The speedster war escalates on a busy episode of The Flash
David Ramsey brings a touch of the Arrowverse past as John Diggle returns
TV Reviews The Flash
An episode like “P.O.W.” demonstrates pretty clearly that The Flash isn’t trying to bring in new fans at this point. Anyone who hasn’t been steeped in the mythology of the show (and the Arrowverse as a whole) would have a hard time making heads or tails out of the events unfolding this week. Hell, I’ve recapped nearly all 149 hours of this show, and I didn’t exactly find it smooth sailing either.
Picking up not long after the previous episode, this one finds the two sets of Godspeed clones continuing to clash as Team Flash tries to figure out what their beef with each other could be. Aiding in that effort is John Diggle, late of Team Arrow and now with Argus, who arrives with a new piece of Cisco-Tech called the entropy trap. The device successfully captures one of the Godspeed clones that defended Barry last week, who explains that he and his brethren are merely fighting to live against the clones who serve their creator and will die when he decides they’ve served their purpose. If Barry joins their efforts, they can defeat the other team of clones, but that would entail killing the original Godspeed, August Hart, and Barry’s not down with that.
The clone is able to escape, because he’s an artificial meta and the team didn’t account for that when applying their meta-dampening tech, so…whoops. In any event, Barry is distracted because daughter Nora keeps appearing to him in dreams, this time telling him that something has screwed up the future and their family has changed. Barry is reluctant to travel ahead to 2049 and check on Nora, what with all the timeline destruction he’s already caused, but Diggle talks him into doing it anyway because family is more important than, oh, saving the city from a dozen warring speedster clones. Not so sure that was the best advice, Dig!
Barry fails to get back to the future anyway, as the clones block his path in the Speed Force and he is flung out of it, only to find Dion waiting. He explains that while the Speed Force is busy fighting the clones, he’s occupied with keeping Iris alive because she’s shifting in and out of the timeline. I guess that’s as good an explanation as any for Candice Patton’s extended absence of late, though she manages to make a brief appearance tonight. Not that there’s time for much more than that, since the episode is juggling more subplots than it can handle.
Let’s try to hit them quickly. Esperanza, having been healed by Caitlin, is ready to seek vengeance on the remains of Black Hole, but Allegra thinks she needs more recovery time. Esperanza invites her to join the mission on the condition that there will be no killing, but Allegra elects to stay with Team Flash, at least until she overhears Diggle’s big speech about family. She arrives too late to save her cousin, who has battled to the death and now disintegrates for some reason. Aren’t you glad we spent all that time with Ultraviolet over the past few weeks?
Joe and Kramer survived the car explosion at the end of last week’s episode, but if you’re waiting for an explanation as to how that happened…well, Kramer spotted a light on Adam’s gun and got them out of the car while we weren’t looking, I guess. They catch up to Adam who believes himself to be immortal and has been working as a mercenary, justifying it by giving half his earnings to the Reservation where they grew up. He also claims Kramer is dead, so we’ll see if that goes anywhere.
Diggle is having a series of headache attacks, which somehow tie in with the green glowy thing he found at the end of Arrow, which everyone assumes is the Green Lantern ring. There’s no resolution to that here, though I understand Diggle has appeared on other CW superhero shows, so maybe more has been revealed elsewhere. Again, this is part of the problem with this episode. There’s a lot going on, and it’s not boring exactly, but it feels like a collection of footnotes to a story rather than the story itself.
In the end, Team Flash gets their hands on August Hart, though he is without his memory, and Nora returns for real, not just as a dream. But she’s got a surprise for Barry (though not for those of us who have seen the character teased over the past few months): his son, Bart Allen. In this shortened season, it feels like we just got three episodes crammed into one…and now only the two-part finale remains.
Stray observations
- Despite her recent absence and the rumors that she’s dissatisfied with the show, Candice Patton recently signed on for the eighth season, along with Jesse L. Martin and Danielle Panabaker. (Grant Gustin was already under contract for next season.)
- Poor Chester gets yelled at by Barry. A rite of passage for Team Flash.
- Next week is the 150th episode of The Flash, which looks like it features nearly 150 speedsters.
55 Comments
Does that mean that Barry needs to go upstairs and…take Iris to pound-town again?I love how Barry and Caitlin are nodding their heads at Chester like they have no idea what he’s talking about.Please let this Kramer thing not be straight forward.Not the ring.How does Chester know that Diggle is the “heart of team Arrow”?I actually hope that this isn’t a lead-up to Allegra leaving.For those who may be wondering, Barry phased into a sewer. You can see the manhole cover about 10 feet in front of where they got Godspeed.Godspeed paperweight.Cecille, if ARGUS is tracking you, you shouldn’t be flattered.How did Godspeed escape his cell? Is his power technological, not biological? (Hey, I was right.)Phasing upward. That’s new.Maybe the ring is in this episode.Iris is back.Esperanza is dead. Now I have the feeling that Barry is going to have to undo something and reset time.Restoring August’s memory. I’m sure that that couldn’t go horribly wrong. (At least, not yet.)And now the real Nora shows up. Way schway.
“How does Chester know that Diggle is the “heart of team Arrow”?”- Barry, of course. Once you’re in the inner circle, you’ll get to know everything Barry knows about the Arrowverse heroes, whether you want to or not.
Except the Zoom room number for the SuperFriends, apparently
And ‘the inner circle’ by now includes anyone Barry works with, all regular customers of Jitters, all readers of Iris’ blog, and anybody Barry happens to bump into on the street who looks like they might be a good listener…
Cisco left incredibly detailed notes.
“Nanites, courtesy of Ray Palmer” was great to hear. Reminded me of better, sadly long-gone, days. This was fine. Bart Allen was cool, sounds like the character. Let’s get this season over with, maybe bring back Thawne one more time, and take a break before the next (hopefully last season) and watch some Season 1 reruns for fun.
I feel like the nanites are always introduced as “courtesy of Ray Palmer.” Oliver said it when they confronted Thawne in season 1, and I believe it’s been used again since.
Yep, that’s what I was referring to. A reference to better times (and better episodes).
I wouldn’t mind if everyone always says “Nanites, courtesy of Ray Palmer” every time they use nanites. Even when it doesn’t make sense.
Diggle is having a series of headache attacks, which somehow tie in with the green glowy thing he found at the end of Arrow, which everyone assumes is the Green Lantern ring. There’s no resolution to that here, though I understand Diggle has appeared on other CW superhero shows, so maybe more has been revealed elsewhere.Not really – when he showed up on Batwoman, he said he was in town to see a neurologist or something, which Diggle name-checks in this episode and apparently didn’t amount to any medical revelations.Ramsey’s appearance on LoT was gloriously irrelevant.
“Ramsey’s appearance on LoT was gloriously irrelevant.”That is a great way to put it. It’s on brand that he didn’t play Digg on Legends. And that Sara mistook Bass for Digg anyway.
“Digg?!”“Yes ma’am, I definitely do dig!”LoT is a treasure
Ramsey’s appearance on LoT was gloriously irrelevant.So in other words, Sunday. (God damn I love that show!)
I’m glad Candice Patton made time to appear in her own show, even tonights brief appearance at least solidified the “I’m sick” excuse from last week. I re-watched season 5 recently (and thought it was actually pretty good, overall) to refresh on Nora and Godspeed, and remain utterly confused what the continuity with Nora is. The way she interacted with Barry tonight, she obviously knows she has a brother that’s due to arrive in a matter of seconds, but also somehow knows this will be a shocker to Barry, as if she remembers the old continuity where she was a single child and was erased. I’m going to just back away from this unless someone has an explanation. Also, isn’t this a recast of August Heart?The Allegra storyline seemingly fizzles unless it leads to some big transformative moment for her, and I’m at least a little curious what’s going on with Kramer. The Diggle stuff was nice, and in terms of fan service we got a good appearance and as much Green Lantern setup as the Arrowverse can get away with short of saying he’s Green Lantern. Unless they announce Diggle’s in the upcoming GL HBO Max series or something else, this may be as good as it gets.
Just put Iris on the Waverider, she might still get to see the Cowboy Narrator from last week Imagine if Kramer is not only A Good Cop, but also A Ghost All Along.
It’s like that Progressive Home and Auto Bundle commercial on the radio. “You’ve heard us talk about the Home and Auto Bundle so much that we don’t even have to say ‘the Home and Auto Bundle’ and that’s why customers love the Sushi in Vancouver and are happy with the Goat with Magic Powers…” If The Flash script replaced every fourth word with “hotdog” and every tenth word with “sloppy grumpus” you’d still get what was going on. That’s not a knock so much as an observation that it’s all on the cast to sell this stew of exposition and technobabble. If they weren’t so freaking earnest, you’d never believe any of this.Anyway. Allegra needs a super suit.
His cousin’s is available now that she conveniently left to seek revenge without it.
*Her
So much of the exposition isn’t even useful. They’re not even trying anymore!Like that “wait, Chester, please fawningly remind the audience who Diggle is?” speech. As the review says, it’s not like they’re getting a lot of new viewers anymore. And if a new viewer did show up, it’s not like being told Diggle was ‘the heart of Team Arrow’, on another TV show that doesn’t even air anymore, would make his appearance any less confusing. And it’s also not like it was that confusing anyway – new viewers will simply recognise that the other characters know who this guy is and assume he’s someone from earlier episodes, but it’s not like the details of his history actually matter. He’s only there to carry an object and deliver a generic pep talk.So why did we have to sit through that rushed, cringeworthy little speech? It established nothing that was worth establishing! [ok, it established that Chester hadn’t met him before and was easily awestruck… but establishing that only required a quick ‘wow, THE John Diggle!?’, not that whole spiel…]And it’s true of so, so much of the dialogue on this show now: it just repeats things we know, or tells us things we don’t need to know (I honestly think there’s more exposition now, 7 seasons in, than there was in season 1, when they had to introduce all these concepts!). And it makes every scene overstuffed and rushed, and all the characters stilted and unrealistic. The show could be made better just by scrapping 50% of the words.It also shows that the writers don’t know who their audience is. Everything is spoonfed to us, as though they think we’re idiots, or haven’t seen an episode before… but if we were idiots, or hadn’t seen an episode before, we’d still have no idea what was going on, because it’s so needlessly overcomplicated. They need to either streamline the show to be more accessible, or else trust their viewers more. Instead, they present a tangled mess, and then rely on having all the characters constantly explain what’s going on every minute of every scene to somehow make it all make sense, which is kind of the worst of both worlds…
I feel like a lot of the exposition is mandated from above. It seems to show up in every CW show. It’s like they think they’re writing an actual comic book and can just put “*As seen in issue #239! -Meticulous Marc.” in a little purple box in the corner and have it not be obtrusive.
It really feels like David Ramsey just wanted to direct, but CW only agreed to let him direct only if he also guest-starred in these shows. Since his appearances have been unnecessary for both the character and the plot.
It feels like a way to inject a sort-of crossover for the Arrowverse since the actual one planned for this year got scrapped due to COVID.
That’s what it said inside the green glowing box: (in mini neon) “Congratulations! You are the next Crossover Event!”
Or, alternatively, “We own you now, David”
I love Dig but when he took Barry aside I swear to god if he said ‘when I was in the army…..’
Now that that the codename & costume are available, Allegra Garcia should upgrade herself to Ultraviolet!
If you drink every time they say “soldier,” “civil war,” “army,” & “family”, you’ll die.
It felt like they paused extra long on close-ups of Dig in his introductory scene as if they were waiting for a live studio audience to finish their applause at his mere presence.
The Spanish-language dialogue between those two was just done horribly. Like somebody just ran a Google translate and called it a day.
Allegra’s family is Brazilian in the comics so they should probably be speaking Portuguese anyway.
I don’t think they trust us to understand that there’s more than one language spoken south of the US…
They trusted viewers to realize Sherloque had a Quebec accent yet he was often mistaken for French.
Still so weird with Iris being in only a single scene across two episodes – the first of which centered around her own possible pregnancy reveal! The writers did a solid job of scripting around Iris’s absence, but it was still odd. (OTOH this is also a show that purposely had Joe simply “disappear” for half a season so Jesse E. Martin could recover from a back injury.)PLEASE tell me Diggle might be joining Team Flash! Losing three key cast members by the tail end of the season has left a tangible void that Chester can’t fulfill on his own. (That plus Diggle is a badass, and Batwoman has Gotham well-covered.) Surely much to much to ask if Felicity could come with Diggle as well, but I’ll ask anyway ‘cause that’d be epic!
I could go on about the oddness of zero crossovers aside from Diggle. Central City is in Missouri, all of one state over from Smallville, so why couldn’t Flash help with one of Superman’s issues or vice-versa? (especially now that he’s broken bad) Superman couldn’t save Kate’s plane from crashing in Gotham? I get that the pandemic made things logistically difficult – and Melissa Benoist was unavailable for much of it due to her pregnancy (plus the show’s about to end), and unavailable since she’s been in the Phantom Zone – but the entire slate of The CW’s DC show is filmed in Vancouver, so it seems like a bit more crossover is in order, especially now that we won’t be getting any future equivalents to “Crisis” since three of its DC shows have now ended.
The whole Ultraviolet thing was way too long, way too messy, I’m glad it’s over. There’s been a serious lack of interesting side characters lately. Hopefully the Allen twins (are they twins? Are they irish twins?) can finally make the show interesting again.
I think it’s predictable but hilarious that Barry’s messing around with the timeline has done to his own daughter what Flashpoint and Crisis did to Diggle’s, i.e. turned them into brother/sister twins (or nearly twins).
Like I felt it would have been better to have Bart show up alone so that it makes Barry even more confused about his dreams and focus on Bart and Barry. Also why not use some of the forces to help like Fuerza and Psych? Joe and Kramer storyline just wrap it up already.
I think the Flash episodes need to slow down the pacing a little bit more to make events stick like finding August should be important but feels like an afterthought or Ultraviolet death should have been done better in a slower paced episode.
While it’s a bit of an unfair exaggeration – though only a bit – doesn’t it seem like any given episode of The Flash is now just a coat of veneer slapped on top of behind-the-scenes show-related drama?Like I said though, a bit unfair. It’s still probably 60% about the writers room being coked out of its fucking mind.Probably.
I liked this episode pretty well in that it felt like it had stakes in the main story (which makes sense with the two-part finale on deck).The Diggle Farewell Tour concludes next week on Superman & Lois and I honestly have no idea whether anything is going to be answered. Wouldn’t it be something if the glowing green thing was not a Lantern ring but just a giant chunk of kryptonite that he brings to Lois to take down Mor-Edge or evil Supes? And did anyone catch what the voices Diggle heard were saying? I usually watch with CC turned on, but it just said “[inaudible voices]”. Ultraviolet dying was annoying, but if it leads to Allegra tapping into anger power and leveling up her Jem powers, I’ll allow it.Dion, the best of the non-Hot Speed Force Mom forces, is welcome to return anytime. I suspect we’re going to see all the forces, XS, Impulse, Speed Iris, Cisco (he’s gonna make a new Godspeed Hood Ornament Machine(tm)), maybe some form of Wells, and Allegra of Vengeance all fighting the Godspeeds. Also, we’re going to find that Kaitlyn & Cecile were responsible for creating Godspeed with that dark matter injection, right?I tried, but I don’t care about Kramer’s problems and at this point they’ve nerfed Joe so hard that I can’t say I’d miss him if he didn’t come back.The kid playing Bart (I say kid, I just looked it up and he’s 27, just get me my cane and dentures) was totally crash! Pleeeeeeeeease let Impulse stick around for next season, this team needs an injection of hilarity.
The voices were saying “Worlds await”.Now if this show doesn’t reveal a GL ring, they got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do. But knowing them, Dig has a travel ad downloaded into his brain.
How is he going to zip from one side of the galaxy to the other without throwing up?
Except Lois already has a Kryptonite rock. She used it against Kyle a few episodes ago, and her dad has a crapton of artificial Kryptonite at the ready.
The kid playing Bart (I say kid, I just looked it up and he’s 27, just get me my cane and dentures) was totally crash! Pleeeeeeeeease let Impulse stick around for next season, this team needs an injection of hilarity.
I wasn’t too affected by Bart Allen being in this season at first. Then I binged Young Justice.
Dude totally had Barts manner of speaking down, and hearing him say “This place is totally crash!” or something similar completely sold me on him
Yeah, I also recently binged Young Justice so my memory of Bart’s mannerisms in that show is pretty fresh, and he nailed it. Obviously it was a short part, but I’m excited to see more from him.
Season 3 of Young Justice aired almost two years ago, but it feels like it was a lot longer than that. Hopefully, season 4 should be here sooner than later.
It’s been awhile since I’ve felt that Arrowverse rush. I know there were only a few references to Team Arrow, Ray Palmer, etc., but it’s more than I have seen lately. I almost wish the two side stories were pushed aside to make more room for Diggle. The possibility of a new DC major, Arrowverse (I’ll always call it the Arrowverse even if Superman and Lois are trying to avoid it) superhero (Green Lantern?) is also something that we haven’t seen in awhile.
I watched this episode solely for the David Ramsey part. I just can’t find it in me to care about the rest. I’ll watch next episode for the 150th episode, then I’ll stick to reading reviews until the series finale.UNLESS! Unless I read or hear something that intrigues me.
Is this you?
– As annoying as it is to see Barry constantly talking to Iris via cell phone rather than in person, it’s at least less cringe than Barry constantly yelling upstairs and not getting a response.- You know, I like the new Flash into and all, but considering all the images are just groups of headshots of the cast names, I think it would look better if we got the main cast credits during that rather than right afterwards.
– The whole “Faraday cage” thing at least gives a minor handwave as to why Flash doesn’t call in Kara or Clark for support.- Wait… how did Joe survive? Last week, the car exploded with the doors closed and I’m pretty sure there were heads and bodies inside the windows.
– The big, triumphant music when Diggle entered the scene was so cringe, but in the most hilariously glorious way.- Chester recognizing Diggle made me think of something. The world knows Oliver Queen was the Green Arrow, but does the public also know the identities of the rest of Team Arrow, like Diggle was Spartan, Thea was Speedy, etc.?- “You wanna invite these new guys into your house, Barry?” It’s not like the doors have any locks to keep them out.- “Team Flash needs me!” … They do? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind Allegra, but with everything involving The Citizen on hold, Allegra’s kinda the odd woman out on Team Flash. Case in point: last week.- Nice to see John in his old outfit once again.
– I wonder if Diggle has adopted Connor yet?- …When exactly did Iris give Cecile Nora’s journal? (EDIT: OK, I guess Deon time jumped Iris to Cecile?)
– Speculation: Diggle’s being taken over by Parallax and the focus of next year’s crossover will be saving him.
– I was genuinely not expecting to see the Speed Forces again. Well, just Deon, but still.
– I have to wonder how much of the whole Iris subplot here was intentional, or a last minute rewrite when Patton needed her break?- Man, what a waste of the Esperanza subplot. If they were gonna kill her off, at least wait until next season to do it.
– How does Adam NOT know that he’s hunting Kramer? Did he not get a briefing of who he was supposed to kill?- The way Nora acted in the final scene… does she have her Pre-Crisis memories or not? Or did Season 5 happen the exact same way Post-Crisis? Just found it a bit odd that Nora would have never mentioned Bart otherwise.
“Wait… how did Joe survive? Last week, the car exploded with the doors closed and I’m pretty sure there were heads and bodies inside the windows.”
For a team full of geniuses they are painfully slow sometimes.Barry never thought to ask the forces for help. You know those literal gods he birthed and spent the whole first half of the season on.
“The Godspeeds are attacking people in their homes now!”“So, I could just be sitting at home listening to (whatever band he mentioned, I can’t remember the name) and then I could get attacked by a Godspeed?”…yes, Chester. That’s what “attacking people in their homes” means.
Fridge notion from the last Legends episode. If John Diggle is a relation to famed Oklahoma lawman Bass Reeves, that means he is probably the cousin to Angela Abar. Who is also a distant relative of Reeves. Watchmen is a Warner/DC property (although it has no business in DC continuity at all)
Dragging out the reveal of Diggle’s mysterious glowing green thing is sending me nuts. I know a GL ring or kryptonite are the most obvious contenders, but it could just as easily, at this point, be literally anything. Like a neon pen. Or a glow stick. From spaaaaaace!I’m sure that giving August Hart, a known villain, a dark matter injection, is going to work out really well for everyone involved. It really made me chuckle that Ultraviolet disintegrated. I mean, why not? They wasted a ton of story time on her to lead nowhere substantial, so why not cap all that nonsense off by having her burn up and vanish. If Barry needs to travel through time, why not call the Legends? You could even have Nate ask “is this for a crossover?” and when the answer’s “not really”, he says “then we’ll have to pass.” with an aside: “Should have given me a seat in the Hall of Justice.”
So glad Nora’s back. She was a real bright spot in Seasons 4 and 5, and the way they disposed of her always left a bad taste. Maybe they’ll actually remember she’s lesbian at some point.Also, I can’t believe that there’s a character called Kramer in 2021 and that the show expects us to take that seriously.
Justice for Kramer vs. Kramer.
Diggle saved this episode