REVIEW: ‘The Flash,’ Season Six, Episode 14 – “The Death of The Speed Force”

The Flash, CW’s series about the ‘scarlet speedster,’ continues the second half of its sixth season with “The Death of the Speed Force.” After working with Gorilla Grodd last week, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) finds himself reuniting with his brother-in-law and speedster partner Wally West/AKA: Kid Flash (Keiynan Lonsdale).  Meanwhile, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) returns from his Earth-Prime globetrotting adventure and Nash Wells (Tom Cavanagh) continues to be haunted by ghosts of the past.

As Season 6 of The Flash continues to air, it’s becoming increasingly clearer how the show has improved upon itself and returned to the levels of excitement and enjoyment of Season 1. That trend is reaffirmed by this week’s episode, featuring a triumphant return of the character Wally West and its utilization of classic rogues gallery members such as The Turtle and Mirror Master. Previous seasons of The Flash dramatically underused both Wally West and Keiynan Lonsdale, so much so that the actor only appeared for one episode in Season 5 and hasn’t really made an appearance in the wider Arrowverse since. However, much like the show in general, new showrunner Eric Wallace has imbued the character with a new lease on life and it shows on-screen – from showing off new abilities to establishing Wally’s greater understanding of the Speed Force. Keiynan also appears to enjoy this newfound respect for his character, which is translated in his fantastic performance. Fingers crossed he will return for a longer duration next season.

The Mirror Master plot continues to unfold with Iris (Candice Patton) still trapped in the Mirrorverse with Eva (Efrat Dor), with the latter still using Iris’ doppelganger to manipulate events in the real world. While the Mirror sub-plot allows for Candice to play a variation of Iris and play around a bit more, it does feel like the “trapped in the mirror” element of the story is going on for too long. Hopefully, this particular revelation will be revealed next week to push that thread along.

The writers for this week’s episode deserve props for juggling significant plot threads without any of them feeling ignored or dull to watch unfold on-screen. Barry and Wally’s journey and exploration of the Speed Force’s death is well done and gives both Grant Gustin and Keiynan Lonsdale some hefty material to work with. It actually gives those two actors the opportunity to work with each other again. The reasoning behind the Speed Force’s degradation also continues the Arrowverse’s promise to have some long-lasting effects from the Crisis on Infinite Earths event, providing some interesting story beats.

Meanwhile, Tom Cavanagh once again excels at what he does best. While most of the Wells characters are enjoyable additions to the Team Flash crew, there’s just something right about Tom’s performance as the evil, future speedster Eobard Thawne. His return in this episode should feel overdone, seeing as he was used quite significantly last year, but it’s just right. It’s interesting to see where they take the character, seeing as he is a fan favorite after all. The Flash also reintroduces another new iteration of a Rogues Gallery member in the form of Turtle 2.0. While this new version of Turtle was interesting enough, it was nice to see that they weren’t just disposed of so easily after one episode, setting up the future use of that character and ability set.

Overall, “The Death of the Speed Force” is another fine entry for the season of The Flash. The return of both Wally West and the Reverse Flash are sure to have the most die-hard fans excited, and will hopefully set up a more regular use of the former in future seasons.