allen Poe story.

The show opens with Marc Blaine, Frost’s boyfriend and variously hero or villain depending on the episode, doing some work on a big project. Since he switched sides last time, we know he’s not doing a good thing, and the pieces eventually start taking shape to the new Cosmic Treadmill. They had something like this big piece of Flash mythos early in the series, but I don’t think they ever used that name for it (I miss Cisco and his naming things). True to stereotypical form, Red Death speeds in to offer some motivation in the form of threats, and we also learn there’s an important piece of this equation missing. Red Death also spouts some lines that are rather famous, but usually come from a different character.

Iris and Barry talk out some theories about their new foe, their plan, and what’s going to happen next. This far in, you’d think they’d know better, but they seem to have leapt to a lot of conclusions here. They also try and figure out why Red Death (although they’re not using that name yet) spared Barry’s life earlier, and reference a few characters from the past. Barry, of course, is determined to save the villain from themselves, and blaming himself for everything. Iris tries to reassure him before going to follow up on one of their leads: Ryan Wilder/Batwoman being missing.

At the West home, the writers unfortunately continue a trend I’ve noticed in the series. When an actor decides they are leaving, the writers often construct a pretty lame story around it (like Cisco giving up his powers, which I still don’t get at all). Jesse Martin was talking about leaving the show, so suddenly Joe West decided he needed to move out of Central City, where he’s lived all his life. As he talks things out with Cecile, we get a bit more insight into his thought process, and it’s way out of character. Down in his workshop at STAR, Chester chats with a friend online, lamenting the weirdness that the writers are doing regarding his and Allegra’s relationship, or lack thereof. Barry comes in, Chester hurriedly hides the chat, and they start brainstorming and techno-babbling ideas for how to track Red Death. They get an alert and Flash speeds off, trying to talk Red Death down. This goes badly, and Barry gets ambushed by a Rogue we haven’t seen in a while.

Flash wakes up in a standard trussed-up hero trap so the assorted villains can gloat. Since they seem to be everywhere he has, of course, been fitted with a meta-dampening cuff. The villains scheme and plot, and Blaine seems to have at least not gone totally over to the dark side just yet. Eventually Red Death shows up, shoos everyone away, and offers Barry the chance to talk. At STAR, the aftereffects of something the villains did earlier are hampering their efforts to find Barry. Khione pops in to offer more odd insights and ends up suggesting they call the team of Rogues they worked with last episode. Where the rest of Barry’s allies are is never really touched on.

Red Death goes into not quite full monologue mode. She’s boasting a lot and dropping vague hints, but we never get much detail about why she’s doing this or her master plan. Clearly, she hasn’t read the union villain book. At the end of her rant, we learn she’s targeting someone close to the Flash, which badly shakes him up. Meanwhile at the loft, Iris gets a very unexpected visitor. They also slightly screwed this scene up, as Iris knows who this is but doesn’t comment on a fairly obvious change in their appearance.

Iris’ visitor spins a long tale about what they’ve been up to, and some small things aren’t lining up with the facts as we, and Iris, know them. As this strange visit goes on, the not-so-bad Rogues show up at STAR. Hartley is at his full egotistical snark, but his brilliant idea doesn’t pan out due to something Goldface points out. Flash tries to change the villain’s mind, and gets more vague responses that don’t help. He’s so convinced his theory is right he keeps arguing the wrong points, and not helping himself. We also get a surprising development regarding Red Death’s armor. Red Death does reveal a part of their plan, and the writers fall down on the job again with the details. We’ve seen this happen before, with a different Flash, during Crisis on Infinite Earths. Barry should at least recognize this setup.

Iris and her visitor keep talking, and Iris realizes enough to know that something’s not right. She does take definitive action, so at least she’s not in Damsel mode. Of course, given one of the problems in the city, Iris’ option here shouldn’t be working, but we’ll ignore that for now. This is the point we finally get a lot of villain background, and once again, this should set off some questions for Iris, but doesn’t seem to. There are also a lot of similarities to the Elseworlds Injustice story. At home, Joe shares more of what’s going on inside his head, and it really doesn’t make a lot of sense for the man we’ve gotten to know over the last few years. He also talks a lot about how he thinks he failed some of the people he’s raised, but there’s a glaring omission.

Red Death has disappeared for a bit, and Mark comes to offer Flash some water. Flash tries to appeal to Mark’s better nature, but Mark’s very busy wallowing in self-pity, which he’s been doing a lot lately. While Barry keeps trying to reach Mark, Iris hears more about her strange visitor from another world, and points out some inconsistencies in the story she’s being told. This ends with an unusual suiting up scene and another line that is generally associated with someone else.

Finally the pieces start falling in to place. Red Death has a hostage, Flash doesn’t see a choice, and most of the villains seem to be looking forward to this in a “we’re kind of generically evil” kind of way. Flash’s cuff gets taken off, and why he doesn’t right there drop all the minion bad guys at superspeed I have no idea. But the change in his status lets the other team of Rogues zero in on him, and Allegra uses the weird teleporting smoke bomb thing she inherited from the last Wells on the show. There’s a lot of tense exchanges, Allegra seems to forget she has powers, and finally there’s a hasty retreat and what appears to be a heroic sacrifice. Barry, of course, doesn’t do well with someone else getting martyred, but he’s outvoted and his powers haven’t fully recovered, because that’s how the damper is working this time.

The rescue team debriefs at STAR, and Barry is torn up about the apparent sacrifice. There’s some more bickering, especially between the idealistic Khione and Goldface. The situation really doesn’t sound great, despite the rescue. In the aftermath of the big discussion, Allegra goes to talk to Chester, and he, too, in my opinion is written very out of character. I found that to be a very frustrating scene with no real purpose aside to artificially add some tension. The Wests talk some more at home, and all the build up they’ve been doing with Joe’s Big Decision seems to just kind of fade away. And in the aftermath of the rescue and the usual property damage associated with a supers battle, Red Death swears vengeance, and her thugs seem to be fine with this idea, despite not really having a horse in this race. The episode ends with the dreaded words: “To Be Continued.”

What I Liked: It was nice seeing Iris figure things out on her own. The ambush for Flash was well set-up and executed and the Rogue involved had a legit grievance with the Scarlet Speedster. Cecile did a good job remaining rational in the face of the weirdness from Joe. Mark being at least a bit conflicted made sense to me. The Rogues taunting their prisoner and almost doing something so many villains have failed to do was a nice touch.

What I Didn’t: There were a lot of holes in this one, some of which I can’t go into specifics on because of spoilers. Joe is being weird to the point that if it wasn’t for bouts of bad writing on this series on occasion, I’d wonder if he was being mentally manipulated. The villain backstory we get should have some of them realizing something they have mistakenly believed since Crisis isn’t true. Barry should have recognized the set-up he was being placed in. There was some great sort of bonding between the new Fiddler and Jaco last time and they seem to have utterly forgotten about it.

This was not one of their better episodes. I’m giving this a 2.5 out of 5, and that might be generous. We’ll see if they salvage any of this in Part Two.