The Flash‘s midseason finale ended on a whopper of a cliffhanger. Following on from the Thinker’s body swap, Barry Allen came home to find the corpse of Clifford DeVoe in his apartment, set up in such a way to frame the Scarlet Speedster for his murder. As the teaser trailer for the episode revealed, the second half of season 4 will see our hero on trial.
The new synopsis for the installment, fittingly titled “The Trial of the Flash,” gives us a further hint as to what we can expect when The Flash returns to The CW next month. It teases that Barry’s wife and father-in-law Iris and Joe will have to try anything they can to keep him out of jail.
BARRY FIGHTS FOR HIS LIFE — As Barry’s (Grant Gustin) trial for the murder of Clifford DeVoe begins, Iris (Candice Patton) and Joe (Jesse L. Martin) must decide how far they are willing to go to keep Barry out of prison. Philip Chipera directed the episode written by Lauren Certo & Kristen Kim (#410). Original airdate 1/16/2018.
Thanks to the aforementioned teaser, we might just know how far Iris and Joe will go to save Barry: they’ll ask him to publicly out himself as Central City’s own speedster hero. As well as the threat of Barry’s freedom, it looks like he’ll have to face another dilemma of whether to reveal his secret identity to the world in order to clear his name.
As the title of the episode tells us, the second half of season 4 is going to be inspired by the classic comic book storyline of the same name. In it, Barry’s identity was similarly called into question when he’s put on trial for the apparent murder of his nemesis the Reverse-Flash. This was also the last major plot arc Barry was involved in before his death in “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Can we expect that storyline to play out next year? We’ll have to wait and see.
The Flash season 4, episode 10 airs on The CW on January 16th.
