“Death of The Speed Force” was definitely a bold episode, and one that could’ve gone very wrong, and to that end they did have a misstep or two. But because of how they played it, they came out on top instead of running place for the most part.
First and foremost, this episode brought back Wally West for the first time in a long while, and now he’s a full-on monk. Which is a nice change of pace considering where he was when he entered the series. The fact that he had powers different from The Flash thanks to his own training was a nice touch, but his warning about the Speed Force brought a very dour twist to things.
Learning that the Speed Force was dying was a huge blow, especially when we all thought it was the infection from Bloodwork that caused it to happen. But instead, the writers pulled a feint and had it be the Spectre’s energy from Crisis that caused this to happen. The Spectre is the “embodiment of God’s divine wrath” so it made sense that it would be the thing that could corrupt the Speed Force. And kill it.
Seeing Barry react to all of this was a bit of a mixed bag. I don’t believe that he would’ve just ignored it at first, but then at the end with him getting the understanding that he wasn’t really at fault for it, was a good thing.
Of course, we all KNOW that something is going to happen to allow Barry to keep being the Flash. Whether it be the “artificial speed force” or even finding a way to bring it back in full, it’s going to happen.
Then…there’s Eobard Thawne. Somehow, he’s alive, and he’s possessing Nash, which is a big twist because we all thought this was just a hallucination, but apparently not. How this all works is unclear, but anytime Cavanaugh gets to be Eobard is a treat.
Less exciting though was the debut of “Turtle II” (less is more), this was very much “villain of the week” material, and the battle with her at the end was very…oddly choreographed. Furthermore, Cisco being mad about not “being different” about his journey felt very odd for the character as he was out gathering information about the Post-Crisis world, not trying to “find himself” like Caitlin or Wally.
Thankfully, we did get some progress on the Mirror Master front, including a new connection between her and the mirror doppleganger…who might have just killed Camilla, it’s hard to tell because it’s been so long since we’ve seen the Mirror Gun.
Either way, “Death of the Speed Force” brought a lot of things to bare, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it all plays out.
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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