FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 6×19- “Success Is Assured”

The Flash (6×19)- “Success Is Assured”

Written by: Kelly Wheeler & Lauren Barnett

Directed by: Philip Chipera

Makeshift Season Finale time, Let’s GO!

We start with Not-Singh on the phone talking with Mayor while Eva shows of her Super-Villain suit. It’s not just for show, it’s keeping her powers from getting out of control. Then it’s time to visit with Frost as she gets ready to go with her mom to some secret research facility in the artic. We also get a little more Allegra-related Nash angst.

With our villain and B-plot checked in on it’s over to the Police Station as Barry and the gang try to figure out Eva’s plan to get Carver. That’s when Ralph pulls out of the diamond Sue gave him and with a little help from Allegra it shows them the location of one of Carver’s storage facilities. They find a warehouse full of evil stuff and Not-Singh getting ready to torch the place. Barry tries to stop the fire but he just doesn’t have the juice to do it so they’re left with one option. Protect Carver.

The next day at Jitters, Carver is discussing villainy with his secretary when Barry shows up and offers to protect him from Eva. Since Carver is a jerk he decides to make this extra hard on Barry by showing him Iris’ abduction and tells him that the mirror dimension fries your brain so if Iris is alive they probably can’t save her anyway.

Speaking of Iris, she’s not completely brain-fried yet but she’s on the road for sure. She and Kamila are trying to figure out the fully-functional-but-still-unusable Mirror-STAR Labs to get free but the first step is to find Singh. Iris has a moment where the monitors make sense and she sees a blip on the equipment that could be Singh but she loses it and since she doesn’t want Kamilla to follow her to Crazytown, a suburb of Brain Mush City she decides she’ll have to hurt herself further by trying to figure out the monitors herself.

Back in the regular dimension, Ralph meets with Sue’s parents to tell them the good news; while he and Barry were in Carver’s warehouse he found the evidence he was hold over them and he thinks their days of blackmail problems are over but Sue shows up. She warns Ralph off while playing the ditsy heiress.

Somewhere in Central City, Carver’s ultraviolet hit squad is gearing up for some Eva-killing but they get taken out by Eva is quick order so by the time Carver shows up they’re all gone. With his muscle taken out, Carver goes to Barry and friend at the Police Station and demands Federal protection. Barry tries to make it happen quickly and quietly but Not-Singh shows up anyway.

He offers Barry a deal, Carver for Iris but Nash steps in and uses some of his tech to get them out of the Station and to STAR Labs. While they brainstorm on their next step, Nash sees a vision of Earth-2 Wells who points out that the Barry he knows would never even entertain a deal with Eva. Nash confronts Barry about it Barry is clearly faltering under all the stress he’s under. Nash poses a question; how would Iris feel if she found out Barry threw away his morals to save her?

Cut to McCulloch tech where the team is evacuating the building while Carver shows Barry his panic room (which is in the same spot as Eva’s secret room in the Mirror Dimension) and the two set up the building security to protect Carver while they wait on ARGUS. Back in the lobby, Nash gives Allegra some crystal for protection while Ralph comes across Sue. She’s joined Black Hole to protect her parents while she murders Carver. With the staff out and the building locked down all that’s left is for Dr Light, Ultraviolet and Sunshine to show and screw up the plan. Since they’re working for Eva now.

A big fight scene ensues while Barry heads to the basement to get Carver’s security system up and running. He runs into Not-Singh on the way and Not-Singh sacrifices himself to get Eva in the building. She takes out Barry and gets to Carver in his panic room. She shatters the mirror but before she can kill Carver with the shards Barry shows back up and Eva stabs him instead. Unfortunately, Eva is not going to be denied and she pushes one of the shards through Barry to kill Carver.

With Carver dead, Eva’s feeling magnanimous and she lets Barry and the team go. She holds a press conference to return to public life, explain Carver’s death and resume control of McCulloch Technologies. And one more, tiny thing. Frame Sue for Carver’s murder.

Barry heads to Caitlin’s apartment before she leave for the artic and she gives him one final pep talk. But while Caitlin’s leaving Joe gets to return to town and it’s time to stop Eva and more important, save Iris!

So back in the mirror dimension, Iris manages to concentrate enough and tune her sense to track down Singh at the hospital! That’s great, but she disappears clutching her head and screaming in agony… That’s not so great.

Well! It’s a good thing that was the season finale cliff hanger, right!

Boy that was abrupt! I mean it wasn’t quite:

But it was something.

This is a tough nut to crack. See, if I were to judge this as an episode I might say it was pretty good. I might say; “Well the fight scene went on a bit too long but they covered a lot of plot in an interesting fashion.” I’d talk about, “missing Carver cause there’s something refreshing in a guy that’s just evil to be evil in this age of sympathetic villains.” I’d definitely praise the final scene with Iris for “adding a ticking clock to the plot because she probably doesn’t have much time left.”

But this is a season finale cliff-hanger that has to be a hook that last about eight months and by that standard… Eh.

The problem is I think there’s too much up in the air right now. Not just when the show will return since January isn’t for certain but will the cast return. Grant Gustin is reportedly no longer under contract since they were in negotiations when the lockdown started. Danielle Panabaker felt like she was leaving for real in this episode. The Villain isn’t caught, Barry’s (seemingly) out of power, Iris has disappeared, Nash has introduced distrust into Barry’s decision making, Caitlin’s off the board, Cisco is missing and Sue’s wanted for murder. How the hell are they going to clean up this mess?

The whole episode felt awkward when I think about it as a season finale cliffhanger. So maybe the solution is not to do that. Was it a good episode in a vaccum? Yes. Did I like Carver and Eva as villains? Sure did. Did I think Barry trying to be a hero despite his powers failing, his friends bailing out, his wife missing and having giant shards of glass rammed into him was great? Absolutely.

So there’s the answer! This was a good episode. It might have been better with some tweaks, like the shard of mirror that went through Barry and killed Carver was so big all I could think was “Barry’s arm should be falling off!” But that does bring up one of this week’s questions for let’s wrap this up.

Things We Learned:

Carver is dead which allowed Joe to return to Central City.
Eva has been able to reclaim her life and company successfully while framing Sue for Carver’s murder.
Not-Singh is dead while in the mirror dimension Kamilla knows where Singh is but it may have cost Iris her life.
Nash might no longer trust Barry’s leadership.

Questions:

Can Caitlin and her mother help heal her injury?
What is Eva going to do now?
Why is Singh in the hospital in the mirror dimension?
And the biggest question…Is Barry’s failing powers all in his head?

At the end of episodes the last few weeks we’ve been left with the impression that Barry’s used up the last of his powers yet every week he’s managing to come up with more speed which makes me wonder if this will all end up being in Barry’s head. There’s comic-lore that backs this up. In the comics, Barry would come to understand that he created the Speed Force and gave it power by using his speed. It’s why in some stories Barry actually became the lightning that struck him and gave him his powers.

I’ve discussed this in reviews before when talking about how I think the show will end. It’s also important that Barry considers Iris his “Lightning Rod” she keeps him grounded. I think that’s where this is going, then again if you’ll recall I thought Nora would be revealed to be working with Cicada last season so what do I know. Anyway. We’ll pick this up before too long when we return to for Season Seven. But until then…