The Flash S06E02 Review: Barry Fucks With Time

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 2: A Flash of the Lightning

I actually watched this episode like, when it aired a month or so ago, but just didn't have the energy to finish editing the draft of the review. 

This episode was... actually pretty neat, and depending on how it's handled, the build-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths is definitely something that I'm a huge fan of. It's a huge storyline they've been teasing us with for literal years, and while part of it does feel like we've walked down this path before (stop Iris from being killed by Savitar), there's a reverence and a sense of us really building up to something, unlike, say, the terrible Flashpoint adaptation, y'know? We get a lot of great acting from Grant Gustin and Candice Patton, though, in this episode, as they come to terms with the grips of morality, and just how they'll keep fighting tooth and nail to save everyone... and the fact that they just recently lost their child doesn't help their mood either. It's all pretty dramatic, which I am pretty much a big fan of. And I do really like that throughout the episode, Barry sort of flips back and forth between two attitudes -- one where he thinks that this might be basically the reason he was given his powers, and that it's always going to be his life on the line before he allows billions to die. 

Of course, that doesn't mean Barry's going to take it lying down, and this episode has Barry zip over to Earth-3 to get the Flash of that universe, Jay Garrick, to give him a second opinion... particularly after an attempt to zip to the future to take a peek causes him to be repelled with (gasp!) a wall of Anti-Matter. So he goes to get Jay's help. Joan Garrick's also there, too, and, of course, she looks like Barry's mom! It's actually sort of undersold thanks to the huge revelations about the crisis and the existential angst that Barry is going through, but I do really love the interactions between Barry and Joan. 

Also, somewhere in the episode we get Joe West's amazing 'resilience' speech. Joe West is an awesome dad, and this speech was pretty awesome even by Joe West standards. 

While all of this going on, the villain-of-the-week is a pretty interesting one. It's not particularly novel, but the idea of a metahuman troubled teen (tm) who is wrongfully convicted, and all evidence points to her being a murderer, and Cecile is very convinced that she is innocent thanks to her own powers, is well-delivered. Her dynamic with the more cynical Joe is amazingly done, and her eventually wanting to open what's basically Daredevil's law firm but for metahumans, is actually a nice, organic direction to take Cecile into. The actual investigation to Allegra Garcia is pretty simple, and the revelation that she actually has an evil (also metahuman) twin called Ultraviolet is sort of a way to make this episode end with an action scene, but it's serviceable. It's certainly a nice break from the endless stream of generic evil metahumans in the previous season, although there's apparently an organization going around seemingly recruiting metahumans like Ultraviolet to their cause. Okay!

And in the background of this we get... Killer Frost trying to understand this silly civilian 'life', alternating from being a Grade-A Bitch to Kamille (she apologizes, though) and being the most adorable person ever as she tries to do this whole 'express myself' thing and turning in a hilariously adorably inept human drawing. It's adorable. I love stories of robotic/anti-social characters slowly trying to figure out society. 

Oh, and Bloodwork's still being built up in the background. He's still being a dick, and his attempts to get funds or whatever, but this ends up with him killing a gangster called Romero when his blood powers spontaneously activate, and his blood is able to... uh... make zombies or something? It's decent buildup. No real complaints here, I guess. 

Ultimately, a very solid episode. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Oodles and oodles of Easter Eggs to Crisis on Infinite Earths, of course, since this half-year's season is going to apparently be loosely inspired by that. Highlights among them is the vision of Barry's death being exactly how he died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, running and dissolving into a skeleton that fades away; and the terrifying wall of Anti-matter going from alternate Earth to alternate Earth, dissolving and disintegrating all they touch.
• The title of this episode is the same with the issue in the Crisis on Infinite Earths issue where Barry famously died. 
• Another huge Easter Egg is the Multiverse Map. The ones on the borders are a bit hard to make out because of the filters, but among the obvious ones are most of the alternate Earths we've been through -- including our Earth, Earth-2, Supergirl's world, Earth-X, the Freedom Fighters' origin, the destroyed Flash-1986 universe, Sherloque Wells' Earth, Breacher's Academy, and a couple of other Wells-related Earth.
• Other than the Antimatter stuff, the Easter Egg that jumps out to me is Thaddeus Brown, the first person to bear the mantle 'Mr. Miracle' and trained the far more well-known Mr. Miracle seen in DC material. 
• Joan Garrick is, of course, the long-running spouse to Jay Garrick, and a very cool old woman in the Flash comics. 
• Allegra Garcia is a minor metahuman with electromagnetic powers that appeared in the pages of the 2008-2011 Titans run, the daughter of the supervillain Wavelength. Her story in this episode is pretty much original, though.