Hello folks! Well, what a freaking year it has been, am I right? It’s been ten months since our last episode of The Flash, and I sure as hell missed it a lot, thankfully yesterday we had the seventh season premier, which means we are back to our weekly recaps! This week’s episode is named “All’s Wells That Ends Wells” and to be honest it had a weird energy, and I can understand it, this was meant to be part of the sixth season, now let’s dive right in.
1. Chester P. Runk and Allegra Garcia are here
The most important thing about last season was that, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths we have some kind of “soft-reboot” where, as you know, all the earths merged into one and a new multiverse was created.
This was taken as an opportunity by showrunner Eric Wallace to change the status quo of the show, and so far, he and his team are doing it great, bringing in a fresh perspective and new characters to play in their sandbox.
Now, this season premier featured heavily the two newest characters introduced in last season, Chester P. Runk and Allegra Garcia, marking their “definitive” welcome to Team Flash on a permanent way. In contrast, Cisco, Caitlin and Ralph are nowhere to be seen. As you might know actress Danielle Panabaker was on maternity leave when these episodes were produced; and actor Hartley Sawyer was fired after some nasty tweets resurfaced.
This created a weird, new dynamic to the team, obviously I missed the old members, but I think that the addition of Chuck and Allegra are going to add a fresh take on the team, especially after the loss of two main characters (more on that later).
2. The Black Hole saga is still going on
As I said in the beginning, this episode had a weird energy, mainly because it wasn’t meant to be a season opener, on the contrary it was one of the latest episodes on last year’s season, therefore it started right away, nevertheless I think that the plot was reintroduced in a well-structured way, which made it very useful to bring the fans up to speed with all the main threads.
Here, Flash tried to stop Eva McCulloch, who is still on a vendetta against Black Hole, but the Speed Force is dead, and she was able to kill the old Mirror Master from season three, revealing that he was merely her first attempt to cross back into the real world.
Meanwhile Iris is still in the Mirror World and is struggling with reflections of herself, but she is getting close to being saved by the team. I believe that this storyline will close in the first three episodes, then we will have a new story arc.
3. Cecile saves the day
When Eva killed Mirror Master, her girlfriend, Top (which I honestly didn’t even remember) was arrested, and Cecile, in her role as defense attorney, went to try to help her, in exchange for information.
Top told Cecile that she can manipulate other person’s feelings, due to her starting as an empath, just like Joe’s wife. After Top’s emotion-attack, Cecile hit back, throwing at the villain her feelings, making her vulnerable, and revealing Eva’s plan to explode a plane full of artifacts previously owned by her late husband, Joseph Carver.
Honestly, I love what they are doing with Joe and Cecile, not only they are the “paternal” figures of the show, but they are also doing their own thing, which helps team Flash, I mean, characters that otherwise could just be there to give some advice every couple of weeks are now being part of how the plot develops.
4. Let’s make your best Wells impression
The funniest part of this episode was obviously when all the Wellses possessed Barry’s body and actor Grant Gustin made his best attempts to imitate Tom Cavanagh’s many characters trough the series, I’m a little sad that this device is not going to be used in later episodes, imagine how funny it would be to see Carlos Valdes’ impersonation of H.R. Wells.
I don’t thing that Grant Gustin did an excellent job as Wells, but it was a funny experiment and an apt tribute to his friend, which we might not see in a while, if ever.
Continued below5. Wells also saves the day, one last time? a.k.a. Pride and Honor
And that’s because Nash wells died in this episode, I’m a little sad that he died without his friends Caitlin, Cisco, Joe, Cecile and Iris, but it was a fine farewell to the character.
Nash is tortured because he believes that he is the worst version of every Wells, he is egotistical and self-centered, but, as Harry tells him, every single Wells comes to the team broken, and at the end of their story arc they are made better by Team Flash.
This was a surprise to me, and I really don’t know if it’s going to be a permanent thing or a Wells is coming back eventually, but I do hope that this is the case, because Tom Cavanagh is a mainstay pillar of this show.
6. This show is not going anytime soon
Ever since it was revealed in season five that the next crossover was going to be “Crisis on Infinite Earths” (remember, Barry dies in the comic) I felt that The Flash was coming to an end soon; when they announced the renewal for season seven, I thought “it must be the last”, then when Covid hit, I thought again “they are cutting short the show and the seventh will be the last”.
Well, I’m glad to tell you that I was wrong, they announced that The Flash is going to have an eight season even before the seventh began airing! And don’t get me wrong, I don’t thing that the show should end anytime soon, but I do envision a future where Barry Allen takes a more secondary role and the show evolves into the next generation of characters, the more obvious to me is that the show could change it’s focus to Wally West’s adventures as the main Flash.
BONUS: Hey, I didn’t even had time to talk about the Cliffhanger revelation! Eva is not the real Eva, she is the mirror version!
And that’s it for this episode, as every season premiere, we had a lot to talk about. What did you think of this episode? What do you think would be a good show post-Barry Allen? I honestly want to read your thoughts, so leave your comments below and join us next week for our take on episode 702, “The Speed of Thought”.
