When Brandon McKnight’s cheery scientist and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) got stuck in a time loop in the year 1998 in Tuesday’s episode, Chester had to guess about his difficult relationship with his father, Quincy (Milton Barnes), an inventor, because it was the key to his freedom. Growing upward, Chester believed his father did not like him because he was always on the street, but this trip to the the’90s assisted Chester to discover that was not true and save the day.
After realizing Quincy had a pc part they had to defeat the episode’s villain, Chester approached his father, who revealed he worked hard to get his son, and even though he was not around much, he took every opportunity to teach him important lessons for the future. For instance, Quincy bought then threw out a part youthful Chester needed to get a job so his son would eventually find it in the trash after his dad left. “It’s my way of teaching him how to become resourceful and a problem solver,” Quincy said. “Chester is well worth any sacrifice I must create… When it comes to him, I don’t believe in quitting.”
“I recall reading the episode and calling [showrunner] Eric Wallace and thanking him for this episode,” McKnight tells EW. “Not simply because Chester is the focal point of this episode, but also for [depicting] that side of this father-son connection between Black men, also being a Black father and how you’ve got to [prepare] your son for a world a lot of it looks down to you. He has not to just be clever, he needs to be smart in a way that nobody is smart. He has to understand to take the trash and make gold from it. I thought this connection was so [symbolic] of exactly what that connection is similar to and what preparing your son kind of has to be.”
Nevertheless, McKnight appreciates the way the storyline also dealt with the constraints of the tough-love strategy. “You are able to raise somebody with tough love, but there’s always a gap left to the tender love as well,” he states. “How do you create a balance? That’s something I don’t think anyone knows how to perfect. There’s definitely going to be defects in it, and there’s always going to be difficulties. I think that specific scene in which he meets his dad touches all those things.”
“It changes Chester tremendously,” McKnight says. “Chester climbed up not really having a figure to aspire to, not actually having an individual to look up to other than the superheroes zipping around town and all the things that he loves. He really understands he has a true figure to check towards… So now Chester realizes, ‘I’m a product of my father, so I now have that in myself as well,’ which translates to him confronting Dion. That only goes into other episodes where he really finds his confidence and realizes that’I can do this stuff and I am capable of this stuff because I am a product of the guy who did these things.'”
Alas, the danger of Dion and the other cosmic forces the Power Force, a.k.a. Fuerza, and the Sage Force, a.k.a. Psych still looms over Team Flash and the Speed Force (Michelle Harrison) since the episode ends. In reality, McKnight warns that we shouldn’t automatically trust the Speed Force either: “I’d say be wary of everything and everybody.”