The Flash, Season 7 Review: Episodes 1-11

The Flash, Season 7 [2020-2021]

It's been a while. I took a long, long sabbatical from watching superhero TV shows, not just because of burnout but also because... well, I decided to review these shows in seasonal blocks or in half-seasonal blocks. It takes a while for me to watch the episodes in the first place. We're back with The Flash, and... I'm not sure how this page will turn out, really, since season seven of The Flash is a weird one. The 2020-2021 CW seasons are weird overall because of how the pandemic have truncated the previous season, and I imagine the storylines for this year's seasons have to be changed as well. Take Hartley Sawyer leaving The Flash due to some real-life drama, and... I particularly can't imagine how this would change Batwoman, who lost its leading actress. 

Anyway, a bunch of people online divided this season's episodes up into arcs, and that's how we'll cover things here. This review will cover the first half of the show. 

"Arc 1": Episodes 1-3

Episode one, "All's Well That Ends Wells", is... it's kind of a weird 'where we are now' episode. Which is fair because of the gap between seasons 6 and 7. Half the cast is absent (they handwave Ralph and Sue as 'being in hiding'), Iris is still in the mirror dimension doing the B-plot of this episode, and Eva McCulloch is reveling in her new mirror powers while the Flash has a limited amount of speed left. This episode essentially focuses on giving Flash his speed back with some technobabble mumbo-jumbo that they do in order to create an artificial speed force... but really, it's just basically a huge way to give Nash Wells an exit. At the time of watching, I didn't know this, but... well, essentially throughout the entire episode Nash dies and sacrifices himself in order to power up the artificial speed force. It's actually a wonderfully acted moment by Tom Cavanagh, giving the Nash version of Wells some pretty great character moment -- he gets to interact with Harry Wells and his sort-of daughter Allegra in a pretty good way. It's just that the only people to really witness this exit are Barry, Allegra and Chester, and that does make the episode's huge moment feel just a bit hollow. 

The episode also gives us the almost casually tacked-on reveal that the Eva McCulloch we've been following is actually a mirror duplicate, which... sure? Okay? She's basically going around blowing up Black Hole installments, including one ran by the second season's Mirror Master and the Top. Presumably they weren't able to get Sam Scudder's actor back because he died without any fanfare. But we do get Cecile interrogating the Top. It's kind of cool how they handled the revelation that the Top is actually the brains in the operation, and that she's actually in league with Eva all along, but I'd honestly have appreciated it a bit more if the show gave us a bit more time reminding us who these characters were, because I genuinely forgot we had these guys in the show. Still, while perhaps not the most exciting season premiere the show has had, this one is a solid episode. It's just that the show really has to go through some changes, and I don't envy the show-writers that have to juggle them all. It's basically setting up the new state of the show, while also trying to wrap up the huge Mirror Master cliffhanger from the previous season. 

Episode two, "The Speed of Thought" is... it's another episode that feels pretty solid as far as being an episode with a pretty neat self-contained story. It also feels kind of rushed, though, and I genuinely wonder just how much of the writing staff had to rewrite and change when these three episodes were pushed from being the closing episodes of the previous season and into the opening act of this one. Which is why the Eva McCulloch story feels so much... in the background? Sure, we get that a scene of her fighting against Killer Frost, and a scene of her talking with one of her light-themed metahuman goon squad, but everything about her feels like it's happening in the background. The huge revelation about her being a mirror-verse creature happened offhandedly in the epilogue of the previous episode, and the way our heroes find about it isn't treated as a particularly huge event. And then Barry just casually breaks this news to the whole world, and the next we see of her, she's just rocking in her office going a bit insane before enacting her huge plan. I just really feel like we could've had so much more with her. 

The rest of the episode deals with Barry Allen slowly getting super-speed thinking, solving every problem our heroes have before the other sidekicks can even verbalize the problem. And then this ends up becoming slowly into Barry losing his emotions and becoming robotic, culminating into him making decisions entirely based on mechanical logic -- like preparing to sacrifice Singh and Kamilla to get Iris back. But not out of love, just out of practicality since she's the only one with useful intel. Some pretty neat acting from Gustin and Valdez, even if I'm not a huge fan of the climax (Killer Frost using superspeed feels honestly kind of random). It's a pretty solid story even if it's one that I feel we've seen multiple times in the CW superhero shows. And if nothing else, the cliffhanger is well-done, with Iris dragged through the portal and convulsing (because of her resistance?) while the rest of Team Flash have been knocked out by Barry's little rampage. 

Episode two was a solid episode on its own, but I really did feel like we're focusing on the wrong things. Iris, Kamila and Signh's mirrorverse story was barely even touched upon and we don't even get an obligatory Iris emotion moment, and Eva McCulloch being a mirror person feels more like a weird plot twist afterthought that isn't being explored. 

And episode three, "Mother", completes the Mirror Master arc, 'ends' the sixth season's storyline, in a fashion. Barry's back to normal, Iris is in a coma, and, off-screen, Eva has been doing some sort of massive mirror-replacement scheme because she went mad in the background of the previous episode. It really is kind of annoying that a character is established with a motivation and then to basically be rewritten with no real preamble, yeah? Eva went from 'righteous vengeance' to an honestly generic 'I will replace everything with my children'. And we didn't get a proper episode to show that change in mindset, too. Kind of a shame. 

We get things that play out in... ways that might actually be good if they were executed well, but they aren't. Not really -- everything just feels rushed, and the scripting feels kind of hollow. Eva gives a speech which causes Barry to brood. Earth-1's Harrison Wells comes back because of multiversal nonsense at the post-credits scene of the previous episode, giving us a very forced 'run Barry run' reprise. Turns out something something love is the answer, and Barry and Iris's love is so powerful that it preserves the Speed Force or something. It's... it's corny as hell, and maybe in a better episode where they actually let Grant Gustin and Candice Patton act the scene out, I might've rolled my eyes and went 'oh, that's cute', but the way this episode handled it? It just felt corny and tacked-on. 

Oh yeah, Elongated Man gets a 'melted face' handwave for the recast -- which I'm fine with, but I really would've rather had it be the B-plot for any of the other two previous episodes, which aren't that busy? Or save it for the next arc, because neither Sue nor Ralph did jack-all this episode, before leaving at the end? Also, Iris randomly gets and loses mirror powers? And Harrison Wells comes back, but not really, but he leaves immediately after? 

And then we get the climax, and it's... it's just there. It's a bit of a jittery action scene with Flash, Vibe and Killer Frost fighting against a bunch of Mirror Masters-es (or Mirror Monarches, as Eva calls herself) and it's... it's honestly kind of disappointing. Iris gives a motivational speech to Not-Eva, and she decides to give up and everyone holds hands to reverse the doomsday plot. Again, done well, I might care about this, but I'm not sure if it's the rushed writing due to real-life issues, or just some pretty terrible decisions. I don't know. I tend to tolerate a lot of the more cornier aspects of CW's work, but this one didn't even give me the 'awww' feelings that earlier seasons of Flash or Supergirl did. It's just... there. Ultimately, it was... it was a pretty disappointing ending. I kind of wonder if it would've been better shuffling some plot points around, and even if they had wanted to end with this story, to actually explore the plot points they wanted to explore? Ultimately, not a fan of this episode at all -- it's like they really rushed through the conclusion of this one without thinking through it. 

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"Arc 2": Episodes 4-11: "God Complex"

Episode 4, "Central City Strong", sort of kick-starts this arc that goes for around a half-dozen episodes. It's also one that feels more or less self-contained, like it was intentionally a 'breather' episode between the hectic climax of the Eva McCulloch story and the next arc. And it's... it's there, I suppose. The Flash has never been a subtle show, but this one was particularly in-your-face about the fact that 'people need to heal from their trauma'. Barry still suffers from his trauma of being duped by Mirror Iris. Iris has to show up to therapy to deal with the fact that she's running away from confronting her trauma. Even Abra Kadabra, who returns to die in this episode, is rewritten to be driven by the trauma of getting back his pre-Crisis memories. At least this one is consistent in its themes, making the Speech-no-Jutsu trick that Barry pulls on Abra Kadabra feel less like an ass-pull as the previous episode. 

And... and that's kind of what this entire episode is all about? Part of me is still salty any time that they introduce a classic DC character and rewrite it in a way that's relatively unrecognizable. I'm still kind of sad that we never got a full Rogues team with CW's versions of Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Abra Kadabra and so on, but I also know that any kind of comics-accuracy at this point is just never going to really happen. There are a couple of neat bits building up for future sequences -- which, unlike Eva's complete character rewriting, are things that you can do in the background! Like Caitlin and Killer Frost splitting up; the random introduction of green She-Hulk Fuerza; or the weirdness going on with ARGUS. Not the best episode, but a neatly solid one by CW standards. 

Episode 5, "Fear Me", sort of eases us in into the whole 'God Complex' arc. Or, well, Fuerza kind of did, but she was such a random and minor part of the previous episode. This one is a bit more like it, even if Psych ultimately felt like a pretty one-note villain. He's a fear-inducing villain, and he wears a funny mask! This episode basically goes through most of what you'd expect from a superhero show dealing with a one-note metahuman villain. Psych just uses his fear-inducing powers to make people see things they're afraid of. Our heroes hook Cecile up into a ripoff Cerebro Thinker's chair and have her fight Psych's purple beam superpower blast with a yellow superpower blast. Oh, and a typical motivational speech™, because every single episode of this season of The Flash needed it, apparently. Not too much to complain about, this one was pretty standard. 

It also does a pretty decent job at stringing along the sub-plots, too. The Speed Force showing up as a wounded Nora (Barry's mom, not his now-ret-gone'd daughter) is a bit random and treated as a bit of a low-key event, but she (it?) isn't really the focus of the episode until the big revelation that both Fuerza and Psych are powered by 'similar entities' as her. We get the bit with Caitlin and Killer Frost being separated, it tying into the whole 'fear' theme, and them making up as sisters. I've seen this show reinvent the Frost/Caitlin dynamic three or four times already, and I genuinely just wished they'd stop and pick one, so this one earned a shrug from me. At least this one felt like a natural progression of both characters. Oh, and we get the set-up of the 'the government wants to arrest Killer Frost' plot here. I admit that I've been finding that plot to be pretty eye-rolling, but at least it's a pretty decent B-plot. 

Episode 6, "The One With The Nineties", is... okay, maybe I'm just tapped out on 'hey, let's homage this certain period of time' with WandaVision and Legends of Tomorrow, but I didn't really care for this episode too much at all. I guess actually having lived through the nineties, it doesn't quite have that same oomph to me? At least Cisco and Chester look like they're having fun, although Chester's inspirational story with his dad is far, far more impactful than anything else the episode has to offer. We go through half an episode's worth of 90's references, then a motivational speech by Chester's dad, then surprise surprise, out of the random background characters, it's the jock that's the host to the Still Force. I did like that Chester's attempt to give an inspirational speech didn't exactly talk the villain down -- three episodes (almost) in a row would be too much. Everything in this episode is so... basic, but at least it gives Chester something. The poor dude's been so irrelevant throughout the past episodes that at least he's got a basic backstory to his name. 

There's a vague B-plot about Iris talking to Nora-Speed-Force, but in honesty I really have a hard time caring for the personification of the Speed Force when all she's allowed to do is to act confused. At least someone acknowledges what a terribly emotionally manipulative thing that she/it did by taking over the form of Nora Allen, but Iris... approves of it? Because she's like a security blanket? Um, what? Yeah, I don't buy that, and thankfully neither does Barry. 

Episode 7, "Growing Pains", is the first of what's basically the Killer Frost two-parter. It's not the most interesting storyline, I admit, but it's... all right? Everything's built up rather competently, and I actually do sympathize a bit with Kristen Kramer, the very hot-blooded investigator hunting her down. We like Frost and we want her to be safe, but I do understand why Kramer went out of her way to blindside Joe West and the other cops because, well, she's not entirely wrong that Joe is aiding and abetting a criminal. And while it's a bit frustrating (Allegra makes a good point about jails not helping people), Frost does also have a point that she hasn't really paid for the crimes she did as a supervillain. Which apparently still happened, despite all the retconnings and new timelines and whatnot? I honestly lost track. 

The main plot of the episode isn't super-complex. A new ice killer is in town, and the over-the-top fanservice bartender that Killer Frost met in her solo investigation turns out to be Chillblaine, a scientist obsessed with the powers of ice. Very comic-book-y, and while the final confrontation is a bit eye-roll inducing with the 'ha ha they get into dance positions', I did enjoy this for the most part. Again, after she beats Chillblaine, everything plays out relatively simply, with Frost eventually surrendering to the police.

The B-plot is something I actually like a bit, and extends the previous episode's rather bizarre 'moral' in a logical way. No, just because the Speed Force (who I also refuse to call 'Nora' because that's the name of two different characters) is on their side and is learning to be a person, doesn't really mean that she can walk around as Barry's dead mother without Barry feeling some kind of way. The episode basically has the two of them sort of... bury the hatchet? The Speed Force is a bit too excited in wanting to help out Team Flash, but ends up short-circuiting Barry's powers all the time. I agree with treating Speed Force as a person instead of holding a grudge on her/it (or her/its past incarnation... timeline resets are confusing) but it's still kind of bizarre. 

Episode 8, "The People v. Killer Frost" is... okay, I have to admit. I really never cared for trial episodes in... pretty much any show I watch. The best I tend to be about them is tolerate them if they tie into the story well, which is how I felt about most Daredevil episodes. This one, though, just feels like it drags on. Officer Kramer finally makes her huge case to detain Killer Frost and charge her, and the episode ends up becoming something similar to the plot of many X-Men stories -- being forced to take the metahuman cure. Which is unequivocally bad since it infringes on personal rights. Things go from bad to worse when Caitlin, Cisco and Allegra try to sabotage the cure itself. And then Kramer turns out to have a vendetta against all metahumans because, conveniently, her squad got betrayed by a metahuman masquerading as a hero before. A lot of great moments from Danielle Panabaker, who had to do double duty as Caitlin and Frost in these episodes, but ultimately I felt kind of bored throughout most of the episode. The ending did kind of surprise me, with Frost receiving a life sentence without parole. 

The B-plot involves Flash and the Speed Force's manifestation trying to find out who Fuerza is, and turns out that it really is a Hulk situation. Mild-mannered ex-addict Alexa is working as a volunteer health worker when she became host to the Strength Force, and she went berserk when Abra Kadabra blew parts of the city in episode four. The Flash manages to get her to cooperate in submitting to tests, but when turns out that she is Fuerza, turns out that the Speed Force isn't really interested in helping Barry out moreso than to force Barry to work to protect her regardless of who must fall. Which means murdering Alexa. I've never really cared for the Speed Force's personification as an ally, but as a villain, I can kind of get behind that. It's a plot twist that I admit that I kind of didn't see coming mostly because the past couple episodes had been pretty much intended to shove "Nora" down our throats, but her as this odd deity-given-flesh as an antagonistic figure, I can definitely get behind. 

Episode 9, "Timeless" is... again, the "Forces" bit really hasn't feel like they've been pushed as a proper main plot. They've really felt more like the side-story so far while we dealt with Killer Frost. And we've also spent so much time with the personification of the Speed Force that I really couldn't get myself invested with the arguments on whether they should treat "Nora" as a friend. I'm not debating that she is a real person, but she's also, you know... pretty much a lunatic? And this episode really did hammer this fact home. Both Barry and Iris really do act like idiots in this episode, with Iris insisting that they can just talk things out with Nora, and Barry literally doing one of the most stupid things he's ever done... go back in time (for the umpteenth time) to change things in the past. 

There's a heavy subplot of 'we can't judge our children for who they are' theme going on, and... anything out of Papa Joe West's mouth is super-wise. And the Wally West example is definitely good. But Deon, Psych and (the dead and randomly revived) Alexa aren't exactly children per se. Perhaps a better comparison would've been taking away their powers -- like the Frost trial? I don't know. They bring back "Timeless" Wells as a cameo to help this out, and ultimately, Barry decides not to go through with the whole thing. Both Deon and Psych also have roles in this episode, though Deon just feels confused, yelling that he's a god while not really doing anything; while Psych is clearly just a lunatic.

There's also a B-plot with Cisco not sure what he's going to do, and ultimately he decides to leave Central City with Kamilla (oh yeah, she exists). Actor Carlos Valdez has really been sort of in and out of the show for the past couple of seasons, I feel, with multiple mini-exits for his character. But I guess between him and Tom Cavanagh (who's essentially reduced to cameos, I guess) , the show's cast really is getting a fair amount of trim-down? Yeah. Anyway, not the biggest fan of this one. A lot of the arguments in this one felt like it didn't land, and we get a bunch of honestly rather odd metaphors that I felt didn't really apply to the situation. It's nowhere as messy as episode 3 of this season, but I'm not a huge fan. 

Episodes 10-11, "Family Matters", is a two-parter that acts as the mid-season finale. And it's... it's there, for sure. It's nowhere as messy as episode three, that acted as the season finale for the Eva McCulloch storyline. But, again, maybe it's just me really not feeling the whole 'these random people fused with Forces that Barry and Iris created are now their children' vibe, which just felt so, so weird. This isn't really anything like Nora West-Allen when Barry finds out that she's got a time-travelling adult daughter. This is just three other people who got infected with variations of the Speed Force, plus a reborn, psychotic Speed Force. 

"Family Matters, Part 1", feels like it's trying a bit too hard to shoehorn the parent/child vibe down our throats and I really don't feel like it's working. Alexa/Fuerza is resurrected and Barry's idea at any problem, be it Speed Force or Psych's new pink psionic tentacles, is to toss Fuerza at them. Predictably, Barry's forced attempts to train Alexa despite her repeated reluctance ends up with her going Hulk and rampaging. And then they remembered that Caitlin and Killer Frost used to share the same mind, so they lend Alexa/Fuerza the same doohickey that Caitlin used before. Okay, that really felt kind of dumb. 

Psych gets to be the focus of this episode, so we learn his backstory -- he's a rich kid who kept being abandoned by other people, but turns out that he kept pushing people who wanted to help him away. Flash and Fuerza beat down Psych and force him to listen, and, again, we get the 'sibling' thing shoehorned down us again. At least Psych is a straight-up comic-book character who talks about how tasty fear is and whatnot, so the dialogue felt a bit more natural coming out from his mouth. Speed Force and Deon, meanwhile, have teamed up, and show up at the end of this episode to zap Iris, Psych and Alexa. Whoops!

Except that in 'Part Two', it's revealed that Psych had an illusion up the whole time. And... I'm genuinely not sure what's going on and I'm just shrugging because... even when I'm not invested in the 'family' side of the story, I expected something more coherent than this. But no, things just happen at random. Flash brings Iris, Alexa and Psych into a part of the Speed Force. He also tries to get Deon to help. But then Deon decides (rightfully) that he doesn't trust Flash and bounces off, while Alexa and Psych steal Iris's plot device to fight the Speed Force themselves. There's a bizarre bit where the Speed Force shows up in goth makeup and declares that the other Forces have been behind the earthquakes and stuff going on, they are the bad guys! And then after a 'family' speech from Joe, somehow the three Force 'children' decide to play nice with Barry.

And then we get the climax as some huge CGI lightning storm threatens to engulf Central City. At least there's a huge climactic fight, isn't it? There's almost the beginnings of a satisfying conclusion if you ignore the breakneck side-changing by the under-written trio of Alexa, Bashir and Deon. But then it all boils down to a brief combination of powers to stop time, show the Speed Force the spooky future timeline where she's all alone, and then somehow she sees the error of her ways. Also, somehow despite all three of the others being humans with lives before, they decide to hang out with fake Nora in the Speed Force dimension being a family. What? I kind of get Bashir, who's looking for a family, but the rest? It's honestly kind of a stupid ending, and I've been through a lot of different CW superhero shows to know that this isn't particularly satisfying. It would've been contentious even if the buildup for the characters is done well enough, but no one here feels like they're a character I care about. 

There's a B-plot running through Part One of Kramer bringing in metahuman-cure guns, which leads Joe to quit in protest. And then he spends Part Two angsting about not having anything to do, until he remembers he can give motivational speeches. Oh, and we keep getting more and more "Cisco wants to leave STAR Labs" waved in our face, though at least he's angsting about it? It just kind of feels repetitive. Oh, and after no one mentioning that Frost is locked up for life, turns out in Part Two she fights Chillblaine during an Iron Heights breakout, and gets a pardon because of that. Uhh... okay? That feels like all that effort in those two episodes focusing on her just got thrown out of the window off-handedly, making those two episodes feel particularly pointless. 

I don't know. There is still half a season to go, and I did enjoy some of the standalone episodes, but man it's really hard for me to find too many positive things about this conclusion...

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Overall... yeah. The way that the storylines for season six ended was pretty butchered. I get that they were forced to write Ralph Dibny (and Harrison Wells?) out and there really was no organic way to do it, but at the same time, the random rewriting done to Eva McCulloch really robbed the final two episodes of what I felt could've been a pretty strong ending to that season. The "God Complex" episodes were mostly pretty great standalone episodes building up the other Forces, but in typical CW superhero fashion I kind of felt like they didn't focus on what made this storyline so much more interesting in a comic-book concept and focused on different subplots instead. 

Oh well, I think this is how I'll handle reviewing superhero show seasons? Ten or so episodes in a single review? Because I definitely don't have enough to fit in a full review for an episode that's just solid, but I do want to talk about the season as a whole.