I find it fascinating (and something of an indictment on the core of the writers room) that it took a pair of outsiders to craft what is arguably the best episode of The Flash in months. I would look at this episode as the best the show's made since "Welcome to Earth-2," which says a lot about how blase the second season has been recently. It is a bit of fan service just to put Kevin Smith's name as the director of a Flash episode, and so it's not hard to keep wondering where he could stick his "influence" throughout the episode. Thankfully, that doesn't really occur. This actually plays as a true episode of The Flash through its whole run.

 

 

I liked that the episode doesn't immediately have Barry come back to life after all of his friends and family saw him disappear. Even better is that the episode doesn't provide a concrete explanation for what he experiences as the "Speed Force." Within the Speed Force, he's given an omniscient "guide" that takes the form of his loved ones in order to (sort of) explain his ordeal. He's given a goal, which is to chase down this shadowy, speedy apparition, only to be met with some opposition each time he encounters both the guide's bodily form and the shadow itself.

 

It proceeds in a level sort of way, where Barry has to defeat his inner demons before moving on. With Joe's form, he's told about his goal, which is to catch the shadow and the Speed Force will give him his powers back. All that Barry is concerned about is to get back to his friends and save Central City. He gets that opportunity when met with Iris' form. To keep things from being too repetitive, Barry gets to talk to each form to the point of projecting all of his fears and anxieties with regard to what that person represents. With Iris, he has always repressed his love for her in some form or another, and the Speed Force beings understand that. All of the forms are the parts that make Barry a true hero. Not his speed powers or the abilities he's learned as a result of becoming the Flash. Barry gets the opportunity to return to the real world, but he doesn't take it because a part of him knows that he still has some things left to learn about why the Speed Force brought him to that particular place.

 

 

Those lessons don't really take hold of Barry until he reaches the forms of first his biological father, Henry, who takes Barry to the gravesite of Nora to show that he's never fully accepted his choice from "Fast Enough" to let his mother die. I think the unspoken thing here is that it was always meant for Nora to physically die, perhaps allowing her "spirit" or "presence" to enter the Speed Force and lead to Barry's final lesson in this episode. He learns to accept his mother's death as inevitable, thus finally becoming at peace with the decision he made at the end of last season, and that allows for the Speed Force to give him his powers back. As with the sequence at the end of "Fast Enough" where Barry effectively says goodbye to his mother in the past, both actors in this scene nail every one of the emotional beats given to them. It's the kind of scene that The Flash does consistently well, something that has been in short supply of late this season.

 

The fact that the sequences in the Speed Force can be done to near perfection underlines the degree to which the ones in STAR Labs couldn't quite match. It was prevalent throughout much of its run. I wanted to know more about the Speed Force and to spend time with Barry on his journey through his psyche or whatever you could call that experience, and each time it went back to Earth, it felt like air was slowly slipping out of the balloon. The concept of fighting Zombie Girder was an interesting one, although they could have picked a more memorable Villain of the Week to reanimate. What was really going in the show's wheelhouse was showing the aftereffects of setting off the miniature particle explosion. It looks like Wally and Jesse will have to take their time in terms of getting their speed powers, which is right in line with what happened to Barry before this series began. But the seeds for both Kid Flash and Jesse Quick have been firmly planted here. Perhaps the explosion has awakened even more previously-thought-to-be-dead metahumans.

 

Zombie Girder may not have been the most memorable one to be chosen, but the way that Barry defeats him should not be forgotten. It is the culmination of what he had learned while in the Speed Force. We see a more humbled Barry, but a person who now knows what it takes to get things done. He's firmly the leader of Team Flash. After this much time and expending this much plot, the show can still be inventive while also packing a whopping emotional punch. I should hope that more of this is to come, and that perhaps, the writers have found a way to recover what they had lost of late.