The Flash season 6, episode 19 review: Success is Assured

“Find Black Hole and find Eva.” Spoilers for The Flash season 6, episode 19 follow.

Eva McCulloch has finally escaped from the Mirror dimension leading Team Flash to search for her as she attacks Joseph Carver and Black Hole on the premature season finale of The Flash.

Meanwhile, Sue Dearbon makes her return to Central City and once again crosses paths with Ralph.

Hell hath no fury

Now that Eva has escaped and is back in the real world, she is about to reign down pain on her husband. “Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned,” the saying goes and there is no clearer example of that than Eva’s hunt for Joseph Carver. This throws Team Flash into a nice dilemma in this episode: Let Eva do what she wants or stop her and free Iris. Obviously, Barry and co. don’t want anyone to die and stopping Eva can get Iris back, so it makes sense why they would try to stop the greater of two evils in their mind. It quickly becomes evident that it’s not that simple though, which creates some great scenes in the episode.

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Beyond the basic plot aspects regarding Eva’s escape in this episode though, we finally get to see Eva in action. First off, she adapts the classic Mirror Master colors, green and orange, which is incredibly fun to see. Second, when going after people, she’s terrifying. The idea of someone who can attack you through reflective surfaces is incredibly unsettling and this episode does a great job of showing that. Just the way that she effectively takes out all of Carver’s assassins in seconds shows how powerful she is. They play her as a horror villain and it’s very effective.

The fight scene between Team Flash, minus Barry, and Black Hole’s assassins toward the end of the episode is too cheesy for its own good though. The episode had been pretty dark and serious, but fight between the two groups doesn’t feel that way at all because of two things. Editing and music choice. The editing feels a lot like the bizarre editing choices in Ang Lee’s Hulk, often making the screen look like comic panels, which doesn’t work. As for the music choice, this season has consistently made weird music choices and this is by far the weirdest. It’s techno that absolutely doesn’t fit the tone of the episode. This episode is often dark, unsettling, and scary, and this fight doesn’t fit that at all.

Frost and Mrs. Snow

After a couple of episodes where Frost had a couple of solid character moments and set-up, but barely appeared, the build has started to pay off. Now that Caitlin’s mother has arrived, Frost has to come to terms with her fears and is facing them head on. So often, many of the Arrowverse shows refuse to have characters directly confront their fears for so long that it just becomes annoying, but it’s great to see that it isn’t the case here. Frost is an incredibly compelling character when the focus is on her, and her fears are handled very well here. And, surprisingly, light on CW style drama.

There’s a lot that can still be done with this story going into the next season, so here’s hoping that the writers room follows up on it.

Sue and Ralph, frenemies

On top of everything else going on in this premature season finale, Sue Dearbon reappears in Ralph’s life. Their episodes and time together have been some of the best parts of this season and that very much continues in this episode. Obviously, due to Eva being the focus, Sue and Ralph take a backseat, but whenever they are the focus of a scene, those are easily the best parts of the episode.

Like Hartley Sawyer as Ralph, Natalie Dreyfuss is so charming as Sue that its hard to not just want her to take Ralph’s hand and turn to the side of the angels, no strings attached.  However, her motivations, while a bit cliché, are so well conveyed by Dreyfuss that it’s completely understandable why she’s doing what she’s doing. Hopefully, during season 7, there can be a full reconciling between the two with Ralph helping her clear her name of murder after being framed by Eva.

The Flash finally brings Eva McCulloch’s storyline to a head and mostly succeeds despite a bad third act fight and the premature finale nature of this episode.