Okay, look. This episode wasn't without its faults. There was some lazy writing and retcons from what I saw, but it was much better than last week. Also, get over the "nobody's aged a day in 10 years" thing. That's one of the things you just have to accept while watching tv shows.
It's also worth noting that I FINALLY got Flash Trope Bingo this week! Looks like the writers have fallen back on a lot of the Flash's tropes like "That's Not How The Speed Force Works!" and "Iris is Secretly the Main Character". However, I thoroughly enjoyed crossing off "Barry Loses an Argument" this week since it was during the best scene this show's had in years! I'll talk in depth about it later.
Throughout the episode we get to see a lot of Cecile handling her grief over Joe's death. And I'm sorry, but I just don't care. Cecile should've stayed a background character like she was during season 4, because she's just not compelling to follow. I appreciated the scene of her and Caitlin talking about Ronnie, but I've never bought the relationship between Cecile and Top. It just kinda seemed tacked on and out of place in the grand scheme of the season. The scenes were acted fine, but did we really need an entire major plotline dedicated to Cecile in the middle of a five episode crossover? The entire plotline could've been cut out by just tracking Barry's comms or checking the cameras at the Hall of Justice, which they clearly have access to as shown by last episode where the team accessed the STAR Labs satellites, or at least Barry's comms, from Chester's garage!
Also, last episode Despero knocked Cecile unconscious with a dirty look, but in this episode she can overpower him for no reason? Whatever.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget that Rosalind Dillon becomes half of Cecile's support system during this episode, so everyone make sure to cross "Forgiving Known Murderers" off your Flash Frustration Bingo Cards.
The Iris storyline about her searching for her dad's killer felt natural, and I actually found myself siding with IRIS of all characters in an argument against Cecile at the top of the episode. Yeah, that really happened. IRIS came off as a more rational human being during an argument, and I'm just as shocked as you are. It's not enough to save the character by any means, but if the writers are trying to make her a more tolerable character, maybe this is a nice first step.
I didn't even hate the stuff about Iris's "time sickness", though it did lead to one of my favorite little tidbits in the show's recent history. First off, "time sickness" isn't a thing, and the writers still have yet to explain what it is or how Iris got it. And two, Deon says that somebody tapped into the "Negative Still Force" in order to change the timeline. And... Yeah, no, the "Negative Still Force" isn't a thing. If memory serves, Thawne CREATED the Negative Speed Force to be the opposite of the Speed Force. The writers reinforce this point during season 6's "Death of the Speed Force". So tell me... WHO CREATED THE "NEGATIVE STILL FORCE"? Deon (and maybe OG Wells) is the only person that we know who's been chosen as a conduit of the Still Force. So unless there's another character that we've never met that created the Negative Still Force, who created it? I'm sure that when the writers figure that out, they'll let us know.
As for the best part of this episode, Barry Allen and Jefferson Pierce. For starters, I loved all the nods to Black Lightning's style of filming. There were a lot of shots taken at an angle, which was commonplace during Black Lightning's final two seasons, and I ate it up! Maybe it's because I miss when Black Lightning used to be good, but the crew pretty clearly watched Black Lightning and took notes. When Barry and Jeff had their fight, it was a perfect mix of modern CW Flash and Black Lightning's styles! I got a real kick out of it!
And it wasn't just the way the episode was shot, but it was the writing as well! This is the Jefferson Pierce that the final season of his show was missing! Where was the CW hiding *this* guy? I missed seeing Jefferson Pierce inspire hope and teach people. Plus, that moment where Jeff said "Where's the future?" and Barry responds with "Right here", and then they went through Jeff's entire mantra was my favorite moment of this show since season 6's "The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Pt. 1". Maybe this means that Barry's finally making some headway as a character? Doubtful, but the scene was great regardless.
Also, the Flash writers respected Jefferson Pierce more than the Black Lightning writers did, and more than the Flash writers respect Barry Allen. Just let that sink in for a moment.
I do however have an issue with the way that Barry's powers are getting removed here. I understand that without Barry asking Jeff to remove his powers in this way, then the rest of the episode couldn't happen, but couldn't Barry just take the Metahuman Cure? It does canonically still exist after season seven's "The People vs Killer Frost", so it is a viable option for Barry to use it on himself. They even made a big deal about the cure being a choice as far back as "King Shark vs Gorilla Grodd", so if it's an option, why isn't it on the table? This is like Despero saying he knows the exact amount of force it take to kill Barry and then not doing it all over again! And yes, I'm still mad about that!
And then we get to the end of the episode where we get the big reveal that the one behind all of this is... Eobard Thawne. Honestly, I don't know why I didn't predict this to be the outcome from the start. I mean, Thawne is the Flash writers' favorite plot device to use to create tension. I mean... The most I can say is that this appearance certainly felt different from any his previous ones. This was a side of Eobard Thawne we haven't seen since the first season of the show, and I can't tell if that's because the writers are trying to tug at our nostalgia, or if they're legitimately trying to do something new and exciting with the character for once. I'd definitely be more intrigued to figure out which is the answer if there wasn't only TWO EPISODES LEFT OF ARMAGEDDON! This is the same problem that last season's Godspeed arc had. There just isn't enough episodes to tell the story with Reverse Flash here, and it shows! It doesn't help that we're wasting time on pointless characters like Cecile, Chester and Allegra.
Overall, this was a pretty solid episode despite the stuff with Cecile taking up more time than it needed to. I think this wasn't exactly great as part of a crossover event, but as a standalone episode it was pretty good. There's still some issues with pointless characters being forced on the audience, and also just some straight-up lazy writing, but where the writing needed to be good, it was! Jefferson Pierce was fricking gold and carried this episode pretty hard, and though I don't think there's enough time to tell Thawne's story, the reveal was still intriguing in itself. Do I think the writers can pull this thing off?... I'm skeptical.
7 / 10.
It's also worth noting that I FINALLY got Flash Trope Bingo this week! Looks like the writers have fallen back on a lot of the Flash's tropes like "That's Not How The Speed Force Works!" and "Iris is Secretly the Main Character". However, I thoroughly enjoyed crossing off "Barry Loses an Argument" this week since it was during the best scene this show's had in years! I'll talk in depth about it later.
Throughout the episode we get to see a lot of Cecile handling her grief over Joe's death. And I'm sorry, but I just don't care. Cecile should've stayed a background character like she was during season 4, because she's just not compelling to follow. I appreciated the scene of her and Caitlin talking about Ronnie, but I've never bought the relationship between Cecile and Top. It just kinda seemed tacked on and out of place in the grand scheme of the season. The scenes were acted fine, but did we really need an entire major plotline dedicated to Cecile in the middle of a five episode crossover? The entire plotline could've been cut out by just tracking Barry's comms or checking the cameras at the Hall of Justice, which they clearly have access to as shown by last episode where the team accessed the STAR Labs satellites, or at least Barry's comms, from Chester's garage!
Also, last episode Despero knocked Cecile unconscious with a dirty look, but in this episode she can overpower him for no reason? Whatever.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget that Rosalind Dillon becomes half of Cecile's support system during this episode, so everyone make sure to cross "Forgiving Known Murderers" off your Flash Frustration Bingo Cards.
The Iris storyline about her searching for her dad's killer felt natural, and I actually found myself siding with IRIS of all characters in an argument against Cecile at the top of the episode. Yeah, that really happened. IRIS came off as a more rational human being during an argument, and I'm just as shocked as you are. It's not enough to save the character by any means, but if the writers are trying to make her a more tolerable character, maybe this is a nice first step.
I didn't even hate the stuff about Iris's "time sickness", though it did lead to one of my favorite little tidbits in the show's recent history. First off, "time sickness" isn't a thing, and the writers still have yet to explain what it is or how Iris got it. And two, Deon says that somebody tapped into the "Negative Still Force" in order to change the timeline. And... Yeah, no, the "Negative Still Force" isn't a thing. If memory serves, Thawne CREATED the Negative Speed Force to be the opposite of the Speed Force. The writers reinforce this point during season 6's "Death of the Speed Force". So tell me... WHO CREATED THE "NEGATIVE STILL FORCE"? Deon (and maybe OG Wells) is the only person that we know who's been chosen as a conduit of the Still Force. So unless there's another character that we've never met that created the Negative Still Force, who created it? I'm sure that when the writers figure that out, they'll let us know.
As for the best part of this episode, Barry Allen and Jefferson Pierce. For starters, I loved all the nods to Black Lightning's style of filming. There were a lot of shots taken at an angle, which was commonplace during Black Lightning's final two seasons, and I ate it up! Maybe it's because I miss when Black Lightning used to be good, but the crew pretty clearly watched Black Lightning and took notes. When Barry and Jeff had their fight, it was a perfect mix of modern CW Flash and Black Lightning's styles! I got a real kick out of it!
And it wasn't just the way the episode was shot, but it was the writing as well! This is the Jefferson Pierce that the final season of his show was missing! Where was the CW hiding *this* guy? I missed seeing Jefferson Pierce inspire hope and teach people. Plus, that moment where Jeff said "Where's the future?" and Barry responds with "Right here", and then they went through Jeff's entire mantra was my favorite moment of this show since season 6's "The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Pt. 1". Maybe this means that Barry's finally making some headway as a character? Doubtful, but the scene was great regardless.
Also, the Flash writers respected Jefferson Pierce more than the Black Lightning writers did, and more than the Flash writers respect Barry Allen. Just let that sink in for a moment.
I do however have an issue with the way that Barry's powers are getting removed here. I understand that without Barry asking Jeff to remove his powers in this way, then the rest of the episode couldn't happen, but couldn't Barry just take the Metahuman Cure? It does canonically still exist after season seven's "The People vs Killer Frost", so it is a viable option for Barry to use it on himself. They even made a big deal about the cure being a choice as far back as "King Shark vs Gorilla Grodd", so if it's an option, why isn't it on the table? This is like Despero saying he knows the exact amount of force it take to kill Barry and then not doing it all over again! And yes, I'm still mad about that!
And then we get to the end of the episode where we get the big reveal that the one behind all of this is... Eobard Thawne. Honestly, I don't know why I didn't predict this to be the outcome from the start. I mean, Thawne is the Flash writers' favorite plot device to use to create tension. I mean... The most I can say is that this appearance certainly felt different from any his previous ones. This was a side of Eobard Thawne we haven't seen since the first season of the show, and I can't tell if that's because the writers are trying to tug at our nostalgia, or if they're legitimately trying to do something new and exciting with the character for once. I'd definitely be more intrigued to figure out which is the answer if there wasn't only TWO EPISODES LEFT OF ARMAGEDDON! This is the same problem that last season's Godspeed arc had. There just isn't enough episodes to tell the story with Reverse Flash here, and it shows! It doesn't help that we're wasting time on pointless characters like Cecile, Chester and Allegra.
Overall, this was a pretty solid episode despite the stuff with Cecile taking up more time than it needed to. I think this wasn't exactly great as part of a crossover event, but as a standalone episode it was pretty good. There's still some issues with pointless characters being forced on the audience, and also just some straight-up lazy writing, but where the writing needed to be good, it was! Jefferson Pierce was fricking gold and carried this episode pretty hard, and though I don't think there's enough time to tell Thawne's story, the reveal was still intriguing in itself. Do I think the writers can pull this thing off?... I'm skeptical.
7 / 10.