The Flash season 7, episode 5 review: Fear Me

“Fuerza. It’s Spanish for strength. What? She-Hulk was taken!” Spoilers for The Flash season 7, episode 5 follow.

Still reeling from Abra Kadabra’s death at the hands of a monster, Team Flash rushes to find wherever this monster is hiding in the latest episode of The Flash season 7.

Meanwhile, residents throughout Central City, including Cecile, have been experiencing crippling nightmares.

Strength and Sage in The Flash season 7

One thing that many of us feared was going happen after the end of last week’s episode was that Team Flash would basically just forget about Abra Kadabra’s death and the monster who attacked. Luckily, this very much isn’t the case as “Fear Me” is a direct continuation of last week’s episode. It may not feel that way, but it absolutely is the case as this episode introduces different Forces, which were key elements in Joshua Williamson’s very recent The Flash run – a phenomenal run which introduced Godspeed, Bloodwork and the various Forces.

First up, we have the Fuerza and what is likely to be the Strength Force. Now, this version of Fuerza looks and acts nothing like the comics version and is closer in-line to Rampage, but the name and power set fits the Strength Force idea well. As for the villain of this episode, Psych, it seems like he uses the Sage Force, which increases psychic abilities in the wielder of the force. But these are just two new forces that have been introduced, so if the last Force is introduced as well as the Sage Force is in this episode, we’re in for a great rest of the season.

This then leads to who will probably be the big bad for at least half of the season, The Turtle. Yes, a character with that moniker has been in The Flash before, but he died and the universe reset, so it’s more than likely that The Turtle will be used once again as the season goes on, which is great because he, or she, is an interesting power foil for The Flash.

Horror in Central City

There have been several episodes throughout the run of the show that have been horror-influenced, but this one is the first true horror episode of the entire series. Is it the best piece of horror media to ever exist in the comic book space? Absolutely not. However, this is a fun change of pace for the series, even if just for one episode, that manages to inject a breath of fresh air that it desperately needed in a lot of aspects.

Psych often feels like a villain of the week in this episode where he’s not developed all that well and doesn’t have the most open motivation. The thing is though, that doesn’t matter a lot here. Psych is a great, unsettling villain that doesn’t even need to raise a fist to win a fight. As terrifying as Fuerza is, Psych is even scarier because he is able to invade the one thing that we all think is something that another person can’t touch: Our minds.

This episode utilizes Psych’s power set incredibly well in order to create interesting situations for our characters, but also just how the episode is shot and edited lends itself a great deal to that horror presentation. There are multiple weird shots and edits whenever Psych is on-screen which creates a great, unsettling technical move that allows the subconscious of the audience to wonder about their own reality.

Frost squared

The most personal part of this episode comes from the separation of Caitlin and Frost. Their duality is a constant point of stress throughout the series so far, so it’s interesting to see them actually playing off each other in this episode. Obviously, Danielle Panabaker wasn’t actually playing off of herself, but Frost and Caitlin’s scenes are edited so flawlessly that it basically makes you forget that they aren’t actually twins in real life.

However, despite the great performance by Panabaker, this is definitely the least interesting part of the episode. It’s not bad by any stretch, but the rest of the episode is so good that it kind of pales in comparison.

The Flash has had two of its best episodes of the past several seasons back-to-back these past two weeks and here’s hoping the Arrowverse show can keep up this quality moving forward.

What did you think of The Flash season 7, episode 5? Let us know in the comments below!