The Flash S06E07-08 Review: Countdown to Crisis

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 7-8: The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Pt. 1-2

So we're finishing up the first leg of Flash's sixth season with a two-parter as we presumably conclude the Bloodwork arc -- Barry Allen's scheduled to participate in a certain Crisis on Infinite Earths with red skies and everything in two episodes, after all! Yet I do think that giving Ramsey Rosso a good half-dozen episodes to be developed as a villain -- one that interacts a fair amount of times with two core members of the cast, Barry and Caitlin, to boot, prior to his slippery descent into madness -- is a whole lot better compared to the slow, slow burn of building up a very static and repetitive villain like what we got with Thinker and especially the Cicadas. Ramsey isn't the most intricate supervillain out there, ultimately, but he's got a great actor, a motivation that starts out as something understandable that gets twisted, and even has a decent supervillain plan, even if it's something relatively as mundane as a zombie apocalypse. Mundane by superhero standards, at least.


We've got some allright B-plots, mostly check-ins with Iris and Allegra discussing journalistic stuff, Allegra questioning about the future Crisis newspaper (which she finally writes) and a wild-goose chase for supervillain uber delivery service. It's neat but genuinely forgettable. There's also a bunch more repetitive and enigmatic stuff involving Nash West exploring those gosh-darned sewer runes. But the emotional and visual highlight of this episode is certainly the lead character, Barry Allen.

Barry's been... an interesting character. Throughout the previous season Barry's taken a significant amount of backseat as most of his characterization and screentime in that season is defined by his interaction with his future daughter Nora, while this season mostly had Barry be morose and trying to accept his death and get his team to work without him... but what about the turmoil that Barry Allen's certainly feeling in his own head?

After Bloodwork nearly kills poor Elongated Man (in an actually awesome, if short, fight involving a sequence where Ralph stretches his way underneath the ground via sewer gratings), Barry ends up transfusing his blood and super-speed-healing to heal Ralph, but that means that the symbiote-esque black goopy blood ends up hitching a ride into Barry Allen's psyche... and we get some of the coolest and creepiest imagery we've seen in this show for a while. Ramsey ends up being a literal demon that haunts Barry's mind, feeding on his doubts and fears. A series of gravestones showing all the people who have died. The terrifying imagery of a peaceful Thanksgiving dinner with his entire family which ends up taking a turn for creepy with the addition of Ramsey Rosso's homemade lasagna and goopy black blood.

All the while, Ramsey is learning all about the Flash and his secret identity and presumably binge-watching the past five seasons of The Flash while sifting through Barry's memories. Ramsey offers Barry a deal to the dark side -- accept his creepy blood powers, and Barry Allen might be such a powerful immortal that he'll survive the crisis. Barry resists, and I do enjoy the mind-game a lot, and eventually comes across the manifesetation of the Speed Force, which once more takes the form of Barry's dead mother.

The Speed Force tells Barry to fight, that it's the only way to fight Ramsey's infection in his blood... but at the same time, doesn't deny that actually accepting Ramsey's powers might actually help him survive the Crisis. There's some great, great acting on Grant Gustin's part as Barry, which was all dead-set on resisting, realizes what the Speed Force is implying, and gets absolutely angry that the Speed Force was so willing to essentially make Barry a sacrifice for the greater good, and Barry Allen's frustration at both his upcoming death and all the deaths of his friends that had died before all come pouring out. It's something that only really works when you realize just how many people have died over the seasons, and how much the Speed Force is just being a vaguely distant entity that goes 'yes be good and fight', with her argument being basically amounting to 'it's not right' and 'that's not your path'. Really should've led with 'you'll lose your personality and be a zombie', but we can forgive the personification of a force of nature to not have good communication skills.

And it's at this vulnerable point where in comes Ramsey Rosso with his intoxicating plans. Yes, it's insane, and yes, we know Ramsey's fucked in the head, but the arguments he makes towards Barry's soul is genuinely well-phrased and easily twisted to manipulate poor Barry. He's here giving an honest argument without taking an emotionally-manipulative form. He's a human who's lost a loved one and is afraid of dying, so while it's fucked-up he understands what Barry's going through to a sense. There's even a logic where Ramsey asks Barry if he's seen a future where they work together and fail. And what Ramsey professes, the ability to cheat death... poor, emotionally fragile Barry is vulnerable enough to end up falling prey to it, leading to a literal tug of war between Bloodwork and the Speed Force for Barry.

The episode ends with Barry Allen seemingly winning the fight for his soul and have fought off the infection... but Iris ends up catching up to something wrong, and she alerts Cisco and Caitlin too late as the Flash, taken over as one of Bloodwork's thralls, zips around with black eyes and goopy mouth and ends up zipping out of STAR Labs to kowtow before Bloodwork.

Easily one of the most solid episodes of The Flash I've seen over... I want to say the past two or three years? I can't believe how much I'm enjoying this Bloodwork stuff, and it really should make CW look more into having shorter mini-arcs of villains instead of stretching things out like we did with the past couple of seasonal big bads. Anyway, next up is the conclusion of the Bloodwork story arc!
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So we get a huge mid-season finale, with Bloodwork unleashing his master plan. Half of Central City ends up becoming zombies thanks to his black goop, and what 'Dark Flash' tinkered around with in the previous episode was in fact preparing STAR Labs' particle accelerator to turn it into a dispersal device to allow him to blanket the country with his infective zombie blood. Pretty cool supervillain stuff, and honestly, while it's a given that Barry Allen will return back to his normal self in time for next episode's Crisis, it's still a pretty tense episode all around especially with the fantastic buildup of the previous episode.

The actual zombie-fighting stuff is obvious padding even if it's pretty well done stuff. Joe and Killer Frost engage in some pretty basic fights against the blood brothers/sisters, and Cecile and Kamilla go full stealth mode to avoid the zombies. Also, in his stupid sewer, Nash's attempt to drive the blood zombies away ends up failing thanks to his torch running out of battery. Oops!

The actual focus of this episode, though, is the fight for Barry Allen's soul. We don't actually get to peek into Barry's psyche-world this episode, but Cisco and Iris are both trying their best to figure out just how much of Barry Allen is gone, and how much of him is still fighting. Cisco manages to drive Bloodwork and "Dark Flash" out of STAR Labs with the Babel Protocol, an anti-speedster force field, and Cisco is also working on a photon emitter, the plot device of the episode that's going to potentially cure Ramsey. Iris attempts to have a heart-to-heart, but in a pretty cruel subversion for this cast, Dark Flash is completely under Ramsey's control (at least at first) and very nearly vibrates his hand through Iris's chest if not for a well-timed teleportation escape. We do get a brief debate, where Iris initially refuses to give up, while Cisco takes the whole lesson earlier in the episode about making the hard choices to heart and tries to make himself believe that this is how Barry Allen dies before the Crisis.

Except, of course, it's not. The two of them start to piece that the specific phrases that Barry uses while under Ramsey's contrl isn't just sadistic call-backs that Ramsey makes, but actually clues from Barry, fighting from underneath this knockoff Venom takeover in order to give them clues on how to beat Bloodwork. It's again not the most original superhero twist -- the mind-manipulator gets mind-manipulated -- but it's done and executed well enough that I don't care all that much.

Ultimately, the STAR Labs crew tricks Bloodwork, who continues to monologue about the evolution of mankind and how he's going to save humanity, but the resulting confrontation and a little UV blast courtesy of Allegra ends up transmitting the antidote to Bloodwork's blood infection instead, freeing not only Flash but also the blood brothers/sisters in Central City.

And then it's one-on-one confrontation time as the Flash faces off against Bloodwork, who finally goes from Sendhil Ramamurthy with black goop dripping from his lips into a giant, hulking gross mass of blood and sinew with a skull head. What the hell, that's actually awesome. The fight actually lasts relatively quick, less than a couple of minutes before Flash distracts Ramsey with a vision of his mother (which is actually pretty heartwarming, and despite all of Ramsey's angry yelling about his 'weak' mom he's just taking mourning to an insane extreme) does a thunderbolt toss and then shoves Bloodwork into Chunk's old cell before shipping him off to ARGUS.

And... you know what? Bloodwork only got eight episodes, and he could've done with two or three more, but that's how you want a villain to be. You want the audience to want more. I would welcome Bloodwork returning for a couple of episodes later on this season. I would as well as welcome the show being done with Ramsey for now, but leaving it open for more. Pretty cool stuff, and honestly around eight episodes is about right.

The episode then ends in a hopeful, intimate note as Team Flash (minus poor Ralph, who's in recovery) hang around each other around a sofa saying goodbyes and just reminiscing and it's all sad and pretty heartwarming at the same time. We get Cisco and Caitlin remembering the good old days of metas-of-the-week before nonsense like Crisises and Flashpoints and time travel, we get Iris being a true love, we get Joe being a dad... and then the red skies and thunderbolts start zapping and lo and behold, here comes the Crisis on Infinite Earths! Which we'll catch up on as soon as I also catch up to all the other CW shows.

And in the sewers underneath Central City, Nash Wells sort of yells around a little at the wall of runes, before it opening up and seemingly eating Nash. Okay? This is the little teaser that shows up at the end of Arrow, Supergirl and Batwoman and as far as teasers for Crisis goes it's honestly kind of lame and they could've chosen something more exciting than "a dude gets eaten by weird glowing symbols." Is this actually the trigger to kick-starting the Crisis? Not sure. The Nash Wells story hasn't been the most interesting buildup to the Crisis, truth be told, just a big ball of vagueness.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While the context of how he achieves the form is different, Barry's gray lightning while possessed by Bloodwork is a visual homage to the Negative Flash, a form that Barry took while facing Bloodwork in the comics when he drew speed from the negative Speed Force. 
• Cisco's Babel Protocol, of course, is based on the famous "Tower of Babel" arc in the Grant Morrison JLA run, where Batman has developed countermeasures to defeat every single member of the Justice League should they go rogue, and said countermeasures ended up getting stolen by Ra's al Ghul. 
• The episode consistently calls Flash-possessed-by-Bloodwork as Dark Flash, which in the comics is Walter West, a time-traveling Wally West from a timeline where his love interest died and he ends up time traveling to the prime universe to attempt to fix things in less-than-ethical means.