‘The Flash’ EP Teases Ultimate Showdown Between Team Flash And DeVoe

Barry and his team make a desperate move to stop DeVoe in tonight’s Season 4 finale of CW’s “The Flash.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, executive producer Todd Helbing said that Barry (Grant Gustin) and his team come up with an insane plan to take down DeVoe (Neil Sandilands), aka The Thinker, once and for all.

“At the top of the episode, they’re gonna toss a Hail Mary. They come up with this crazy scheme to stop the Thinker in a way that we have never seen them fight a villain before,” Helbing said. “During that, there is a massive twist. I know we say this every year, but this is by far the biggest episode that we’ve done on a visual effects level, and in conjunction with story level. I would say it’s an ‘Inception’-inspired episode.”

When asked to explain how the season finale is like the 2010 Christopher Nolan film, Helbing said, “In the last episode, Iris (Candice Patton) and Harry (Tom Cavanagh), or what remained of Harry, went and tracked down Marlize (Kim Engelbrecht) and convinced her to come back and join the fight against her husband. So she comes up with this idea that the only way that they can take him down is to go into his mind and find the good part that’s left in him and appeal to whatever good is left of DeVoe.”

Helbing pointed out that DeVoe was a professor before he became The Thinker, suggesting that this season’s big bad isn’t totally evil. “At one point in his career, he was a teacher who wanted to teach people and better humanity,” Helbing said. “Once he got corrupted by the dark matter and became The Thinker, all of his humanity was swept aside. She (Marlize) knows though, being married to him, that there is good that’s left in, or thinks that there’s good that’s left in him. … So they literally send Barry’s consciousness into DeVoe’s.”

It appears, however, that the team’s decision to get into DeVoe’s mind isn’t a good idea. “You’re in my mind now. [Now] there is no escape,” DeVoe tells Barry in the trailer for the episode.

As previously reported, the season ender will also feature two major cliffhangers. According to Helbing, one of the cliffhangers will reveal the identity of Jessica Parker Kennedy’s mysterious character, and the other will introduce the main villain for Season 5. Though Helbing didn’t drop any hints about the identity of the next main villain, he said that “most people that are familiar with the comics will probably be able to deduce who the big bad is.”

“The Flash” Season 4 finale, titled “We Are the Flash,” airs on Tuesday, May 22 at 8 p.m. EDT on The CW.