Jessie Robertson reviews the second episode of The Flash season 6….
So, Barry has to die. What does he do next? Well, first, he and his wife have a come to Jesus meeting about exactly that topic. He wants to investigate and she can’t give up on him. He makes a great analogy: what do you do when you get bad news from a doctor? You get a second opinion. So, Barry travels to Earth-2 (I think) to find his mother and father (Mr. & Mrs. Garrick on this Earth) to help him figure out what exactly is coming. After donning Jay’s helmet (which was a very cool visual), Barry is a different man. He’s seen the Crisis up close; he’s seen billions dying, including his loved ones, over and over again. The only thing to prevent this is his sacrifice, which we get to see in an amazing homage to the brilliant artwork from 1986’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The season is starting to feel like season 4, where Iris’ life was counting down, except with bigger stakes. There are a lot of fires on the stove right now and they did a good job devoting enough to this one, while still capturing some dramatic moments. Both Grant Gustin and Candice Patton deliver in their conversations with each other as this couple faces sure death once more and makes every moment count, or at least they plan to.
Meanwhile, the Flash focuses on two of it’s nicer background characters: Cecile and Caitlin (Killer Frost). Both go through some growing pains that feels long overdue on the show. Frost, now that she’s living a life, has discovered art and how subjective it can be. As Cisco helps her defrost (sorry, how can I not?) her icy insides, she’s learning like a blank slate of a person, which I find pretty damn funny, especially her artwork. Cecile’s plot honestly takes up the bulk of the episode as her first “open and shut” case as DA finds her trusting her meta powers more than the evidence in a case of a young girl being tried for murder. The details of the case are pretty inconsequential but are enough to fill 18 minutes of plot to get us to the ending, where our villain of the week is revealed (and will be quickly forgotten about.) The crux of what they were getting at is her unfulfilled drive to protect metas as she tells Joe she needs to protect them the only way she knows how: as a lawyer.
There are some other nice moments here: the highlight being Jesse L. Martin doing what he does best: giving inspiring speeches with nearly a tear in his eye. When talking to Barry about the plight of his death, he weaves a story that shows you where Barry Allen got his sense of pride and sense of heroics from. It’s a damn great moment in an episode where Barry wistfully looks at his Mother (who’s not) and manages to convey so much with a look and not say a word.
7.5/10: I can’t not rate this favorably after so many touching parental moments and the dynamic between Barry and Iris (as well as the sub plots) even if the ending villain battle was just bad (Will The Flash ever just finish off a first time villain easily?).
Jessie Robertson
