The Flash season 7, episode 10 review: Family Matters, Part 1

“You made me do this, Barry.” Spoilers for The Flash season 7, episode 10 follow.

With the Speed Force on its way to find the other Forces, Team Flash rushes to find them before anything can happen to them in the latest episode of The Flash season 7.

Meanwhile, the Sage Force is really beginning to make his presence known in Central City as Psych returns in “Family Matters, Part 1”.

Gathering of the Forces

One thing that’s been consistent about every season of The Flash is that around this time every year, the show seems to just be spinning its wheels with no forward momentum. And well, unsurprisingly, that’s happening once again in this episode. It doesn’t seem this way at first, but that’s exactly what it is. The Arrowverse shows are often hampered by their lengthy seasons and it always shows about this time. What happens in this episode probably could have been contained to twenty minutes because so much of this episode feels like filler.

Based on the opening scene of the episode between Nora and Deon, it feels like its about to really use most of its runtime to move the plot forward but nothing really happens. A lot of said runtime is about learning Psych’s backstory and, given what his backstory is, it’s simply not worth the runtime it has. Psych’s backstory is basically just “Batman, but not at all sympathetic.” It’s wholly uninteresting and honestly, we as the audience would have been better off not knowing anything about the villain. End of the day, after being an interesting villain, this episode makes Psych incredibly uninteresting – which is very had to do.

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Then there’s the person that deserved more time than she got, aka Fuerza. The scenes with this character are the most interesting parts of the episode. They don’t really do anything new for this show, but seeing Alexa trying to now control the monster within, it seems like something straight out of a Hulk comic and it was interesting to see here. However, it feels like the episode is just rushing through these scenes in order to get back to Psych. This is incredibly disappointing as these scenes never have the proper time to breathe.

Side note, the fact that the show is calling the different Forces Barry and Iris’ children is just weird. It’s easy to see what the writers are going for, but it’s weird and doesn’t work.

Psychic hunting in The Flash season 7

As for Psych himself, after his first couple appearances in this season, it felt like there were going to be some more fun fear-based scenes that the character has been shown to utilize before. However, we don’t even get that in this episode.

Nothing visually interesting happens with Psych here beyond him just using some purple tentacles to hit Flash into a limousine. It’s so disappointing after having his powers showcased incredibly well in previous episodes. In fact, it’s doubly disappointing because, based on dialogue in this episode, he has become more powerful and yet, we don’t even see any of it beyond the purple tentacles. It’s the definition of a missed opportunity.

And that’s without mentioning how just visually disappointing the battle against Fuerza and Psych is. It’s so slow and nothing really happens in it and then it just…ends after Flash says like, two sentences to him.

Investigations

As for Kramer, she’s not done in Central City. Even after she got Frost put away, she remains truly hell-bent on getting rid of all the metahumans in Central City. We still don’t know why, but it’s clear that she’s not going away anytime soon.

But like the rest of this episode, it just feels like this subplot is spinning its wheels with no forward momentum either. Nothing really happens and it just feels like it’s there to fill time.

If this week’s episode of The Flash is anything, it’s just uninteresting. At its worst, however, it makes the characters that were previously interesting no longer so.

What did you think of The Flash season 7, episode 10? Let us know in the comments below!