The First Episode Back Will be the Trial of The Flash

Following the all-heroes on deck trailer from yesterday, The CW has released the first photos and an extended trailer for The Flash midseason premiere! Check it out in the player below!

Set to air Tuesday January 16, the episode is titled “The Trial of The Flash,” taking its name from a storyline from the pages of DC comics, and is described as follows: “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, which was written by Lauren Certo & Kristen Kim.

The Flash stars Grant Gustin as Barry Allen/The Flash, Candice Patton as Iris West, Danielle Panabaker as Caitlin Snow, Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramo, Tom Cavanagh as Dr. Harrison Wells, and Jesse L. Martin as Detective Joe West. New additions to the cast are Katee Sackhoff as the villain Amunet Black and Hartley Sawyer as Ralph Dibny, aka Elongated Man.

Based on the characters from DC Comics, The Flash hails from by Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (Arrow, Supergirl), Sarah Schechter (Arrow, Pan) and Todd Helbing (Spartacus).

With its midseason finale, The Flash ratcheted up the weird factor where The Thinker's plot was concerned, as Clifford DeVoe sacrificed his corporeal vessel so that his vastly superior mental skills could be transferred into the body of Dominic Lance. Not only did this provide the villain a physical upgrade, but it also set Barry Allen up to take the fall for DeVoe's "murder." As we wait to see where this comic-sourced story is going, The CW has released an extended trailer that hints at a troublesome way that Barry might escape his courtroom problems.

While the trailer above is largely the same as that initial look we got following "Don't Run," there are obviously a few key moments that we're just seeing now for the first time. And I'd say the biggest new-to-us moment is that exchange between Joe and Dibny, where it becomes clear that Joe intends to plant evidence at the crime scene -- the DeVoe household -- in order to save Barry from facing any major jail time. This immoral breach is quite outside Joe's normal sense of metahuman-adjacent authority, and it's important for at least two reasons.

The more obvious implication here is that the normally scrupulous Joe West would be tainting his position within the justice system. I mean, it helps somewhat that Joe knows Barry is innocent, and that he wouldn't just be planting evidence for purely nepotistic reasons. But still, if there's anyone who should have faith in Central City's legal infrastructure, it's a member of the CCPD. Plus, who's to say this bit of evidence-planting wouldn't whet Joe's appetite for more gray-area tactics in the future? Okay, that's not likely, but still.


The second relevant issue here is that Joe is with Dibny during this evidence-planting mission, and if there's anyone that Joe should have avoided teaming with in this instance, it's Team Flash's stretchiest member. After all, Dibny has his own history with planting a faux murder weapon at a crime scene, and him getting kicked off the police force is what started the strife between him and Barry. So it really doesn't seem likely that Dibny will be gung ho about Joe using the same illegal plan in order to save Barry. And when Dibny is the one holding all the morals in any given situation, you know something is screwed up.

With any luck, Joe won't actually need to incriminate himself by planting evidence at DeVoe's abode. I'm not sure what would stop him, but the trailer also puts a heavier tease on the prospect of Barry Allen going public with the fact that he's The Flash. That's not an alien concept within the Arrow-verse, where Oliver Queen recently had to defy rumors that he is actually the Green Arrow. It would be interesting to see how that reveal would play out in Central City and beyond. But, realistically, it probably won't happen that way.

Possibly leaving behind some of the fun we've seen in the earlier days, The Flash will return to The CW for the remainder of Season 4 on Tuesday, January 16, at 8:00 p.m. ET. To see when other fight-tastic shows are coming, head to our Superhero TV schedule, and to see when everything else is hitting the small screen in the coming months, bookmark our midseason premiere schedule.