Holiday episodes are a bit tricky, especially when it comes to superhero shows. Sometimes we get something powerful like “Year’s End” all the way back in Arrow Season 1. And then, you sometimes get “Love Is A Battlefield”, where it has merit, but gets lost in its own message.
The biggest thing that detracts from the episode was the stinger from the great “Marathon” episode we had last week. We KNEW that something was wrong with Iris immediately when she came out of the mirror, especially since she didn’t tell Barry about the mirror. Then, the subtle changes to her life, being able to cook, buying the espresso machine, talking Italian, being more aggressive further cemented that this WASN’T Iris…but the show didn’t commit to that in the way that you would expect.
Rather, they turned this around and made it about Barry not ‘accepting’ who Iris was, which is all sorts of bull given who Barry Allen is. Now, how Iris grown? Yeah, and last weeks episode proved that in a great way, but there’s a difference between “growing” and acting out of character, and yet they made it more about Barry than what was clearly wrong with Iris.
Now, for the record, the message was solid, and would’ve made for a great episode/message pre-mirror stinger, but not when we know something is wrong. And sure enough, the ending stinger of our Iris banging against the mirror and saying “that’s not me!” made it all the more eye-rolling.
Speaking of which, did we have to do a storyline with two villains falling in love with each other and going through a bad breakup? I mean, seriously? Don’t get me wrong, parts of it were funny, “You walked out with my Straight Outta Compton album!”, and props for creativity in certain aspects, but this was so cringe at times I couldn’t believe it. Not to mention that while Amunet Black and Goldface have been around a bit, just throwing them together and acting like they’ve been together for a while makes it all the more clear that they did this just to do a…mirroring…of what was going on with Barry/Iris.
Finally, Frost and Allegra growing closer was fine and all that but it felt like a more-or-less pointless storyline. Especially with Nash STILL being Nash. Though the notion that he’s seeing the other Wells’ is curious.
In the end, “Love Is A Battlefield” really slowed things down after a great return last week. Hopefully with the focus now being on Iris inside the mirror dimension, things will get back to the great start that they had last week.
Todd Black
Todd Black is reader of comics, a watch of TV (a LOT of TV), and a writer of many different mediums. He's written teleplays, fan-fictions, and currently writes a comic book called Guardians (guardians-comic.com). He dreams of working at Nintendo, writing a SHAZAM! TV series, and working on Guardians for a very long time!
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