Jessie Robertson reviews the eighth episode of The Flash season 6…
In the follow up to last week’s amazing psychological mindtrip can’t quite live up to it’s opening chapter in Part 2.
With Barry taken over by Ramsey (whom Cisco eloquently dubbed “Dark Flash”), the team is nearly wittled down to nothing. Iris and Cisco make up the force trying to deal with this deadly threat as Frost transports out to try and save Joe in the middle of an invasion from Ramsey’s blood zombies throughout Central City. There’s also a third tier featuring Cecile and Kamilla, who are in trapped in the office, surrounded by blood zombies. It’s a pretty unimportant set of scenes, mostly there for horror effect, as they figure out Cecile’s meta power could help them get out of the building safely.
More importantly elsewhere, Ramsey and The Flash are taking over Central City; when they lure Iris back to her and Barry’s apartment, she can’t get through to her husband, as he threatens death on her, but lets her go. Cisco wants to try out his UV ray gun thing (which has never been tested) on Ramsey, thinking it will revert him back to normal human form, but as he does, The Flash ruins his plan and destroys the device. During both scenarios, Cisco and Iris are not killed; in fact, they are told something by Barry each time he previously said to them. They realize that he’s not fully taken over, as we the viewer, realize he let himself be taken by Ramsey to eventually defeat him. It leaves a gray area in my mind as to exactly how these Blood powers work? Everyone else he gives it to is a stark raving maniac; except Barry. But, Ramsey is said to control his every move and word; but how can that be? It’s one of those things that sticks in my mind, then I just try to delete it as it’s not something you want to ponder too hard on as overall, there is a large scale yet deeper story trying to be told here.
Keep in mind, Barry’s sacrifice for the Crisis in coming up in mere hours; Joe was hurt badly and there are very low on people that can deal with this threat. They allow Ramsey and Flash into Star Labs, from Barry’s suggestion, and there, finally, they can defeat Ramsey with whatever Barry’s planning. Then things get weirder. Somehow, these blood zombies all form into a ball – assumingly being controlled by Ramsey to do so and start running with super speed towards the particle accelerator- the idea being once they are going fast enough and hit it, it will send Ramsey’s blood all over the city, as it did once before, with the rays that created metas. But, huh? Again, not important part. That comes when Allegra is once again recruited to use her UV powers to disperse the blood people, return everyone to normal (except Ramsey) and save Central City. But, huh?
Ramsey goes all super Blood Monster in a very cool visual before Barry reveals he has secretly been invading Ramsey’s mind the whole time Ramsey thought he had controlled Flash’s mind, finally making some sense. Team Flash then traps Ramsey into their new meta prison, the mind portal thing they trapped Chester in before, then apparently, Lyla has Ramsey in ARGUS custody- never mind she’s over on Arrow, more importantly, as you’ll see, on Lian Yu, warped into a portal by the Monitor at nearly the same moment as this. Sorry, again, not important. Bottom line, The Flash and his team defeat their supervillain, in just the right amount of time for everyone to share inspiring stories about Barry to him, as he tears up in front of them, literally counting down the seconds until Crisis, in the best moments of the episode.
Rating: 7/10 – A fairly okay end to the Ramsey saga but it couldn’t maintain the deep, psychological story at play in Part 1; instead, it felt bogged down by too much detail on unnecessary story points before bringing it back to pure, raw family emotion that this show has a bullseye on.
Jessie Robertson
