Season seven of The Flash reaches its end amid the chaos of the Godspeed war. We get a resolution to that, several allies working together, an old enemy coming back, and a nice little family scene at the end. To my surprise, there was no big cliffhanger, which the CW usually does on their season finales.
The end is near… of season seven, anyway. The beginning of the two-part season finale has speedsters at war, two old friends coming back, more nods to the comics, and another attempt at redeeming a supervillain.
There are multiple, apparently identical, speedsters running around, Team Flash is outnumbered and arguably out gunned, and one of their depleted number goes off on their own.
Flash’s long-term planning has been all sorts of thrown off over the last year or so. COVID changed the spacing and timing on a few major plot elements, and in some ways it feels like they’ve been struggling to get back on track ever since. When in doubt, they toss the mysterious Godspeed into the mix.
It says something in the confidence a show has in their ensemble when the main character takes off for an episode and lets the various supporting characters take center stage. This has happened a few times on Flash now, and they pull it off pretty well.
This season of the Flash seems to be hitting more emotional notes than going for the fun adventure the show started out as. I didn’t care for the two part “Family Matters” story line with all its strained analogies, and then “Goodbye Vibrations” saw my favorite character leave the series.
When they do it right, a hero show is more than just a string of fights and strange things happening. I’ve been enjoying the Flash since Barry first popped up during the second season of Arrow (granted, some episodes and stories more than others), and I’ve grown to really like these versions of characters I already knew from the comics.
They’ve been really beating the metaphor to death of the “family” aspect of the new Forces running around on the Flash. I’m still not clear if they just possessed existing people, or recreated dead ones, or how this worked. Nora, for example, looks like Barry’s long-dead mother, but Psych has a recent backstory as a human.
The new “Forces” have been plaguing Flash and company since they turned up in Central City. Barry was stunned to find out that the Speed Force, wearing his mother’s face, wasn’t as nice as he thought, but was actually out to kill the other forces.
This week’s Flash felt both padded and overly soap operatic, and not at all “Timeless.”
