Things are dry and droopy after Cisco left The Flash and if the second half of the season doesn’t bring in a new supervillain or the Kid Flash anytime soon, things will become worse. Now that rant is out of the way, “Masquerade” features a decades-old entity capable of psychic abilities. This is also one of those episodes that centers around Cecile and her empath powers, yeah you guessed it right. Ever since she got hit by Psych in episode 11, “Family Matters: Part 2” she’s been acting strange and frankly, a little lost. This episode finally reveals why.
Cecile is shown trapped inside a mindscape, it’s unclear whose prison this is. What is clear, though, is this mindscape is familiar to Cecile. The weird thing is she doesn’t fall into a coma like Barry did when he was imprisoned by Grodd in season 6, episode 13, “Grodd Friended Me“, her body is under someone’s control and nobody suspects her of anything. When Barry visits her office to help her on a case, she gains control of his mind and locks him in the same mindscape as Cecile. Only this time, Barry is unconscious as Cecile takes him to S.T.A.R. Labs on the pretext of saving him.
Caitlin suggests this could be a situation similar to Grodd abducting Barry’s mind, creating two brainwaves instead of one. But in this case, it looks like the second brainwave was ‘feeding’ on Barry’s mind and using it as a source of energy. Chester skips a beat and figures out the culprit to be Psycho Pirate from Cisco’s meta binder, and the man last known to wear the golden mask attributed to him was Roger Hayden who’s locked up in prison. Team Flash concludes the mask has a conscience of its own and plans to steal it from the museum it’s currently being stored at. And say hello to Sue Dearbon!
When Barry catches up with Cecile in the mindscape, he finds out Cecile had been inside this prison for two weeks: yeah, the lightning that hit her earlier was not Psych’s doing! It was Psycho Pirate’s. Also, this mindscape is an old hidden memory of Cecile that nobody knows about, that she was a psychiatric patient in the past after her mother lost the battle with cancer. As Barry and Cecile try to find a portal to the real world, they get confronted by Cecile’s ‘Fear’ who doesn’t let them escape. And in the real world, Psycho Pirate attacks Sue, steals the golden mask from her, and also takes control over The Thinker’s chair that was stored in the Labs’ basement.
In an extremely anti-climatic ending that has Chester stabbing The Chair and deactivating it, Cecile finally overpowers her ‘Fear’ and escapes the mindscape with Barry at the same time. The Team then sends off the mask to a secure unknown facility to prevent any similar incident and Sue decides to stay in Central City a little longer, maybe working with a Team is her jam after all. On a side note, that everyone seems to be avoiding, Barry and Iris are trying to have a child. This episode has taken a very awkward take on this arc, it shoved Chester into the scene where the couple was apparently trying, and he tells them: “take a vacation or something, ya’ll.” Here’s to praying we get to skip that vacation and meet a 14-year-old Kid Flash, I mean this is a show about time-traveling!
Watch The Flash Season 7 Tuesdays on The CW.