The Flash Sneakily Explains An Annoying Rainbow Raider Plot Hole - Screen Rant

Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for The Flash season 7, episode 12, "Good-Bye Vibrations."

The backstory and punishment of a new Rainbow Raider left many fans of The Flash scratching their heads, given that she was reportedly fired and rehired from the same position several times in a short span of time. Despite seeming like a plot hole, a little bit of applied logic and knowledge of the Rainbow Raider's power set explains everything: she kept getting rehired because she was using her powers to influence her employers!

The Flash season 7, episode 12, "Good-Bye Vibrations" was largely devoted to Team Flash preparing to send STAR Labs technician Cisco Ramon off in style, after he announced that he was leaving Central City to take a new job with ARGUS. However, the going-away party had to be put on hold when they learned of a new metahuman criminal. Cisco dubbed this new thief the Rainbow Raider 2.0, based on her having mind-control powers similar to those of the original Rainbow Raider, Roy G. Bivolo. The key difference between them was that Bivolo's powers caused people to become angry and combative, whereas this new Rainbow Raider made people happy and agreeable.

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Team Flash eventually learned that the new season 7 Rainbow Raider was a former collections officer named Carrie Bates, who had been fired from six different collections agencies in the past three months, due to her clearing the records of people who owed money because of medical bills, without them paying their debts. They also determined that Bates' crimes were motivated by altruism and that she had planned to give away the millions of dollars she had stolen from banks and jewelry stores to people who were at the mercy of predatory lenders. By the episode's end, The Flash had convinced Bates to turn herself in and put in a good word for her with the District Attorney's office. This resulted in Bates, instead of serving jail time, being allowed to work with the Mayor's economic development committee: a job she had no apparent aptitude or training for, apart from a desire to help the financially exploited.

This confused many fans of The Flash who found this chain of events highly unlikely. Even ignoring that the collections business has a high turn-over rate among its agents, it seemed laughable that Carrie Bates could keep finding work at various collections agencies if she had been repeatedly terminated for erasing debts without authorization. This also raised the question of whether or not Bates would have faced civil or criminal charges in addition to being fired. Finally, ignoring that Bates had no apparent qualifications to work with a major civil department, it seemed impossible that the same district attorney's office that was previously hell-bent on making an example of a dangerous metahuman during the trial of Killer Frost would suddenly be willing to show leniency to a rogue telepath, even if The Flash was willing to vouch for her.

While this all might seem incredibly lazy on the part of the writers of The Flash, the fact that Carrie Bates' powers allow her to cloud other peoples' minds (and therefore judgment) explains everything. Without explicitly stating so, the Arrowverse show set up the perfect excuse: her powers. Anytime Rainbow Raider was fired from a collections agency, she could simply apply at another firm and use her powers to charm the interviewer into offering her a new job on the spot. While it's unlikely the new Rainbow Raider would have been able to pull the same trick with the DA, it is amusing to think she might have been able to talk her way into a lighter sentence or that The Flash's putting his reputation on the line for her was based around a residual effect of her powers.

More: How Cisco's New Arrowverse Role Avoids Ruining His Story

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Matt Morrison (1522 Articles Published)

Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word "blogging" was coined. He got his start writing for the legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing, before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on to write for over a dozen websites, including 411 Mania, Comics Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American Comic Books, Japanese Manga and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Managing Editor of Kabooooom.com, the house critic of Explore The Multiverse and writes reviews for No Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog – My Geeky Geeky Ways – which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series making up The Arrowverse as well as his comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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The Flash Sneakily Explains An Annoying Rainbow Raider Plot Hole - Screen Rant

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