The Flash season 5, episode 19 review: Snow Pack

“I never should’ve lied to them about working with you.” Minor spoilers for The Flash season 5, episode 19 follow.

The Flash takes back Nora back to the future after the truth about Thawne comes out, leading to a divide within Team Flash, while Nora tries to return to the present.

In the present though, the older Grace has kidnapped the younger self and Caitlyn’s father is back in Central City.

Iris and Barry at odds

This episode starts with a bang with probably the biggest fight that Barry and Iris have ever had. Coming directly off the back off Barry returning from 2049, emotions are running high on the entire team, but none more than Barry and Iris. This opening scene of the episode is absolutely top-notch with everything it does. It may be some of the best writing, acting, and camera work in the entirety of the series. This season has consistently gone back and forth from the highest of highs and the lowest of the lows, but this is maybe the best scene of the entire series.

This rift between them though causes Iris to pull a move straight out of Barry’s playbook and heads into the future, with Ralph accompanying her. It’s an interesting play to have Iris play into her emotions, just as she accused Barry of doing, but she’s also right in a way that Barry is. Both of them have good points regarding Nora, but Iris is right in a way that Barry rarely is when he acts on his emotions. However, Barry is also right, but only because of his own actions. There’s a lot of nuance in this episode that is extremely rare for this series.

It’s also saying something about the state of Barry and Iris’ relationship when Thawne is giving them good relationship advice. It’s still hard to tell what Thawne is playing at, but you can’t say that he tells a single lie or gives bad advice in this episode.

The Negative Speed Force

With Nora back in the future though, with no friends, no family, there’s only one person that she feels she can turn to, Thawne. With the realization that Thawne had travelled back in time without being noticed by Barry, Nora asks how, bringing about the first mention of the Negative Speed Force.

It’s a really interesting development that makes complete sense given the Thawne character and it really makes him feel like Barry is right about him manipulating Nora. But, in turn, this is all because of Barry’s mistrust of Thawne that he’s even able to manipulate Nora in the first place. Tom Cavanaugh also does a brilliant job in this episode not making it easily known as to what Thawne is actually thinking.

The actual access of the Negative Speed Force is so similar to yet so different to the regular Speed Force that it’s haunting. It’s accessed through pain and suffering, showing the things that case that anger and rage within oneself, rather than showing possibilities. It dwells on the past and not the future, which is a very saddening thing to see Nora going through because of the optimistic, hopeful woman she is.

Winter has returned

With the West-Allen family at odds, some more family drama within Team Flash has returned, this time in the form of Caitlyn’s father. Like almost, every B-plot of this season of The Flash, this part of the episode falls completely flat. The family dynamic of the Snow family feels incredibly weak given the family drama of the West-Allen’s. Icicle also isn’t really that interesting of a villain either and his goal in this episode isn’t great.

This season of The Flash has consistently struggled on the superhero aspects of the show and its evident again here. When dealing with the human side of Barry’s life, the show has generally been great, but when it’s dealt with The Flash’s side of his life, it’s consistently been weak or not interesting when not dealing with Cicada.

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This week’s episode of The Flash combines its best and worst aspects of the season into the same episode, but the good definitely outweighs the bad.

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