Movie Review - The Flash (2023)

The Flash (2023)

Yeah, my attempt to write a review for this movie was as troubled as the movie's creation. At this point I've lost like three drafts to this movie, so I'm just going to give a quick impression about the movie and be done with it. 

So this is kind of the swan song to the rather sad fate of the DCEU. I think there are a couple of projects that are technically tied to it, like Aquaman 2 and Blue Beetle, but... the DCEU just had terrible luck, huh? From simply being outpaced by the Marvel Cinematic Universe in terms of the quality and frequency of movies, in terms of scope and scale, and the sheer erratic quality and tone of the movies. Not to mention WB already losing faith in the DCEU, releasing multiple independent DC comics property movies like The Batman and Joker. But The Flash, originally titled Flashpoint, really is just the final nail in the coffin. 

And... it's kind of a shame, because on the surface it's not a bad movie. It's just one that's released after the relevance of Ezra Miller's version of the character almost six years after his debut in Justice League, and... knowing that this is basically both the first spotlight and the final spotlight for this actor and the character (in no small part due to Miller's own real-life crimes) does make this movie feel kind of... it feels like it's building up to nothing, basically. 

The movie itself just feels 'competent', and I actually feel like it's nowhere as bad as people made it out to be. There are some spotty CGI, yes, but I really do feel like the movie's biggest problem is a lack of relevance. It's hardly the first adaptation of 'Flashpoint', which was already done by a cartoon movie and the CW Flash show, and both of those did the legwork by giving much more impact and weight behind Barry's backstory. The Marvel TV shows and movies have already done the multiverse angle, and it's really not helping matters that Flash debuted around the same summer that the much more excellent Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse did. 

The opening of the movie, questionable baby CGI aside, is pretty good. We get to see a quick exposition-dump of Barry's situation with Henry Allen being wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of Barry's mom Nora; while Barry is kinda-sorta flirting with Iris West. Oh, and Batman and Alfred is using him as kind of a gofer, telling him to evacuate citizens while Batman goes around chasing terrorists. We get a short cameo from Wonder Woman as well, which is nice, though it's all just glorified cameos sine none of these guys actually matter compared to the already-maligned 'basically a cameo' roles in Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness. 

(Superman and Aquaman not being available; and Cyborg's actor leaving in bad terms with DC, probably didn't help matters either). 

In the midst of it all, Barry accidentally runs back through time, and we get to see him angsting a fair bit before he finally returns to the past and prevents Nora's death from happening by swapping out the can of tomatoes that his father went out to buy, leaving Nora and Barry alone in the house. But a monstrous speedster attacks Flash as he tries to return to 2023. Instead, Barry shows up in 2013, meeting his younger self and realizing that without all the trauma and drive from Nora's death, he's an irresponsible hippie. 'Our' Barry tries to get 2013!Barry to get his superpowers, but the meddling with time causes lightning to strike both of them, robbing 'our' Barry of powers and giving 2013!Barry powers.

And admittedly, I actually do like what they are doing from a writing standpoint. Giving the older Barry a younger self to pal around with gives him a 'mentee' figure of sorts, while also actually being a foreshadowing for the Dark Flash we see in the climax of the movie, which I thought was somewhat obvious when we reach the climax but a welcome buildup as well since 2013!Barry is an impulsive, dumbass twit. It's just that... well, 2013!Barry is annoying as all hell, and while some of his antics are okay, I did really feel like he overstayed his welcome by a fair bit. 

Also, the timeline has changed -- both the past and the future -- as Barry later explains with strands of spaghetti. We find this timeline in the climax of Man of Steel, and... it's an interesting but ultimately watered-down version of most adaptations of Flashpoint as the Barrys learn and try and figure out what is different in this timeline. The other members of the JLA either never existed or haven't gained powers yet, while the changes in the timeline has caused Bruce Wayne to... well, he goes from being Ben Affleck to Michael Keaton. 

And now, I absolutely adore Michael Keaton in this role as Old Man Batman, even if the movie itself really isn't super-clear on whether this is the same Batman from the Tim Burton movies, or if it's an altered version of Affleck's Batman, or... well, our old actor is back, don't question too much! I mean, I enjoy the cameo as much as anyone who grew up on the Tim Burton movies!

Batman and the Flashes go on the Batplane to Siberia to recover the Kryptonian pod, only to find that instead of Kal-El, they find an emaciated Kara Zor-El, who's far less happy to help out humans after being tortured in Siberia. It's an... interesting twist, to replace the starved and tortured Superman from the comics' Flashpoint with a female version of herself. And despite looking rather sub-par in the trailers, I actually think that Sasha Calle plays a 'bad future' Supergirl pretty well. 

Again, there's always some fun action scene to break things up, with Batman and Supergirl both being easily the highlights of the show. Eventually through some shenanigans, Present!Barry also gains his powers back while earning the friendship and respect of Supergirl and Old Man Batman respectively. I actually do like this part of the movie a fair bit, I must confess. 

However, the climax happens, and... and it's not the most interesting thing in the world. General Zod is reduced to a boring unbeatable villain. There are a lot of fun visuals here and there, and I'm not complaining. My favourite has to be all the scenes with the Batplane, as well as Supergirl and Zod's initial beatdown... but there's also something neat to see when present!Barry straight-up murders a Kryptonian to save 2013!Barry. 

Ultimately, though, Zod kills Kara and Bruce dies flying the Batplane into a forcefielded Kryptonian ship. This causes the Barrys to travel back in time... only for Kara to still die to Zod, and Bruce gets killed by Nam-Ek this time. And 2013!Barry just keeps going back in time again and again, gathering more and more Kryptonian debris grafted onto his body and telling us who the true identity of the Dark Flash is. In a neat twist, however, 'our' 2013!Barry hasn't completed his transformation into Dark Flash thanks to time paradox shenanigans, leading to a triple-Barry confrontation in the Speed Force. 

(We also get cameos by other Batmen, Supermen and Supergirls, including a surprising one from the never-made Superman Lives starring Keanu Reeves)

Ultimately, we get a rather interesting moral about 'responsibility' and 'time is unchangeable'. Dark Flash kills 2013!Barry, and 'our' Barry goes back to the past to put back that damn can of tomatoes. And... this is where the movie falls short. I don't necessarily mind the fatalistic moral that 'time cannot be changed, accept your fate', because while it does run contrary to most optimistic superhero shows it is a responsibility-related moral and arguably causing just enough of a change to free Henry thanks to time-travel mumbo-jumbo would be enough to give us a flawed but consistent moral. 

But then that's ignoring the fact that the 'Nora lives' timeline is... kind of fucked. None of 'our' Barry's actions are going to save Keaton-Batman and Supergirl, who I guess are just doomed to die with little fanfare after the Flashes return to the Speed Force. And then at the end of the movie we learn that Barry might've fucked up the timeline anyway with George Clooney's Batman showing up for a gag... and then the end credits close? 

It's just... it's just messy near the end, despite the relatively earnest acting done by Ezra Miller. And really, a good chunk of this movie and how good it is really does depend on how much you tolerate Miller's version of the Flash. It's an okay movie at the end of the day, albeit with an odd, truncated ending, but with better adaptations of Flashpoint and a definite lack of followup to the climax of this movie, it really does feel like a gigantic oddball. I did enjoy the cameos, for what it's worth, and Michael Keaton is always fun to see, but otherwise... yeah. This movie sure does exist, and I think the confusing tone really dose make it a rather apt epitaph for the DCEU in general. 

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. 

The Flash, Season 7 Review: Episodes 12-18

The Flash, Season 7 [2020-2021]

Part two of my review of Flash's seventh season. This one has been a bit of a rockier season! The first half of the season had wrapped up the plotline of season 6, and we just completed an arc involving the other 'Forces'. The remaining seven episodes cover a mini-arc of its own. Without further ado...

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We start off this half of the season with episode 12, "Good-Bye Vibrations", which the show has basically been sort-of building up in the background. I've seen a lot of original cast members leave CW superhero shows, particularly the long-running ones, but in the case of Cisco Ramon, he's been... I don't know. The actor, Carlos Valdez, has always brought great energy to the show, particularly in this episode, but he's also been very much under-utilized in the past couple of seasons. The constant back-and-forth on whether he is a metahuman or not, whether he's an on-field superhero or not, Chester already being pretty obviously a shoo-in for a replacement, and the two rather mediocre romances he's stuck with... the character already kind of feels like he's got one feet out of the show already at times. But this one is a pretty good episode. It's also a goofy-ass episode with a couple of very well-done heartfelt moments, and I felt like it's a much stronger send-off to the character and actor compared to Cavanagh/Wells's exit earlier this season.

Anyway, Cisco leaves to work with ARGUS, and helps to solve the case of Rainbow Raider 2.0 for this episode. Which involves Rainbow Raider turning both Cisco and Barry high for the first half of the episode, and there's a "I'm angry because you guys act like you don't care" "but we do care, we're putting up a brave front" cheesy plot. Unlike the cheesiness of the Speed Force hullaballoo, though, it's one that works pretty well. Rainbow Raider 2.0 has a bit of a Robin Hood plot and Barry arranges for her to work with the mayor or something, but is just an impetus to get everyone to vent their emotions. Oh, Kamilla also has a very minor sub-plot, but let's be honest... the show really hasn't done anything too interesting with her, and I'm thankful that this episode still gives her a decent exit even if it's basically a mirrored version of Cisco's plot. It admittedly ran a bit too long, but I enjoyed it. 

Episode 13, "Masquerade", is a... weird one? Speaking of under-utilized characters... now, Cecile is nowhere as under-utilized as someone like Kamilla is, but she's been dipping in and out of relevance. This is a full-on spotlight episode for Cecile, and just like the previous one, a rare standalone episode for The Flash. It's a pretty good one, too, actually, perhaps because it's so different. In the real world, Cecile's body has been taken over by the immortal mask of the Psycho-Pirate, and our heroes have to figure out how to do a heist which is subtly (well, as subtly as this show can get, anyway) influenced by the Psycho-Pirate mask. We get Sue showing back up, but the main character here is Chester, who basically goes through a typical 'gaining confidence' story arc. I really have no complaints here, it's a pretty solid storyline. 

Where the episode really shines, though, is the absolutely fun horror movie shots inside Cecile's mind. The mask traps Barry and the real Cecile inside an asylum, and while the obvious 'conquer your inner demons to break free' is pretty much par the course for this sort of episode, this one also deals with an interesting bit of Cecile's backstory -- she blamed herself for her mother dying alone, was overwhelmed by anxiety and depression, and spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Other than the rather heavy topic, though (which both Barry and Cecile's actors deliver well!) it's pretty simple 'fight your inner demon' stuff. Again, nothing too surprising happens here, but Danielle Nicolet really got a rare chance to shine as multiple versions of the same character. It's fun. 

Our last standalone episode before the four-part arc to close out this season is "Rayo de Luz". And another under-utilized cast member gets the spotlight here! Allegra (does she even have a superhero name? I don't think she does) has been a character that... is kind of there. Yes, she's more prominent than Chester, and she's got that whole storyline with Nash Wells and she has an evil cousin. But for the most part she feels like a bit of an afterthought, so it's nice that she gets a bit more screentime. I guess with so many original cast members bowing out, it's inevitable. Through a series of coincidences, this episode features Allegra, Chester, Sue and a little bit of Caitlin dealing with Ultraviolet's return. And it's... it's there? It's an all right standalone story, as our heroes go hunt down the evil scientist that experimented on Esperanza, but one key problem here is that Esperanza is such a cipher that when the episode pulls the twist that 'oh, she's actually hunting an evil scientist', and the subsequent 'oh, she tries to kill Allegra because the evil scientist promises to give her voice back', I really didn't care all that much. While most of the episode is pretty decent if unimpressive, the climax is another 'power of your heart'. Quite literally, because Allegra's power-up quite literally involves a surge of light energy emerging from her chest. At this point I just eye-roll and go on. 

A neat outing for the newer characters, I guess. Joe gets to pull the B-plot this time around, having spent his time after quitting CCPD investigating Kramer throughout the background of the past couple of episodes. And this episode he confronts her, and turns out that she, just like Esperanza, has a bit of a sob story to go through. I really want to care about this, but Kristen Kramer is another character that's kind of a cipher. I guess we set up a new villain, but ultimately it's not a particularly interesting one. 

Episode 15, "Enemy at the Gates", is where the Godspeed arc finally begins, and... and I'm going to say it straight -- it's handled better than the Speed Force arc. It's most certainly not the best Flash has ever been (I don't think the show has ever been the same since... oh, the Thinker season, I guess) but at least the story was competently done. And interestingly, Godspeed is a villain that we've seen before, on-and-off, in the fifth season. So it's easy for me to think that this episode was going to be another one-off episode. And we get multiple Godspeeds this time around. And they speak in bizarre garbled modem-speech. The actual plot part of this episode is actually pretty cool. All the Godspeeds hunting down our heroes and causing them to feel despair, and being utterly besieged in STAR Labs? Hell, for perhaps the first time in this season, we even get a pretty decent fight scene with Flash, Killer Frost and Chillblaine fighting against the Godspeeds. Flash doesn't even win this episode, not really, because six other modem-speaking Godspeeds show up to beat up on the first six Godspeeds. 

Of course, the rest of the plotlines in this episode are... well, I am comparing it to the terrible "we're the parents to the Force children" plot earlier in this season, and it looks good compared to that, but it's not the most engaging thing ever. Barry's main plot is, after some comedy moments in the three breather episodes, trying to hide from everyone that he's trying to test for Iris's pregnancy. Because he got a weird dream -- a situation that feels extra-dumb when I sit down to type it. While the episode also very pointedly not show Iris at all for the whole episode... which I thought was going somewhere, but I guess Candice Patton just wasn't available for a couple of episodes? They explain it in the next episode, but the explanation was a bizarre one. 

The Killer Frost/Chillblaine storyline finds its conclusion in this episode, and I'm kind of glad it did end this way. Chillblaine never felt anything like an utter jackass that flirts a lot, and while this episode does give some typical romantic flirting lines between the two, I'm so glad that they're not trying to rewrite Chillblaine into Mr. Redeemed Villain out of nowhere. His team-up is cool, but turns out he's playing Frost like a fiddle and buggers off by the end of the episode. There's also the ongoing Allegra/Esperanza plot, and in this one, Caitlin operates on Esperanza and frees her from her mind-controlling neck-implant thing. 

Episode 16, "P.O.W." gives us JOHN DIGGLE! I mean, shit, I can't really review eight seasons of Arrow without falling in love with John Diggle, and I actually audibly whooped when he returned for a guest star spot that took me completely by surprise. This episode basically deals with the previous episode, with Team Flash enlisting John Diggle's help to fight the new Godspeeds, who are having a huge rumble in Central City and destroying everything. Diggle shows up with a Cisco-made entropy speed field thing that they create from Time Trapper (who presumably shows up in another CW show that I haven't watched) technology. And, again, all the Godspeed action stuff is pretty neat! With Diggle's help, they manage to capture a Godspeed, and interrogate him -- finding out that the Godspeed Civil War is caused by two different factions of clones. One faction serves the original August Heart, and the other faction wants to kill him to gain their independence. 

The huge theme (tm) that John Diggle gives Barry this episode is that family is more important than anything, and Barry decides to take this advice and try to travel to 2049 to check on Nora, only to find out that time-travel is blocked by an army of Godspeeds (the original Godspeed came from the future, I think). Somehow. Okay. We get the aforementioned explanation -- Iris is apparently hiding in the Still Force because of... something? Something-something shifting out of the timeline, which the show immediately forgets about in the next episode? It's bizarre, and something that the show kind of drops on us and forgets, because we've got a lot of sub-plots in this episode. Anyway, they end up finding the real August Heart, but he's just some bloke with utterly convenient amnesia. And then we get a non-dream Nora West-Allen actually showing up... but she also brings in Bart "Impulse" Allen from the future. Okay. 

The first B-plot! Esperanza, after being healed by Caitlin, continues to be a one-dimensional bonehead, and goes off to fight Black Hole on her own despite being clearly weakened by the operation. In a surprisingly not-consequence-free episode of The Flash, she gets straight-up shot to death and dies in Allegra's hands (right after she overhears the Family speech, too!), cursing her as she goes. A bold move, actually... if only Esperanza was written to be more than a one-dimensional satellite character to Allegra. 

After spending the background of the previous episode hunting Adam Creyke, Joe and Kramer basically trick Creyke into revealing himself. Creyke apparently has immortality metahuman powers, but he gets his leg caught in Joe's meta-cuff gun. He gives a very basic motive rant about how he justifies killing people by giving half his money to help kids from the reservation... and while I'm glad that this plot didn't actually get that much screentime comparatively, it's also easily the least interesting part of this season. Jesse L. Martin is an entertaining actor, but this plot is really not that entertaining at all. 

Oh, and to top it off, Diggle keeps getting headaches throughout the episode which has something to do with the Green Lantern ring calling out to him and stuff... but we don't get any resolution here, and I don't even know what show Diggle will join! Anyway, this episode... really feels like it's cramming way too much. Toss in Iris's bizarre non-subplot, and we get a whole lot of buildup for the two-part finale and a bunch of subplots being tied up. Again, though, none of them are all that interesting, so they really do feel like stuff that just incidentally happen in the background. 

And we start off with the first part of the two-part finale, "Heart of the Matter". On one hand, I do find this heightened pace actually pretty refreshing. We immediately jump into trying to get us to know Impulse, Barry's son from the future, and... and he's a pretty fun character, for what little we see of him in these two episodes. A lot more bubbly and yolo-ing it, as we get to see them fight a gloriously speaking Godspeed, who gives absolutely fun hammy monologues of a villain with a god complex. Nora/XS gets a lightning whip! It also explains just how Godspeed got from 2049 to 2022, which... you know what? I actually forgot that Godspeed was a future villain while watching these episodes. It's not that there are a lot of Flash episodes; there are a lot of timeline retcons in Flash is what's annoying. 

Speaking of timeline retcons, Jay Garrick is back with his metal hat and his speed is restored. I genuinely don't remember, I thought he was dead, but that might be a different old Flash played by John Wesley Shipp? Going to the Wiki tells me that this is Earth-3 Jay Garrick, who apparently got folded into Earth-Prime... you know, maybe just one scene even before this would've worked to actually remind us that this character exists? But the Godspeeds show up and kidnap Jay -- and in the future, because Godspeed is "Bart's Thawne", apparently Godspeed killed Jay in the future, and they're trying to replicate it here. 

Having Bart show up with Nora is also pretty cool -- the audience presumably still remembers Nora from season five, so there's a point of reference for these future kids, even if we did get an eye-rolling reprise of the "I'm your dad, so listen to me even though I don't really know what's going on" nonsense we had with Nora. Only these didn't take entire episodes to angst through, so it's less annoying. Flash, XS and Impulse basically take turns being beaten up by Godspeed as they race around and try and fail to figure out how to stop Godspeed, until Cisco shows up as (Mecha?) Vibe and saves the day. So they finally decide to tap into the amnesiac August Heart to figure out what his main plan is.

There's a B-plot with Allegra and Chester that happens in this episode, too, with Allegra being unable to access the full spectrum of her powers because she' grieving over Esperanza. I can't really blame her for being angry, honestly. In a fully-realized season, I actually think that the Allegra/Esperanza storyline could've made for an actually dramatic standalone episode. 

...and it's interesting, because previous seasons have over-stretched their villains for a bit too long. Thinker was probably the worst example of this, but Cicada was also pretty overblown. This is interesting because, just like Bloodwork and Mirror Monarch (pre-season-7, anyway) before him, Godspeed does prove that The Flash could make for a decently compelling villain by just leaving their monologue speech saved up for a single episode. Granted, this does mean that Godspeed is a pretty shallow character... but honestly? At least he's a shallow villain that leaves an impact. In the fake Zauriel Cathedral (I get that reference!) of August Heart's mind, Barry and August get to talk with each other, and August Heart gets to give a gloriously hammy performance. He's a man with a god complex, believing that he's the only one deserving of being called the 'god of speed'. Again, not particularly three-dimensional as far as superhero characters go, but it sure is a fun, hammy performance. The real August Heart, trapped inside an amnesiac mind, delivers Barry an ultimatum -- give him organic speed, or else the Godspeed clones will keep returning. 

As the final episode that still has to deal with a huge crisis on their hands, the episode quickly wraps up some side-plots. Joe and Kramer are probably the one that's the hardest to care about, and the resolution to the cliffhanger last episode is 'they didn't die'. At the end of the episode we learn that Kramer has the metahuman ability to mimic other metahuman abilities but only if she's near death, and that's the solution to a mystery that I wasn't even asking. Allegra is sad about causing Esperanza's death, and while this could've gone to a discussion about toxic family members or gaslighting... all we get is Chester giving a motivational speech about how vital and crucial Allegra is and she's back up as a productive team member of Team Flash. Kind of eye-rolling, but I guess they made do with the best they can do. Cisco gets one last hurrah, getting some action scene team-ups with Killer Frost. 

And then... I honestly can't say that I really care about Barry and Iris angsting about being parents to time-traveling kids who are superheroes in their own right, but at least the actors are given far, far better dialogue than the tripe they got in the Speed Force arc? This episode goes for a mid-episode climax by having Barry, Iris, Jay, Nora and Bart all dress up as a huge Flash family. Oh, the Speed Force (they call her 'Big Nora') also shows up to help out too. That action scene was pretty fun -- Impulse has lightning shurikens! Impulse himself is kind of interesting. We get just enough out of his interactions with Nora and Barry within these two episodes to make us care about him, and he gets a pretty neat -- if short -- subplot with Jay telling him to know when to stand still. 

But then Godspeed continues to prove unstoppable... which begs the question as to why Godspeed even needs organic speed. It's the principle of the matter, I guess? And Team Flash decide to give it to them... but, in a surprising move, Barry and Iris actually have a plan beforehand. Godspeed gets said speed through some handwave-technobabble, and proceeds to regain his memory, reabsorb the twelve clones, and proclaim his desire to kill all the speedsters and become the God of Speed.  (Cecile's sub-plot of talk-of-friendship-ing Godspeed, mercifully, gets subverted) Flash faces off against Godspeed... and then Reverse-Flash comes in out of nowhere to help out.  

Which... okay, Tom Cavanagh is back, that's neat, but just like Jay, I really felt like this was a plot twist that they could've foreshadowed. Probably also because I wasn't even sure where Reverse-Flash is beforehand, or that he's an option in Earth-Prime -- wasn't he expelled like an exorcised spirit out of Nash? And then... we get Star Wars with lightning lightsabers. Reverse-Flash stabs August (but is nice enough to not kill him) and is about to kill Flash, but then apparently Barry is now faster than Eobard, and Eobard swears some 90's cartoon vengeance before running off. 

No idea why Barry didn't go catch Eobard if he's faster now and chucking him in an anti-metahuman cell. Or why they kept August Heart, the criminal from 2049, in Iron Heights. Or why we need a whole scene talking about Kristen Kramer because that's clearly the sub-plot the audience wants to know about the most, right? And then the episode comes to a close without a cliffhanger, with Barry and Iris renewing their vows and Bart singing a song. The end. 

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That's it for Flash's seventh season. After just how much this show really felt like a gigantic mess in the first half of the season, at least while this second half-season felt rushed, it also felt like the stories that the show-runners wanted to tell was a good one. Just one that's paced badly and perhaps could've used with some B-plots in the previous episodes tossed out... the Kristen Kramer storyline really didn't go anywhere, and I do feel like stuff like Frost/Chillblaine or Allegra/Esperanza could've been moved into the 'filler' episodes, while Jay or Impulse perhaps could've appeared an episode or two earlier. But, again, comparing it to the Forces subplot it was handled a lot better. Still, it's also pretty clear that The Flash is pretty far from its glory days, and while real-life problems have caused the handling of this season to be messy, it's also... not very good overall. 

I'm experimenting with how I'm handling superhero TV shows on this blog... I'm not sure if these half-season reviews are how I'm going to talk about shows in the future? Or which show I'll watch next. There are so many superhero shows out there that I definitely am never going back to 'watch all the episodes weekly' grind as I did several years ago. And I'm thankful this year doesn't have any crossovers? I'm not sure which of the CW shows I'll cover next, but we'll see. If I'm covering those shows I'm definitely going to do this method, because sometimes, some of the filler episodes really don't give me too much to talk about.

The Flash S06E16 Review: Ragdoll Redux

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 16: So Long and Goodnight

Okay, so I kind of fucked up! One of my complaints in episode 17 of this season is how there appears to be a bit of a jarring bit of Mirror David Singh appearing with no real foreshadowing, and the reason why that is... is because I completely missed an episode! That's what happens with sudden mid-season hiatuses, sometimes you just completely forget what episode you're on and you just tune in on a number that feels right. Mea culpa. 

And... this episode is honestly mostly set-up and also a villain-of-the-week one, starring the return of Ragdoll, but considering I jumped from 15 to 17 with literally no problems, suffice to say that this episode is certainly not exactly required viewing. It does help to fix some of the problems I had with the pacing of some plot points in episodes 17-19, in that it foreshadows the whole Mirror-Singh situation, explains Joe's absence (which I sort of thought just happened off-screen, and is something that isn't acutely felt considering Flash's cast has a record of having random absent characters in random episodes this season), has some Sue/Ralph scenes with the diamond (also something that could've happened off-screen) and gives Joseph Carver an unambiguously label of 'villain' (something the season finale does pretty well itself). Again, none of these are necessary and it's unfortunate that it's all extra-clear because I accidentally skipped the episode. 

Perhaps the big reveal that I wasn't quite super-clear on before watching this episode is that Carver and Eva sort of... talk to each other? Carver's basically set up as a complete douchebag throughout the episode, attempting to get Joe assassinated via the creepy Rag Doll, being a smug smarmy ass and at the end of the episode reveal that he's aware of Eva existing in the mirror instead of just giving up his search and actually be misunderstood. Eh. 

The main conflict of the episode focuses on Joe, but at the same time it also makes Joe look particularly dumb. And in light of this length of the season focusing on how the Flash isn't super-fast and can barely do bursts of speed without clutching his chest in pain, it's particularly stupid for Joe to just intently march into Carver's building goading incriminating evidence and also showing it off immediately to him so he can activate his handy-dandy EMP gimmick. Also, y'know, Rag Doll is after him, and he's sort of been retooled from a creepy bone-crackly contortionist into basically Evil Elongated Man with stretchy limbs. Also, because his motivation is gone, he now wants to inflict pain and somehow this makes him subservient to Carver's directions to tell him to murder Joe? Okay, sure. There's a hostage situation with Cecile and ultimately after Barry and Joe narrowly make it out with Barry's nerfed speed, Joe decides to go into witness protection, infuriating Mirror Iris. Again, it's an 'okay, sure' situation and part of it sort of stems from knowing that none of these really ends up amounting to anything in the season. 

Ralph and Cisco get a brief bit of B-plot tracking down Sue Dibny, which is a lot of fun and apparently Sue's got some super-awesome Batwoman face-masks because she impersonates January Galore from that inexplicable James Bond parody episode earlier in the series in order to investigate Black Hole. It's a neat sequence of Ralph and Sue sort of getting brief one-ups on each other before forming sort of a not-team-up. 

Ultimately, though... a very slow episode, and not even one that works particularly well as a standalone 'filler' episode. It's not particularly exciting, the villains Rag Doll (who loses all the creepy factor that made him so effective the first couple of times he shows up) and Carver are very vanilla and none of the Mirrorverse plotlines really are all that interesting. Again, I don't have a whole ton to say here, it's kind of an episode that's just there. 

The Flash S06E19 Review: Mirror Mistress

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 19: Success is Assured

So this is the final, forced season finale for Flash's sixth season, and it's certainly one that feels... rushed? Again, it's factors outside of the show's control, and it does at least feel like we've concluded a chunk of the ongoing storylines for the sixth season. The season's cut short a couple of episodes before what it really was intended to, and we're quickly rushed towards what's the closest cliffhanger we could've gotten while still feeling like a conclusion to a season. I'm curious how the other CW shows will play out.

Whatever the case, a lot of storylines are obviously put aside for the next season. The Artificial Speed Force, bringing back Barry's speed, Godspeed, whatever the hell Eobard's up to... and we're focusing the entirety of this episode on wrapping up at least the first chapter of the Mirror Master storyline. Interestingly, though, we don't conclude all the hanging plot threads! Sure, Eva McCulloch hunting Carver for her vendetta plays out in this episode, and, surprisingly, even Sue Dibny gets to return and hang out for this episode (I can totally see the original version of this season having the Ralph/Sue bit play out in a whole episode of its own). Most interestingly, though, the show's still keeping Iris, Kamilla and an off-screen David Singh trapped in the Mirrorverse, so that's going to be the huge thing that the seventh season will be building up towards.

It's still a pretty surprisingly intense final episode for a season, though, ending on a high note and that's not just because the show surprisingly had a budget for a bunch of stunts and fighty-fight. I thought that Eva kidnapping the light-based trio of Dr. Light, Ultraviolet and Sunshine as just that for Carver's heavy-hitters, but then Eva just lets the three of them loose against Carver and they end up fighting the rest of our heroes, with a neat little hand-to-hand action for Sue, and a neat little sequence of cousin-fight between Allegra and Ultraviolet. Not sure about the random bits of the screen being cut up into like... comic-book panels or something? But the actual fight scenes, once they get going on, is neat.

A good chunk of the episode's huge conflict comes from Team Flash attempting to protect the slimy Joseph Carver from being killed by Eva, and throughout the episode, the writing does emphasize what a terrible asshat Carver is, being a dick to everyone and trying to profit even in the midst of being protected. One by one, Eva turns all of Carver's defenses against him. She takes over the trio of light-based metahumans, she shuts down Carver's huge forcefield thing, she blows up Carver's storehouse of blackmail material and it's all Team Flash can do to even keep up with her.

Again, the episode is paced surprisingly well for a rushed finale, feeling tense as our heroes (and Carver) try to figure out how to outplay Eva. Even Sue's inclusion, with how she shows up with her parents all fine and dandy in Ralph's office, and later reveals to have taken her parents' place in Carver's organization to help clear her parents' debt, is done pretty well. Sure, the subsequent little twist of her deciding not to be evil and end up following Ralph's suggestion to not go around assassinating people is obvious, but it's a neat enough B-plot to play in the background that makes the episode feel as involved as it is. There's also the brief bit where Barry was actually even willing to hand over Carver to Mirror-Singh until Nash shakes him out of it. It's a short moment that's resolved quickly, but I really do like the display of genuine vulnerability from Barry.

Still, while all the secondary characters duke it out in the lobby of the McCulloch industries building, we get a neat little sequence of Eva facing off against Barry. And Carver is pretty much scum, and it's not just the things he's done towards Eva either, abandoning the search for her and just weaponizing and profiteering from her discoveries. We haven't been sure how much of this is just Eva's interpretation of what has happened, but the episode reveals that, well, Carver's known about the Mirrorverse all along and is a gigantic dick about everything else. And that's perhaps the more boring way out, making Carver a card-carrying villain, but it's also one that fits the fact that we got to conclude this season quickly. Barry tries to prevent Eva from killing Carver because, well, he's a superhero and that's the superhero thing to do, but Eva's mirror manipulation powers easily allows her to stab the speed-deprived Barry, shove a shard of glass through his body and turn Carver into carved.

There's a bunch of B-plot that happened in the background. The exit for Danielle Panabaker's pregnancy is kind of silly and drawn-out, and I honestly think a single short scene set in episode 17 would've been preferable. But now Frost is off with Caitlin's mom to do some rehab. Nash and Allegra also get a bit of a sorta-father/daughter bonding time when Nash gave Allegra a little gadget that saved her life in the fight, and it seems like their little conflict is now a truce for the time being?

And the episode ends with Eva winning, sort of -- her main goal of killing Carver is done, and it appears that the sunshine trio is now loyal to her. She's also done what she wants to do and taken over the company that she thinks rightfully belongs to her... but Iris, Kamilla and Singh are still trapped in the mirror-verse. Plus, Sue Dibny is framed for the killing of Joseph Carver, which is a neat bit of 'fuck you' from Eva. Eva herself is honestly pretty interesting as an antagonist, especially considering the relatively limited amount of time we've seen her. She's clearly evil and murderous, no doubt about that, but at the same time, she is working off of her own twisted sense of justice and revenge, making her a genuinely different shade of evil compared to someone like Cicada or Thinker or the many evil speedsters. If nothing else, it does actually make me really excited to see what this version of the Mirror Master (or is it "Mirror Mistress"? Master is a gender-neutral term, technically...) is going to be up to next season. If nothing else, it's a decent enough season finale with what they're given with. 

The Flash S06E18 Review: Sonic Lightning

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 18: Pay the Piper

So I would've thought that the remaining three episodes of The Flash would basically be the show wrapping up its Mirror Master storyline. And... well, I guess they had to do with whatever episodes they've shot scenes for? Last episode is a huge Mirror-Iris-centric episode, and presumably next episode would be the huge climactic showdown between Team Flash and Mirror Master, but this one is a bit of an odd one as once more, Eva McCulloch slums it in the background while two guest stars end up being the primary focus of the show -- the return of the Pied Piper, as well as Godspeed.

Turns out that this whole Eva thing has to be put on hold because Godspeed randomly shows up to crash Central City, menacing the city and basically acting as a second-rate Zoom, demanding to want to eat Flash's speed and zipping around and just looking cool without any sort of real motivation. Turns out he's, uh, an android at the end of the episode, so it's just sort of foreshadowing for what's going to be the Real Godspeed next season, I suppose. Godspeed's kind of a weird dude in that he's shown up randomly over the course of this season and the previous one as this guy that's sort of built up as a super-scary new speedster, but honestly... we've had a lot of super-scary evil speedsters from Reverse-Flash to Zoom to Savitar, and all of them really are far more imposing than Godspeed. Who, at least, has a pretty kickass costume.

But Barry Allen being basically speed-less means that he doesn't have a lot of options to take down Godspeed, and the artificial Speed Force still isn't up yet. Plus, the Unwritten Rules of Crossover means that Barry can't call Kara and use her super-speed to help take down Godspeed. So after a bit of deliberation, Team Flash decides to call in Hartley Rathaway, who shows up post-Crisis briefly to remind the audience that, hey, after the showmakers forgot all about Pied Piper since season two, he's back here again! Honestly, I loved Pied Piper in the comics and the actor they picked for him plays him well, but man, Pied Piper has been such a non-entity in this show that making it out that this new post-Crisis iteration being a villain again when he's barely a reformed hero in the pre-Crisis timeline isn't something that ends up being all that emotional.

Turns out that this post-Crisis Pied Piper is super-duper angry for the Flash due to the specifics of their new, revised encounter. A combination of Flash's lightning spear slamming onto Pied Piper's sonic booms caused his right-hand man and boyfriend Roderick to be caught in a state of eternal agony, constantly vibrating in flux and stuff. The episode does have kind of a bizarre bit where it tries to make it feel like "oh my, Roderick is Hartley's boyfriend!" is a huge revelation when it's, um, already kind of obvious.

The episode plays out relatively obviously. Barry gives Hartley this long motivational speech about helping people and how he totally understands losing the love of his life and whatnot, and they team up and... to be fair, that actual showdown with Godspeed zipping around buildings and Flash and Piper combining their powers is pretty neat. But as an emotional piece it really ended up falling flat, mostly because, again, we know so little about Hartley and the episode establishes that Hartley is a Grade-A bastard (like his original season 1 portrayal) that the fact that he's suddenly turned into being decent-all-along is genuinely kind of clunky writing.

There's also a hilariously large amount of motivational speeches in this one -- Cecile tells Cisco that he's still a hero despite the lack of Vibe powers (the show really wants to hammer this point home; but Cisco was always cooler with Vibe powers); Barry's speech to Hartley; Ralph's speech to Frost; oh, and Kamilla and Iris give each other motivational pep-talks while they're trapped in the mirror-verse. Sure. There's the B-plots (Frost is going away but she feels like the third wheel; Iris has vague mirror-clairvoyance powers or some shit) which feel extra-clunky, too, but I'll chalk those up to the pandemic causing writing problems.

Honestly, again, it feels like this episode has a lot of potential but gets rushed to production probably because of the whole pandemic thing, and while it does feel kinda mean to blame the show for writing faults that are outside of its control, this episode does end up feeling like it could've been polished a lot more. Still, it's a pretty entertaining half-an-hour of superhero goodness, for sure.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Killer Frost reads one of Heatwave's "Rebecca Silver" novels from Legends of Tomorrow. 
• Cicada's dagger, which was zapped into the mirror dimension last season, makes a cameo as one of the items Kamilla has scavenged. 
• The original events portrayed here of Pied Piper's fight against the Flash with cars being thrown around took place in the first season of the Flash, whereas Barry knowing that Hartley is willing to work with the heroes happened in a different timeline shown in season two episode "Flash Back". A bit of a change is that Barry is lobbing lightning spears, something that (unless I'm mis-remembering) is a skill he didn't pick up until the second season. Ah, Crisis of Infinite Earths, the perfect handwave for any internal inconsistencies in this show's history!
• Once more, Atlantis is mentioned, although knowing what's going to happen in the next episode, it's likely something that they dropped out of the original iteration of the sixth season. 

The Flash S06E17 Review: Hello Siri

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 17: Liberation

So the Coronavirus pandemic has, understandably, put a lot of currently running shows on hold. After a month or so of hiatus, the CW shows that are still running announced that they're basically going to end their seasons early -- at least some of them are, I haven't really read up on what they're doing for every single show. The Flash, in particular, are basically ending season six in three episodes, and... and I'm genuinely not sure if this is the way the writers wanted to end the season and they just rushed through the available material and trimmed away all the fat unrelated to the Eva McCulloch story, or if this is an alternate stopgap ending while everyone takes a break due to the whole pandemic thing. Also, I'm not entirely sure if any of these episodes were actually filmed (or at least partly filmed) prior to the hiatus, or if this was hastily put together afterwards. Or something.

And... it kind of works? At least this one episode of Flash that I've watched is pretty exciting, anyway, feeling like a combination of them rushing through a plotline or just the general escalation that comes with the end of a season. Whatever the case, this episode covers the whole Mirror Iris storyline and concludes it, albeit you can totally see a version of this season where the Mirror Iris storyline takes two or three episodes to unravel, with maybe the mid-episode point of Barry being framed as the Mirror Creature be the focus of an episode. And things work out a lot better in this way, I feel, with the story moving quickly, and there being jut enough rama without things feeling stretched out.

Anyway, after several months of living with (and, as sirI herself points out, sleeping with... ick) the suspicious not-Iris, Barry finally gtes a bit of a breakthrough and realizes that the Iris he's staying with is not Iris, but maybe a shapeshifter or a martian or something. Of course in a better paced season we maybe have an episode prior to this where Mirror Iris slipped up or did something that's not just "she kicked me out!" but the abruptness of this and Barry himself going into a bit of a crazy conspiracy theorist web thing does end up making the whole theme of Cecile thinking that Barry's applying a superhero's cazy conspiracy mind into what's basically a domestic spat. Which, of course, the audience knows isn't the case and that Barry's actually right and not being an idiot for once, but Cecile does see that both Iris and Kamilla are being kinda weird, so she gives Barry the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, they reckoned without the fact that Mirror Iris's 'mother', Eva McCulloch, is able to see through the mirrors and basically catch what's going on and prepare Mirror Iris accordingly, by swapping the mirror-creature-detector device and making it react to Barry, making it look like Barry and his chaotic ramblings are that of a confused mirror creature himself. And then the episode focuss mostly on Mirror Iris, and... as a character that was very much uneven throughout the season, this eisode finally lets Candice Patton act the hell out for two characters. The real Iris gets a significantly less amount of screentime, just basically investigating Eva's lair and finding the secret observation room before being held hostage... but not without her basically calling Eva out on some of her bullshit, allowing Barry and Mirror Iris to talk it out in the climax.

But it's her performance as Mirror Iris that ends up being super-awesome. Throughout the first half of the episode we get to see Mirror Iris being her typical, flat villain-impersonating-another-person self that we've seen in previous episodes of the season. And turns out that Mirror Iris... is developing a soul! Not so for her 'siblings', Mirror Kamilla and Mirror Singh (which is a bit of a huge 'wait, what?' moment, but you kind of roll with it). She clearly feels a huge amount of guilt in imprisoning Barry in spite of her cover-rant to Cecile and Nash, but we get a huge moment when she goes off to Iron Heights with her mirror buddies to free Bloodwork, because Eva needs a sample of Bloodwork's blood for reasons.

And Bloodwork's still fun, talking about the survival of the fittest and chewing the scenery and stuff. Again, the fact that Bloodwork's arc was paced perfectly and the villain wasn't overdone like some of the weaker Arrowverse villains (Cicada, Thinker, Damien Darhk's stint in Arrow) makes his return so much more cool and fun, even if he's essentially just repeating the same old survival of the fittest mantra. Mirror Iris is clearly disturbed by the robotic 'everything for the master' mentality that caused Mirror Kamilla to literally just kamikaze herself into Bloodwork's forcefield, shortening out the Iron Heights prison. And when Bloodwork uses his blood-goop abilities to attack the two surviving mirror people, he basically demands to know from Mirror Iris what she wants... and she just tells the truth that she just wants to live. Because the season can't afford too many cliffhangers, Bloodwork just does the convenient thing and uses the excuse of 'this is not my time yet' and elects to not escape, and just leave the required blob of plot device on Mirror Iris.

And, sure, a lot of this doesn't really hold up to close inspection. Bloodwork letting the mirror people survive despite his previous M.O. of turning everyone into a blood zombie is a bit questionable, as well as him playing a bizarre evil-mentor figure to Mirror Iris. And, of course, his decision to not break out. But eh, again, I'll buy it. I'm giving these post-hiatus seasons a bit of a leeway for more rushed writing, y'know?

Meanwhile, Cecile decides to trust Barry and let him out of the Pipeline. There's also another bit of bizarre plot hole why Cecile never actually detects Mirror Iris's real thoughts or something, but I'll just chalk it up to selective plot-convenient telepathy that so permeates X-Men comics. Whatever the case, though, Barry confronts Mirror Iris in her apartment in a very cool boss fight mode. Mirror Iris turns her arms into some T-1000 arm blades which is badass, and then when Eva decides to help out her creation, turns out that Mirror Iris can stab into any mirror near her and have the tip of her blade appear elsewhere and turn the depowered Barry into shishkebab. Very comic-book-y, and I appreciate this so much.

The jump to the conclusion is a bit abrupt, but this is Barry Allen and Iris West, and the two of them, on either side of the mirror, realizing that Mirror Iris is super-conflicted and deciding to give her a chance at an independent life outside of being an extension of Eva is great. Mirror Iris (and a later monologue by Eva) ends up cluing Barry in about Eva's plan, but poor poor Mirror Iris ends up being literally shattered into itty-bitty pieces right after she's established her independence as a person. Incidentally, as someone who's been only portrayed as ambiguously evil and maybe even just doing things out of desperation, this episode really hammers home that, no, she's not a card-carrying villain like Zoom or whatever, but Eva McCulloch, the Mirror Master, is still a villain. Pretty cool stuff as we wrap up the Mirror Iris stuff this episode, making me actually care for a part of the plot that I genuinely didn't give a shit about in previous episodes. Good show! Now we have two episodes left to wrap up this season, and honestly, the shorter episode runtime might actually make this Bloodwork/Mirror Master season my favourite one.

There's also a B-plot I completely forgot about involving Caitlin getting a cold (a literal) cold and Ralph and Cisco go off to help cure her by using Ralph as a jumper cable. It's kind of obvious filler padding, but I do know that Caitlin's actress Danielle Panabaker was pregnant while filming this season so this is an obvious way to have her film a scene with everything below the chest under a blanket. Some other characters (notably Joe, and also Nash halfway through the episode) also are MIA, but at least unlike other Flash episodes, this one had a better real-world reason.

As far as other superhero shows go... Flash and Supergirl only have a handful of episodes to talk about, and I am comfortable with just blazing through Legends and talking through it in two-episode review format, so it's just going to be Batwoman, Titans and the final season of Jessica Jones that I'm going to be slowly taking my time to watch. Apparently Stargirl's out, too? I'm undecided whether I'll be covering that show or Doom Patrol on this blog -- I'm taking things a bit slowly after being perhaps a bit too hectic throughout April and May.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Among the theories that Barry postulates what Mirror-Iris could be is Everyman, a shape-shifting metahuman killed in season one (but is alive post-Crisis, according to Barry); martians (J'onn gets name-dropped) and Plastoids (briefly mentioned off-handedly by Breacher last season).

The Flash S06E15 Review: Return of the Thawne

The Flash, Season 6, Episode 15: The Exorcism of Nash Wells

Y'know, this is actually a very solid episode of The Flash. It's just that, well, the whole concept of Eobard Thawn's ghost somehow being combined into all the different Harrison Wells-es that are folded into Nash Wells is sort of dumped upon us out of nowhere and really doesn't make a whole ton of sense even by the wacky sci-fi standards of comic books. But okay. Sure. But compared to the honestly kind of disappointing last couple of episodes, "The Exorcism of Nash Wells" is actually pretty neat. There were actual stakes, there was a decent build-up to the stuff that happened here (even if it doesn't exactly make the most sense) and even if everything happened the way I thought it was going to (particularly in regards to anything behind Nash's paper-thin backstory) it's still a solid episode.

The titular exorcism of Nash Wells involves Team Flash trying to find a way to get rid of Eobard Thawne from Nash Wells' psyche, because all of the Harrison Wellses in the world have been combined into a single being, and Eobard got dragged in because of some vague reason or whatever. I guess everyone that looks like Tom Cavanagh gets combined into Nash? Nash has never been the most interesting character in the show. His character is pretty flat and we're dragging the very obvious reveal that Allegra's alternate-Earth doppelganger is his dead daughter is very much on-the-nose.

That said, though... just because the backstory is obvious doesn't make it any less well-done when the episode actually delves deep into Nash Wells' psyche. Thanks to Nash's self-loathing, Eobard is able to tap into the Negative Speed Force and feed on Nash like some sort of emotional vampire, becoming stronger and becoming the dominant personality if he can get Nash to wallow in sorrow and self-pity over letting his adopted daughter Maya die. And I do like that we don't go overboard with the flashbacks like some other CW shows (looking at you, Arrow, Batwoman) and we just get to see the first and last meetings that Nash has with his daughter. Tom Cavanagh's acting as the sorrow-stricken Nash in that mental cave is really, really amazing, as is Tom Cavanagh's acting as the devil-like Eobard who continues to twist that knife deep in Nash's heart, telling him how it's all his fault, how the 'treasure first, everything second' mentality that costed Maya her life was Nash's fault... yeah, it's all pretty well-done.

Barry and Cisco enter Nash's mind to confront Eobard and Nash, and Cisco, as always, uses his multiversal constant of being a buddy to any Harrison Wells in the multiverse to talk to Nash and give him a great pep talk. Meanwhile, Barry and Eobard get a pretty good little face-off. Earlier in the episode when the combined Nash-Thawne was doing a combination of faking being Nash and taunting Barry over "Little Runner", Barry flipped out and pretty damn near killed Nash, but in their final confrontation in this episode, Barry ends up basically doing the same thing that Nash did -- confronting the source of their pain, the deaths of their respective daughters, and refusing to let Eobard Thawne utilize the pain of it against them. In Nash's case, it's acceptance that the responsibility for Maya's death was his fault, and in Barry's case, it's to stop letting Eobard Thawne get into his head with Nora. Sure, the episode ends with Eobard Thawne exorcised from Nash Wells in the form of red lightning being purged from his body, but, eh, he'll be back.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Siri and Allimak are a duo of mirror people running around the real world. We have no idea what Eva McCulloch did to the real Kamilla, because she sure isn't in that one room that Eva and Iris hangs out in, but the mirror people are looking for another MacGuffin, the Prismatic Refractor, and there's a whole thing about Eva's husband Joseph Carver having a hand in obtaining a lot of these devices in the real world, and the mirror squad have to get the plot device before Joseph Carver hides it in his secure facilities, or Team Flash gets to it and shoves it to the authorities like ARGUS. But then they get attacked by another of Carver's supply of light-based metahuman assassins, Sunshine.

Because Barry's speed is something they can't waste, it's Killer Frost that heads off to rescue the floundering mirror duo from Sunshine. Barry tries to shoehorn his way in, and gets poor Frost zapped. Eventually, Barry decides to trust his friends or whatever, and sets up a trap with Joe and the CCPD to trap Sunshine in a room where she has no access to sunlight, and apparently arrest her and take the Refractor to ARGUS. But Siri and Allimak have already switched out the Refractor with a replica that Eva provided them. Joe ends up noticing something suspicious about Iris, especially after Wally's warning to him last episode, so, uh, some progression in that part of the storyline.

Speaking of minor progression in the storyline, Barry also ends up getting the idea of using Nora's future diary to make his artificial Speed Force. Okay, then. Honestly, I'm not very sure about the whole artificial speed force storyline, and I just hope that it leads to something that's interesting. Until we get a new Flash episode after this whole worldwide plague situation, though, this is the last we'll be seeing of Team Flash for a while, and it's a good episode to end on, if nothing else.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Nash notes that he encountered a bunch of "psychic starfishes" in Earth-26, which, of course, is a reference to Starro, the giant alien psychic starfish that was the Justice League's first enemy in the comics. 
• Sunshine is original to The Flash. 
• The Cerebral Inhibitor was used in season four multiple times when Team Flash fought the Thinker. 
• Among the villains that Iris mentions to Barry is "Ringmaster", a.k.a. Beauregard Baer, a minor Flash villain who, in the comics, was hypnotized by Golden Glider to upstage the Flash as Central City's newest superhero. Ringmaster used ring-themed equipment to fight, but after being defeated by the Flash and freed from Glider's mind control, Ringmaster retired.