The Flash season 7, episode 9 review: Timeless

“I will destroy those other Forces, Barry, with or without your help. Then you’ll see that I’m right.” Spoilers for The Flash season 7, episode 9 follow.

With Fuerza dead on The Flash season 7, Team Flash must come up with a plan that will stop the Speed Force from taking the life of the other new Force wielders.

Now, Barry wants to go back in time, once again, to erase the Forces from coming to be.

Creation of the Forces in The Flash season 7

You’d think that Barry would have learned his lesson about time travel after the first or second or umpteenth time that he’s gone back in time to fix something and just made everything worse. But well, with the Speed Force now becoming a murderer and on the run, there just isn’t much of a solution. Either Barry goes back in time and stops the new Forces from spreading or the other wielders of these new forces die. End of the day, Barry will want to save lives and go to the most extreme lengths to do so, which this episode thankfully reminds us of.

It’s frustrating seeing Barry, once again, plan on doing something seemingly insanely reckless at first, but as the episode goes on, it becomes abundantly clear that Barry is not making the same mistakes that he has in the past – or, at least, he’s trying not to. Even though all of these precautions are being taken though, the episode goes out of the way to prepare you for the worst to happen. So, when things inevitably go wrong, it’s not shocking in the slightest, which should be a bad thing, but here, it isn’t.

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

Everything Barry does in this episode is arguably the most in-character that Barry has been in over a season. He is so focused on saving as many people as he can and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders that it’s once again easy to root for him despite still questioning his plan. His disagreements with Iris and Cisco feel incredibly organic and in character, which is something that the show has struggled with this season. The disagreements don’t create the most compelling scenes ever, but it’s just nice to see disagreements between two characters that aren’t the result of forced conflict. This itself makes the episode stronger than several of the previous episodes this season.

There’s also a Barry/Joe heart-to-heart that seemingly comes out of nowhere, but it literally doesn’t matter because it’s the best scene in the episode. Joe has consistently been the best part of the show since season 1 and it’s absolutely no different now.

A Divining Rod

As for Iris, once she splits from Barry in this episode due to their understandable disagreement regarding what to do with the Forces, she ventures into what is definitely the weakest part of the episode. There’s a lot of pseudo-science happening in this portion and if a show that is entirely pseudo-science is dumb enough to be noticed at weaving it in, it’s really dumb.

However, this dumb pseudo-science leads to Psych, who has been the second-best antagonist this season. Whenever he’s shown up, the show becomes incredibly horror-tinged and, as a horror fan, this is just an incredibly fun change of pace for the show.

Does it feel out of place? A bit, but at a certain point, that doesn’t matter as it creates some fun scenes that toy with the traditional style that the show has had for 6 and a half seasons. It’s always nice when a show can be on for its seventh year and manage a way to get outside of its comfort zone, even if just for a bit.

After last week’s horrendous episode of The Flash, this episode has some of the best characterization for Barry seen in a while and some incredibly fun scenes with the other Forces.

What did you think of The Flash season 7, episode 9? Let us know in the comments below!