The Flash season 6, episode 16 review: So Long and Goodnight

“So much delicious suffering. See you soon Captain.” Spoilers for The Flash season 6, episode 16 follow.

Still on the search for Black Hole’s leadership, Joe becomes the target of an assassination attempt by a recurring Team Flash enemy, Rag Doll in the latest episode of The Flash season 6.

Still in the Mirror dimension, Iris is still being manipulated by Eva as her plans continue to move forward.

The assassination of Joe West

As good of a cop that Joe West is, that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t had trouble with connecting various assassins to Joseph Carver and Black Hole. Regardless of this trouble though, that doesn’t mean that Joe hasn’t been a pain in the side for Carver, which is what causes him to hire Rag Doll to kill him.

The last we saw of Rag Doll was when Nora recruited a new team of Rogues last season, but after that, it’s been all quiet on the Rag Doll front. Now that he’s back though, the slight body horror that he brought to the episodes he was in, returns. He’s an extremely creepy villain that is really accentuated by the great sound effects and mixing that accompany his appearances. It’s a bit disappointing that he’s not as crazy as the most recognizable versions of the character, aka Gail Simone’s take in her Secret Six series, but he’s still creepy enough.

Going beyond simply being creepy though, he truly feels like a real threat to Joe, and the rest of Team Flash, in ways that other villains simply don’t. Very little can hurt him as he basically has a more visceral version of Ralph’s powers. At the end of the day, the fact that he wasn’t even trying to kill Joe for money, but for his own death, really makes the fact that Joe almost dies feel all the more real.

There are some things during the Joe portions of this episode that don’t really work though. First off, during the first attempt on Joe’s life, music that sounds like lesser Devil May Cry fight music (which is usually awesome) starts playing and it absolutely does not fit the scene. Same with the music at the end of the episode when mirror Iris kicks Barry out. Second, the scene between Joe and Carver is cliché and pretty uninteresting on pretty much every level. The good of the episode outweighs the bad, but the bad is very noticeable.

Losing his speed

Still losing his speed, Eva formulates a plan to rid Barry of his speed for good. She decides to use her mirror duplicate of Iris against him, manipulating into feeling even more guilt than he should feel. This forces Barry to push himself further than he should so that he lessens his guilt.

With Eva using mirror Iris to manipulate Barry, it really feels like an organic way for Barry to quickly to lose his powers. He doesn’t want to disappoint Iris in anyway, or lose the man who is basically his father in every way that counts, so it makes sense why he would push himself so far that he could lose his powers. Some of the ways that mirror Iris manipulates Barry doesn’t feel like Iris at all though, which makes sense, but it feels like a missed opportunity for Barry to notice what’s happening, at least a little bit.

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But, there’s more to Eva’s plan than just using Iris to get at Barry though, she’s also using Commissioner Singh to get back her husband. This has been hinted at for several episodes, but it’s fully revealed that he’s working for her now, which really is not surprising.

The search for Sue continues

After finding Sue Dearbon, and promptly being tricked by her, Ralph tracks her down again and, with the help of Cisco, he tries to stop her before she can escape again. Things don’t go as planned though, even as Ralph discovers more about Sue’s plan.

Honestly, any Ralph/Cisco team up right now is fun to watch. They’re a great team together, so it’s always enjoyable to seem them on-screen together. However, the real draw of this part of the episode is the growing relationship between Ralph and Sue. Hartley Sawyer and Natalie Dreyfuss have great chemistry together and only get better the more time that they share with each other. This episode goes a long way in developed the budding relationship, and probable romance, between the two and it’s great fun to take in.

There’s also a nice Bond/Mission: Impossible parody with Sue at the beginning of the episode and, even though it’s a minor portion of the episode, any spy film fan will appreciate it.

With its first episode back from its month-long hiatus, The Flash season 6 delivers a mostly solid episode that injects a great amount of stakes to it.

The Flash Season 6 returns to The CW next Tuesday. April 28, at 8:00p.m. ET.