Could ‘The Flash’ be overcorrecting this year for the doom and gloom that dominated last season? This week’s episode is almost aggressively silly, to the point that slip-and-fall slapstick gags are central to the plot and the villain of the week barely qualifies as a nuisance.

On the plus side, whatever was going on with Wally’s hair last week appears to have sorted itself out.

Central City’s latest meta-human threat is Becky Sharpe (Sugar Lyn Beard), a squeaky-voiced girl who just has the rottenest luck in everything. We’re introduced to Becky in a flashback to three weeks ago, when she’s fired from her job as a casino blackjack dealer for allowing too many customers to win and spilling drinks on them. Becky is convinced that her whole life has been jinxed. Her luck is about to change, however, thanks to the machinations of that weird dude called The Thinker, who manipulates events to put her on the same bus as last week’s villain, Kilg%re.

The next we see her, Becky is on an incredible lucky streak that, while making everything go right for her, causes anyone around her to have bad luck. She leaves chaos in her wake as people spill coffee on themselves, stumble off ladders, and fall victim to all sorts of other mishaps – the distraction of which allows her to walk into a bank and steal a bunch of cash totally unimpeded. When Barry races to the scene to stop her, her he slips on a bunch of marbles spilled in the street and lands on his ass.

Meanwhile, Harry (Tom Cavanagh) visits from Earth-2 to deliver a “break-up cube” that contains a hologram message from Jesse dumping Wally. When the cube malfunctions, they have a very awkward conversation as Harry, insensitive as always, drops the hammer on that relationship.

Regarding Becky, Harry is insistent that there’s no such thing as luck, just the extraordinary complications of quantum mechanics. He and Cisco bicker about this a lot. Whatever the cause, Becky’s “bad luck field” starts to affect the team. Among other things, Joe suffers a major plumbing disaster at his house. Barry accidentally sees Iris’ wedding dress early, their wedding venue burns down, and the priest suffers a terrible allergic reaction.

Cisco dubs Becky “Hazard.” In tracing how she could have gotten her meta-human powers, the team discovers that the bus she rode on was exposed to Dark Matter as a result of the portal that opened when Barry exited the Speed Force. A total of 12 people were on the bus. Barry feels responsible for creating a dozen new metas. (For some reason, no one points out that every portal to the Speed Force should have likewise spilled out Dark Matter.)

When Becky goes on a huge winning streak back that the casino, her power expands, threatening to crash a passenger jet and start another meltdown at the particle accelerator. While Cisco and Harry work on shutting down the reactor, Barry tries to talk some sense into Becky. Unfortunately, she’s too selfish and won’t listen to reason. Eventually, Harry urges Cisco to simply let the reactor explode. When it does, instead of Dark Matter, this time it spews some other particle that cancels out Becky’s power, bringing her good luck streak to an end. Barry arrest Becky and deposits her in Iron Heights. (How convenient for our heroes that there are no courts or judicial system in Central City.)

Harry admits that he came to Earth-1 because Jesse kicked him off her superhero team, leaving him with no place else to go. (This comes on top of Jesse dumping Wally, which begs the question of what’s going on with that girl.) Cisco invites Harry to stay.

While everyone else celebrates another job well done, Wally points out that nobody even noticed that he left town for a few days to go sulk about Jesse. He promptly announces that he’s done with the team and is moving away, which everyone (even his dad) seems totally fine with.

The episode ends by revealing that The Thinker has been spying on S.T.A.R. Labs through the head of the samuroid captured in the season premiere. Also, Cecille tells Joe that she’s pregnant, the news of which causes him to freeze up without reacting.

Episode Verdict

Other than the revelation that The Thinker is orchestrating all the metas that Team Flash will face this season, the main plot of this episode is fairly inconsequential. Harry’s solution to let the reactor explode is nonsense even by this show’s standards.

The Thinker himself also doesn’t seem like a very imposing threat. Perhaps that’s intentional, to contrast against all the Savitar nonsense last season. Or perhaps he’s just a lame villain. We don’t have enough information on that to form an opinion yet.

I think it’ll be nice to have Tom Cavanagh back on the show regularly. On the other hand, Wally’s abrupt departure is not handled well at all. Personally, I couldn’t care one way or another whether Wally stays or goes, but he’s a pretty major character and the way he’s been unceremoniously written out with little more than a shrug feels almost insulting, both to the character and his fans. I wonder what behind-the-scenes politics led to that decision?