Television

FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 7×01- “All’s Well That Ends Wells”

The Flash (7×01)- “All’s Well That Ends Wells”

Written by:         Sam Chalsen & Lauren Certo

Directed by:       Geoffrey Wing Shotz

Okay! You’re not writing about the Mandalorian anymore. You’re writing about the Flash… You can do this.

After a one hundred and fifteen thousand years, The Flash is back and it’s a doozy!  First off, the recap was very useful.

Afterwards we open on Chester monitoring the computers at STAR Labs when Eva shows up so Chester hints a button and brings Barry out of carbon freeze…

Wait! That’s something else!

Apparently they been keeping Barry in cryo-freeze alongside Ted Williams and Walt Disney to save what little speed he has left.  Barry wakes up and races off to find Eva.  He finds her but it’s all downhill from there.  Eva kicks his ass with very little effort and continues with her evildoing.  By the time Barry comes to she’s killed Sam Scudder aka the other Mirror Master.

After the title sequence we find Barry and Iris having takeout with a Barry Allen twist as everything is from a different part of the world.  Barry namedrops Clark so I’m just going to assume he means this guy:

See the source image

And move along becomes it quickly becomes apparently that all is not right in Central City. Mostly because this isn’t Central City, this is the mirror dimension and Iris is continue her decent into madness and this is where Iris spends most of the episode so we’ll come back to her later.

The next morning Barry is recapping Joe and Cecile.  Eva is wiping out Black Hole but The Top is in custody and Cecile is her defense attorney and she’s going to see if The Top can help them take down Eva.

Meanwhile at STAR Labs, Chester and Nash Wells are hard at work building the device they’re going to use to create the Artificial Speed Force and it looks like it might actually be ready to test.  They just need a fuel source.  Chester’s goes to shut the machine down but almost touches it which would turn him into… a pile of ash so Barry takes Chester off to help him get some caffeine and Nash gets a visitor so I think it’s time to play a little Good News/Bad News! Just a little because I never got to play during the Mando reviews! So here we go with a rare first volley of:

BAD NEWS! (For Nash) It’s the Council of Wells but…

GOOD NEWS! It looks like Sherloque got a new hat so he couldn’t be confused with H.R. However…

BAD NEWS! They also brought Harrison “Orson” Wells and my faith in the Flash’s writing is so shaken that I’m going to break the dimensional review boundary and issue this!

See the source image

Back to the Game! GOOD NEWS! They came up with an idea to fuel the Artificial Speed Force.  They use the remaining bits of the energy of the Multiverse within Nash’s body to power it forever. There’s a big problem though!

WORST NEWS! The only way to power the ASF is at the cost of Nash’s life.  Huh. I didn’t know there were fatalities in Good News/Bad News.

My thoughts exactly Lando.

Over at McCulloch Tech, Eva is going through Carver’s stuff when she finds an external hard drive of his.  In the drive there’s a video titled “For Eva” and it causes her to remember his final moments where he continued to maintain that she died in the Accelerator explosion.  Eva gets at little upset at casts the hard drive aside.

Back at the Police Station, Cecile is talking to The Top and she’s understandably torn up about the death of her boyfriend and understandably afraid to say anything about Eva.  Or at least… She appears to be afraid, turns out being to manipulate people’s brains in one way isn’t that different from messing with people’s minds.  Looks like The Top is on Team Eva and as a bonus for Cecile, her powers started out much the same way as Cecile’s.

At Nash’s place, he’s in desperate research mode because if the only plan involves him dying he wants to make that Plan B.  Allegra comes by and Nash realizes they can use her powers to push the energy out of him and into the ASF and contain it that way.  Later at the Lab he explains his plan and despite Chester’s doubts they try it and it almost works.

Of course, it’s the kind of “almost works” that causes the energy to get lose and “almost” kills Allegra if not for Barry pushing her out of the way.  Which means the Council of Wells is now inside Barry!  Well I’m sure it will be fine, a little goofy comedy and…

Nope, Barry collapses because it’s killing him. Turns out most brains can’t handle a multiverse of other personalities inside.  Not even Barry’s.  While they’re trying to figure out what happened and Allegra is drowning in guilt Chester realizes they needed an organic receptor, which is enough for Allegra to figure out that Nash caused her to almost kill Barry and she’s pretty pissed about it.

Now it’s Nash’s turn to wallow so he’s visited by Harry in Barry, they talk about Nash’s personal hang ups.  (As though it’s completely out of line not want to kill yourself just to power a device that isn’t guaranteed to work.)  So “Harry” gives him a pep talk to keep him going.

Back at the Police Station, Cecile returns and maybe it wasn’t the best idea for The Top to tell Cecile her powers started off the same as Cecile’s because she puts a serious whammy of The Top using her empathic powers and finally Top admits what she’s been hiding.  There’s a Black Hole jet that’s going to be flying over the city that night full of Carver tech and she’s planted a bomb on it that will blow up while it’s over the City which will kill a whole lot of people.

Back at the Lab, Chester’s finished a device to help pull the particles out of Barry and back into Nash.  Chester’s tech is on par with Cisco.  Unfortunately they don’t have enough time to help with the Black Hole jet so Nash decides to sacrifice himself to get Barry his powers back.  But not before we get a goodbye from Harry, Sherloque and HR and Nash Wells saying one more time, “Run Barry, run.” Before he’s turned into a pile of ash as Barry gets his speed back.

He takes care of the bomb and returns to STAR Labs to help Chester and Allegra deal with Nash’s death.  He also welcomes them all the way onto the Team and they help him understand why Wells did what he did for Barry.  So, it’s time to work on getting Iris, Kamilla and Singh back and stop Eva.

Let’s check in on Iris because after a couple of visits from what she believes are other hers she realizes that it’s Eva messing with her which Iris believes means that she’s close to figuring something out.

Back at McCulloch, Eva decides to look at the video Joseph was keep and she see security footage from the night of the Accelerator Explosion in his office.  She watches herself get hit by the Energy wave and get thrown into the mirror like we saw last season but there’s a problem for Eva.  She hit the mirror and it did ripple with dark energy but she didn’t pass through it like she told Iris. She hit the mirror and bounced off then died in Carver’s arms. 

Eva is a mirror duplicate.

Strong episode to come back with.  The episode dug back into the plot in a way that season openers haven’t had to do for the Flash before.  Even without the recap they got you up to speed on important plot points fast and in an organic fashion.  This episode also served as a reintroduction of Chester’s character.  If you can remember last season, you might recall that Chester didn’t have a whole lot to do and he was more of a fanboy that part of the team so this episode set him up well as one of the team’s tech guys.

The episode also cemented Eva as the main villain (for at least the first half of this season) and made her not only a threat but the revelation in the final scene adds a new layer to her.  The Cecile and Top stuff not only punctuated the Eva plot but introduced something for Cecile’s character going forward.

But all that is secondary to (what I presume is) the sendoff for Tom Cavanagh’s Wells character(s) he got to do a lot of stuff and seeing Grant play him as well as play off him was a lot of fun. So much fun I’m a little concerned for the things if this is indeed the end for Cavanagh on the show. (I know! I know! I complained about them letting the cast get bloated last season, but I wasn’t expecting season seven to start with their answer to the Red Wedding.)

All that said, this was not only satisfying for the things that were brought to a close but a good enticement for what is to come.  All that’s left is…

To force in a picture of our beloved Patty! We’re back, gang! 

Things We Learned:

  1. Barry has regained his powers via an artificial Speed Force.
  2. Chester P Runk aka Chunk is now officially a part of Team Flash.
  3. There is more to Cecile’s powers than being an empath.
  4. Eva Carver has been dead since the night of the Accelerator Explosion and the woman who believed she was Eva is a mirror duplicate.
  5. Nash and the Council of Wells sacrificed themselves to help Barry regain his powers.

Questions:

  1. Is Nash truly gone?
  2. What does it mean for Eva to be a mirror duplicate?
  3. What has Iris realized that might worry Eva?
  4. Could Cecile’s powers grow beyond her control?
  5. Is the Artificial Speed Force a permanent solution to Barry’s powers?
  6. Is it even a solution at all or is it a problem waiting to happen?

Just another guy on the internet.