TV Review: The Flash Season 7 Episode 1

The Flash Season 7 Episode 1 “All’s Wells That Ends Wells”

Director: Geoff Shotz

Starring: Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Nicolet, Kayla Compton, Brandon McKnight, Efrat Dor, Tom Cavanagh, Jesse L. Martin, Ashley Rickards, Eric Nenninger

Rating: TV-PG

Runtime: 42 minutes

Spoilers Follow:

With Arrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. both having ended last year The Flash is now the longest-running live-action superhero show on TV.  Unfortunately, the seventh season premiere isn’t in the position to make the kind of bold new start for that such a status deserves.  Like Arrowverse-siblings Supergirl and Batwoman, Flash‘s previous season was cut short by the pandemic, but while the other shows were at least able to end on decent cliffhangers, with Supergirl even managing to provide some amount of resolution to its main season-long emotional arc, The Flash is still very much in the thick of its sixth season story. Eva McCulloch (Efrat Dor) has just ascended to true supervillainy as the Mirror Monarch, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) is still losing his super-speed, and his wife Iris (Candice Patton) is still trapped in the damn Mirrorverse, the strange alternate reality Eva controls. Those circumstances could have lent the show a nice desperate energy as it comes back from COVID-extended break but instead a lot of it just feels tired, as this arc would have gone on too long even if it hadn’t been interrupted for nearly a year.  Still, while the perfectly titled “All’s Wells That Ends Wells” fails as a season premiere (again, because it wasn’t meant to be one) it works decently well as a regular episode and excellently as a tribute to Tom Cavanagh, one of the show’s strongest cast members, who does some especially impressive work alongside Gustin, even though a lot of the show’s regular flaws are on full display.

At the beginning of the episode Barry winds up chasing Eva (who herself can move at super-speeds through reflective surfaces) around Central City and as soon as the sequence started I realized I had no idea what Eva’s current goal was. Dor gave a strong performance when we thought Eva was just a fellow prisoner of Iris’ whose long isolation in the Mirrorverse was driving her mad and the character continued to be decently interesting when she was solely focused on killing her corrupt husband, Joseph Carver, but now that she’s succeeded at that there’s little reason to be invested in her story any more. Eva eventually declares that she’s trying to erase Joseph’s influence from the world by destroying the remnants of the Black Hole organization but that’s not a particularly strong motivation and it’s clear that the character is devolving into more of a grandiose take over the world/city-type villain.  DC TV has made those fun in the past (Damien Darhk on Legends of Tomorrow or Lex Luthor on Supergirl being probably the best examples) but it doesn’t work for this character.  There is a decent twist at the end of the episode that could restore some nuance to Eva and it doesn’t focus directly on her enough for her to be too much of an issue but the problems with the character indicate how this whole Mirrorverse arc has lost energy.

Arguably the biggest recurring problem with The Flash is how enormous the cast has gotten, with Barry himself often getting lost among all the other members of the crime-fighting team, and while at first this episode seems to offer something of a reprieve from this issue it also indirectly highlights it.  With Iris still in the Mirrorverse along with some other friends and allies, Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) visiting her mom, Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) visiting Atlantis (!), and Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) on the run with Sue Dearbon (Natalie Dreyfus), Barry is left to work alongside only the newest members of Team Flash, Nash Wells (Cavanagh), Allegra Garcia (Kayla Compton), and Chester P. Runk (Brandon McKnight) to try and rescue the captives and stop Eva. Meanwhile, Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) and his partner Cecile Horton (Danielle Nicolet) interrogate Rosa Dillon/Top (Ashley Rickards) after her boyfriend is killed by Eva.  The absences of Iris, Cisco, and Caitlin in particular are supposed to make Barry’s situation seem even more desperate but the fact that he still has five other team members to call on when the core ones are missing just shows that the group has gotten much too big.

In the episode’s defense it does make at least one big move to shrink the cast (and the show in generally may be forced to make another) by ending a character’s story but unfortunately it’s one of the few people it really can’t afford to lose. Team Flash is working desperately to create the Artificial Speed Force to return Barry to full power but are unable to find a sustainable way to power it. Nash, who following Crisis on Infinite Earths also houses the consciousnesses of all the other Wells from the old multiverse, is told by Harry, H.R., Sherloque, and the new Harrison Orson Wells that the multiversal particles in his body could serve as a viable power source, but that if they were used as such Nash himself would die.  Nash refuses to sacrifice himself and doesn’t tell the team about this new option. Instead he suggests that Allegra’s light-based powers might be able to do the trick but when they try this out she’s unable to contain the necessary power and Barry is hit by a kind of energy spike. It turns out this somehow transferred the other Wells’ consciousnesses into Barry, setting up the first part of the episode’s Cavanagh tribute as Harry and company continuously swap control over Barry’s body. Gustin clearly relishes the opportunity to impersonate his long-time castmate and he does an amusing, excellent job of recreating the mannerisms Cavanagh uses for the various Wells, especially Harry. But the body-swapping fun doesn’t last long, as Barry soon drops to the ground in a seizure.  The new, mobile Gideon AI states that Barry’s brain is being overloaded and that he’s only surviving the experience because of his speed-healing, meaning that when his powers soon run out he’ll die unless the Wells particles are removed from his body. When Chester and Allegra discover that Nash could serve as the “organic receptor” they need Allegra is outraged at Wells for lying to her.

At the police station Cecile discovers that Top is actually working for Eva and they have planted a bomb on a jet that will cause it to crash into Central City. Allegra pushes the particles back into Nash, who then decides to sacrifice himself so Barry can get his powers back and save the city.  He thanks Barry, and by extension the rest of the team, for helping him become a better person, and allows the other Wells to briefly take over his body so they can also say their goodbyes. This scene isn’t perfect (having Barry say he’s not sure he can be the Flash without a Wells on the team is a little too on the nose and self-aware) but it serves as a great showcase for Cavanagh’s tremendous range and hearing him say “Run, Barry, run,” maybe for the last time is moving and Gustin’s work is equally powerful.  I also appreciate that the show didn’t compromise in regard to Nash needing to do something drastic to redeem himself for inadvertently playing a part in starting Crisis.

An emotional Barry runs around the Speed Lab track until his new Artificial Speed Force powers kick in, after which he zips off to stop the bomb in a rather fun action scene. He then returns to the Speed Lab to find Nash’s ashes. The team briefly mourns Nash, with Allegra of course doubly sad for spending her last couple hours with Nash angry with him. The Allegra stuff is the one part of the Wells plot that doesn’t work well, as the fact that she was mad at Nash for not wanting to die is another example of Team Flash having absolutely absurd standards for moral and emotional “perfection” but it doesn’t detract too much from the overall strength of the storyline. I can’t imagine The Flash and Cavanagh are really done with one another forever but it does seem like his role will be drastically reduced going forward.  It’s unfortunate that the strongest member of the supporting cast is one of the ones exiting, as Flash without Cavanagh will be hard to get excited for, but the show really does need to trim the cast down and the episode is a terrific send off for the actor that effectively celebrates the tremendous work he’s done throughout the series.

In the Mirrorverse Iris sees visions of alternate versions of herself that attempt to convince her she’s losing her mind but eventually she realizes they’re illusions created by Eva and declares that she won’t break down, before sending a message to Kamilla and Singh in the hopes that they can all find each other and escape. At McCulloch Technologies Eva watches security camera footage of herself being thrown into the Mirrorverse the night the particle accelerator exploded and is shocked when she realizes the video shows the original Eva being killed while a duplicate is created, meaning that Eva herself is a mirror clone.  This reveal and the idea of captivity having long-term impacts on Iris’ mental health are somewhat encouraging signs that this story arc might pick some steam back up, but ultimately I still think it’s best the show end it as quickly as possible to give itself a real fresh start in this Wells-less era it’s entering.

Notes:

• COVID filming restrictions mean there’s no big Arrowverse crossover this year but David Ramsey, who plays Arrow‘s John Diggle will be reprising his role on and directing episodes of The Flash and most of the other shows.
•  And despite the lack of crossovers the show is still very quick to reference Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman now that he’s a more regular part of the franchise and given Grant Gustin’s love for the character of Superman I’d expect there will be plenty of team-ups between the Man of Steel and Scarlet Speedster when things are hopefully back to normal next season.
• I don’t know why but the sight of Barry jogging around the track at a regular speed before his powers came back was really funny.  They needed to do another take of that, especially considering how emotional the rest of that sequence was.
• The one cast member who is definitely gone for good is actually Sawyer, who was fired over the summer when racist comments he made on Twitter were uncovered. Dreyfus is making at least a brief return as Sue and Ralph’s powers make a potential recast quite easy to explain but I also wouldn’t be surprised if we’ve seen the last of this version of the Elongated Man.
• Given that they’re using a Mirror universe the show really should be making more Star Trek references.