The Flash 7x2 : The Speed Of Thought review

 

      Be warned there will be *SPOILERS* involved in this review. With that being said let's get into it.

Boy oh boy this was a crazy episode of The Flash. Beginning with a short tribute to Harrison Wells both old and new we see Barry, Cisco, Joe and the others talking and remembering Wells. Nash Wells gets a small memorial complete with his gear inside Star Labs as a way for the team to never forget him. Joe mentions that it's not superpowers that give them their strength rater it's their humanity and love above everything else. Barry says his heart is his enemies greatest power which after all he has been through makes sense. Back in the main room of Star Labs and as Cisco begins to try and come up with a way to track down Eva and stop her Barry begins to have flashes of everything that Cisco does before he even does it. It happens twice before Cisco has Barry examined and we learn that thanks to the Artificial Speedforce Barry has gained an extreme amount of inhanced cognition. In summary he is like the smartest man alive and it's all thanks to his this new power which is later called Speed Thinking. Alegra soon enters the room after getting a message from Iris who is still in the mirrorverse. Her message reads meet in the Speed Lab at 7pm. Alegra rushes to tell Barry but is met with not Barry at all but instead this hyper intelligent Barry who as the episode goes on becomes more and more robotic like with little to no emotion shown. 

With Barry's new speed thinking his mind is constantly running throughout this episode. He comes up with all manners of solution some crazy some not so much. He does go with the crazy when it comes to Eva as he comes to the decision that in order to open a portal to the mirrorverse he must collect dark matter particles that have formed around Eva McCulloch. So The Flash and Cisco go to Eva's next hit location which is yet another Black Hole warehouse. At the warehouse Flash says he brought some back up as Killer Frost makes her return. What we don't know right here however is that Flash is basically going to use her as bait and a way to distract Eva so that he can collect the particles. Flash does this but in doing so puts Frost in danger as Eva shoots her with her light energy stopping her right in her tracks. Cisco can't believe what he has seen and back at Star Labs calls out Barry on what he did. Offering no real response Barry instead comes up with a cure for Frost which saves her. He does say that it was the only way to collect the particles from Eva but other than that he is pretty robotic like I mentioned earlier. It's all pretty fascinating to watch as the usual upbeat, energetic Barry Allen / The Flash is pretty much a husk of his former self. 

The episode draws to a close as Barry exposes Eva. Yes he exposes her on a talk show of all things. While giving a speech about returning to her life's work Eva is about to show a video of her upcoming projects Barry chimes in and thanks to his super speed thinking is able to hack and insert the clip of Eva that we saw last week. The same clip that proves that this Eva is not actually Eva McCulloch rather her mirrorverse duplicate. Absolutely stunned by this Eva rages out and flies into the TV becoming nothing but mirror particles for the time being. Soon after this in the Speed Lab Cisco basically tells Barry that because they opted to put no emotion inside of the Artificial Speedforce it has caused Barry to show zero emotions only that of supreme intelligence. Not convinced by this and with only one goal now in mind which is to save Iris and forget about Kamilla and Singh who are also in the mirrorverse don't forget, Barry goes it all alone as the final 10 minutes or so of this episode come into effect. It basically turns into everyone vs The Flash as they try to stop him from making a giant mistake. Killer Frost injects herself with Velocity X and becomes a speedster for a brief time as she chases Flash throughout Central City in such a cool sequence. Alegra and Cisco try to fight back but for the most part are pretty much useless. They do end up stalling Flash but it's not for long as soon enough everyone is laid out and the portal to the mirrorverse is being opened by Barry. Iris who inside has just seen the apparent death of Singh and Kamilla in front of her very own eyes knows almost immediately that something is off with Barry. She refuses to go cross the line back into the real world but after much resistance gets pulled by force back inside. She collapses almost immediately and it is this that snaps Barry out of his robotic super speed thinking state as his wife lays on the floor. Barry now notices that all his friends are on the ground also having taken them all out. He notices the Artificial Speedforce in the background and without hesitation throws a bolt of lighting at it powering it completely off. Barry feels the brunt of the de-powering situation also as a surge of energy is released from him. The episode ends first with Eva who is sitting by a mirror stating that this world will soon be hers, at CCPD we see a police officer enter an elevator. Upon looking away for an instant her reflection ends up dragging her into the mirror much like what happened to Iris last season. What is Eva planning now that everyone knows that she is infact not the real Eva McCulloch?? but the episode has one more trick up it's sleeve before it ends and that is something that happened many, many seasons ago. Once Upon A Time flashes on the screen as we see the original Harrison Wells be killed by Eobard Thawne as he took his identity in season 1. Well after all these years we see what happened afterwards as Reverse Flash buried the remains of Harrison Wells nearby where the incident happened. What happens next is truly shocking as Harrison Wells literally manifests back into existence before we get a To Be Continued title screen. Honestly what an ending and overall what an episode. It's episodes like this that made me fall in love with this show in the first place. It's not perfect but it's pretty darn close and hopefully now is a way to truly kick start everything into full gear this season.

★★★★