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TV REVIEWS: FTN Reviews The Flash Season 8 Episode 13

May 5th, 2022 by Todd Black Comments

The team behind The Flash made it very clear that there was going to be a “big character death” with “Death Falls” tonight, and on one hand…they did indeed do that. But on the other hand…it was very much the safe choice, and that kind of hurt things in many ways.

To be fair, they didn’t go with the dumb choice, which I feared they might do. As at one point, I wondered if Mark might die so Frost could “finally feel grief” and that would’ve been a total copout. But instead, they killed Frost, and…I’m kind of mixed on that, but I’ll get to it.

Most of this episode was honestly fun just because of the true horror element to it. Deathstorm and his phantoms terrorizing everyone in various ways was truly fun. Especially the early 1-on-1 between Deathstorm and Frost where he said some very impactful things to her (even if they didn’t exactly line up with past seasons…). Then you add in the return (again?) of Eddie, and the new abilities to FORCE someone to feel grief, and it was really well handled for the most part. Even Barry’s speech about love being a strength (something that would’ve pushed him through a challenge before) got backhanded here.

And while a little heavy-handed, Frost hearing about she “is real” was well done enough. This was easily the most tolerable Mark has ever been. And that’s saying something. So I’m curious what he’s going to do now that his love is gone…and I wouldn’t have said that before given how he was handled.

Oh, and the fight between “Hellfrost” and Deathstorm? Honestly pretty cool up until the end, more on that in a bit.

The two main problems here were sadly Iris and Frost. They, once again, HEAVILY implied that Iris is going to die because of her time sickness, but we all KNOW that won’t happen. So it’s really becoming a broken record that we’re totally over. Her interactions with Eddie were fine, and that speech about his “death being pointless” hit home in many ways, so I wish they focused on that instead of focusing on her “impending death”.

As for Frost, her defeating Deathstorm so easily after her power-up honestly felt like a copout to Deathstorm as a character. He REALLY came off as menacing…and then dumb at the end. How could he NOT tell that wasn’t Caitlin when Frost only had SOME grief in her? That was the whole point of the transformation, remember? Then, Frost dying after absorbing him was no doubt meant as a Pyrrhic victory, and that’s fine…to an extent. Except Frost dying still kind of felt like a copout as she was an “expendable” character.

After all, she’s been saying for a LONG time now that she was “made to defend Caitlin” so in a way she was just serving her purpose right up to the end. Even though they’ve been trying to give her a life of her own to live…and now that’s gone. Also, the future shown in Armageddon is even more bunk (which is part of the reason I didn’t like it) because she’s gone. Honestly, Caitlin would’ve been a bigger blow as Frost would’ve had to learn about how to live without her “protection detail”.

And now…what’s left to do? The answer is Iris’ time sickness but that hasn’t been interesting in…well…almost ever. So we’ll have to see how it plays out.

In the end, “Death Falls” did do certain things right, but it came at a cost in other ways. And with Deathstorm gone, who knows how this season is going to end.

3.5/5

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!