The Flash season 6, episode 18 review: Pay the Piper

“We need your velocity.” Spoilers for The Flash season 6, episode 18 follow.

While Team Flash is trying to find a way to enter the Mirrorverse in The Flash season 6, Godspeed makes his return to Central City.

In the Mirrorverse though, Iris and Kamilla try to escape Eva McCulloch’s grasp.

Godspeed returns

After not appearing for most of The Flash season 6, and with no trace of his return anytime soon,  Godspeed’s return to the Arrowverse is at the worst time possible. With the team at odds with each other and Barry’s speed disappearing at an ever-faster rate, things couldn’t look more dire (except if Reverse-Flash suddenly appeared). So, because of every extenuating circumstance, only one person can help Team Flash right now and that’s Hartley Rathaway, aka the Pied Piper.

The reason for Godspeed’s return is the most unsettling thing about his reappearance in this episode for one simple reason. For most of the episode, we don’t know why he wants Barry’s remaining speed, he just does. Knowing what someone wants, but not why they want it creates a really uncomfortable feeling especially when there are no visible features to try to ascertain motive. As such, Godspeed is a very intimidating villain even though he’s only in a few scenes. Honestly, it’s disappointing that he wasn’t in more scenes here.

But that brings us back to Hartley. In the comics, Pied Piper has gone through some massive character arcs and has been a big part of many Flash storylines. He’s even married to Captain Singh in the comics. So, all that sad, it’s been a bit sad to not see him used outside of five episodes in the series, with a few only being minimal appearances at best. So, to actually dive into the character in a significant way, it’s a good thing to witness.

The problem with this episode really falls onto throwing both Pied Piper and Godspeed into one episode. It doesn’t give either of them a chance to shine. Neither Godspeed gets to shine as the villain he deserves to be nor does Hartley get to live up to his full potential as a budding hero. They both have their moments, but if given separate episodes, their stories could’ve both better been better constructed. Godspeed should be a season villain and Hartley should be a recurring character at greater intervals, rather than both arcs being shoved into the same episode.

Trying to enter the Mirrorverse

After taking too long for Team Flash to figure out that two of their members are mirror versions of themselves, it feels good that the fallout of the discovery is immediate. The team is in a state of shock, as they rightly should be, and it’s great to see the fallout occurring throughout this episode. The fallout from the hole that the team is in needs to happen, so that they can climb out, stronger than ever.

From the opening scene of the episode, we really get a glimpse of the follow caused by the revelation of the mirror duplicates. Barry finds Joe and this really kicks off the fallout featured in this episode. They have one of their patented Barry/Joe talks, but this doesn’t fix everything like normal. Barry still feels useless after his revelation. Cisco is having an emotional breakdown. And as such, they come to odds with each other in a completely believable way.

More from Arrowverse

• The 9 best (and 8 worst) Arrowverse characters
• 27 best fighters in the Arrowverse, ranked
• All 8 Black Canary actresses ranked from worst to best
• 11 things nobody wants to admit about the Arrowverse
• The 7 best (and 6 worst) Arrowverse villains

And because the two leaders of Team Flash have broken down, Cecile has to step up and act as the new parent of the group in lieu of Joe’s absent. She does an admirable job, but alas, the writing doesn’t give her enough to do to make her feel like she has truly made an impact in this episode.

Either way though, when the group finally comes together again at the end of the episode, everything about it feels earned. It doesn’t just feel like something that needed to happen to continue the story, but rather something the characters would organically do.

Trapped and lonely

A couple of other storylines also occur in this episode, but they’re relatively minor in comparison. The first being a character focused story on Ralph and Frost and the second being in the Mirrorverse. Of the two, Ralph and Frost’s story was much better.

Ralph and Frost’s story wasn’t very complicated in the slightest, but it was incredibly sweet nonetheless. Entirely character focused, short, to the point. The Flash normally doesn’t do a small story like this well, but it manages to do it incredibly well here.

As for Iris finding Kamilla in the Mirrorverse, that’s literally all there is to it. It does nothing more than show that Iris and Kamilla are actually able to find each other, which means they can find Singh too. There’s nothing much else to it.

The Flash season 6 brings back two interesting villains in this week’s penultimate episode, but gives neither of them the justice they fully deserve. Although Hartley fared much better than Godspeed.