Hello again folks! Can you believe it? These are the last five thoughts on The Flash! After nine years the show is finally ending. What a prowess! This story arc is named “A New World” and it has been building up to a big final confrontation for Barry Allen and Team Flash. Are you ready? Let’s dive right in!
1. The Big Fight
After seeing the slow fall of Eddie Thawne, and his transformation into a villain, this episode he is fully formed as Cobalt Blue and he brought along every speed-related villain that has fought on the show – Reverse Flash, Savitar, Zoom, and Godspeed – and they are ready to make a big mess, only Team Flash can stop them.
And they have a standoff, the whole team is ready to fight alongside with Barry, this is surely going to be a bloody fight, right? Well, it ended rather quickly! Cecile used her mental powers against Godspeed, Zoom was easily defeated by Khione now that she’s a goddess, Nora fought against Savitar and they recreated that iconic moment when he killed Iris, but XS used her phasing powers and killed the villain; and Reverse Flash was too busy having fun torturing Chester when he got hit by Allegra’s light.
One can easily get mad because villains that took an entire season (or more) to defeat were easily defeated by the sidekicks, but to that I counter with this: they were remnants of the real villains, mere constructs made by the Negative Speed Force that was overwhelmed “feeding” that many villains.
2. The real Fight
And to be honest, the fight was not that important. We have to know how is Barry supposed to defeat an entity that has attacked him time and again. He said it himself: they might be condemned to have the same fight forever, so Khione encouraged him to find a different solution.
If an avatar is needed for each force, and the Negative Speed Force won’t stop, well, at least they can find a healthy equilibrium. So Barry proposes that to Eddie, he is the villain here, but he’s also a hero and a victim, and Flash appeals to that side of him to truly become a hero and make a peace pact against the Negative Speed Force’s will.
And that’s it. Barry won again, maybe this time, forever. It was a deliberate act from the writing team. Yeah, you got good fights and great use of effects (that scene with the explosion of every car was great!) but that is not the important thing. This was always a show about doing the right thing despite the odds.
3. Nora and all the good things that come with a baby
The second half of the episode focused on the farewell of our heroes. Joe came back to propose to Cecile, they finally are getting married; Nora was born and she immediately showed the lighting on her eyes; Iris got a Pulitzer; Barry did not disappear in any crisis; Chester is a C.H.U.N.K., whatever that means; Allegra is a hero; and Khione left her mortal body, which allowed for Caitlin’s return (and now I get why they didn’t have a funeral for her.)
They all are ready to live in A New, Better World…But there’s still some work to do.
4. Coexistence
The theme for this episode is Coexistence, that’s what Khione encouraged Barry to seek and that is what saves the day one last time, and this theme has been somewhat recurrent all through the series. There was a division between regular humans and Metas as well as a reflection of real life many crises: from the hate that Candice Patton received when she was cast as Iris West to how the world of become harsher in the Trump era, race was always present on the show.
And they always advocated for a world of understanding and coexistence. A world where evil exists and we have to learn to exist despite it. The last thing Barry does is to send a lighting bolt, now that he is the one choosing, and we see three new future speedsters: Avery Ho, the Flash from China; Max Mercury, a native American man; and Jess Chambers, the non-binary character created in the Future State publishing initiative. So now we have a diverse new cast of superheroes, for A New World, both in the show and, symbolically, in real life.
Continued below5. A farewell
The world of entertainment changed a lot in the last decade. Streaming already existed but with the first original created by Netflix (House of Cards,) the streaming wars began to brew and now we have shows that last only 13 episodes, tops, and come out every year and a half, at least. I don’t think we will see a show like this, maybe ever again, with its charm and heart and with over 22 weekly episodes each year; a show that doesn’t take itself so seriously and allows itself to have mistakes and cheesy dialogue and errors that don’t affect the experience.
You personally might not like what showrunner Eric Wallace brought to the table and the direction the show took with him starting in season six, but you cannot deny that he and his team had fresh ideas and fought the good fight to give their best, even when the world was falling apart (remember COVID lockdowns?)
Many argued that the show was getting less-good with each new season. I even said multiple times that the show should end “next season” so it could leave on a positive note, but I always defended it and will continue to defend The Flash as the last bastion of an era of superheroes in television that we may never see again.
Personally, I want to thank every single person involved in the creation of this show, from Greg Berlanti, passing by Grant Gustin and every actor, to Vanessa Parise and every director. From the riggers to the boom operators and the VFX team, you always delivered. Thank you for having read my reviews/recaps and opinions these last five seasons that I have written about The Flash. I want to thank Brian Salvatore for passing it onto me, it meant the world to me in a moment of doubts about my writing. This has been a very exciting adventure and I feel a lot of emotions about saying goodbye.
It wasn’t always easy. Writing a review late at night or early in the morning could be a tiring task at times, and coming up with something to say was sometimes complicated, but I always enjoyed it.
Lastly, please support WGA’s strike. They are fighting for, truly and without exaggeration, the future of entertainment. Production companies and streaming services want to churn out “content” and keep the profits of that regurgitated A.I. crap they plan for, and if it’s not a hit, they will disappear the show from (legal) existence and ask for a tax write-off. No more cult classics or sleeper hits.
By the way, the fact that this show exists takes a whole other meaning when you remember that they announced a Flash movie before the show started and it will finally come out in two weeks, only after the show ended. That shows us two things: how hard it is to produce something, and how hard Team TV-Flash have been working on this show.
Writers, actors, and the whole production team behind every show deserve a part of the cake (even maybe most of the cake) and all they are asking for is respect. So, if you enjoyed The Flash, and the entire Arrowverse, please support them on their strike for their rights.
And that’s it for this beautiful, weird and hilarious show. My final overall review is this: I love The Flash. What did you think of this episode in particular? How about this last arc? About the entire season? And how do you feel about the show in its entirety?
Leave your comments below and keep reading all that we have planned for you and, again, you have my gratitude for reading along with me. Thank you very much.
