The Flash season 7, episode 18 review: Heart of the Matter, Part 2

“The impossible is your thing! You can figure it out!” Spoilers for The Flash season 7, episode 18 follow.

After venturing into Godspeed’s mind, Team Flash now knows what his endgame is: To steal the speed that he believes is rightfully his.

Now, with an ultimatum, they must decide what they need to do to defeat him. And in The Flash‘s season 7 finale, “Heart of the Matter, Part 2”, they reach out to a few friends to help them.

Godspeed revealed

So, now that we have an actual personality given to Godspeed several seasons after the character was introduced. That means it will make up for all of the uninteresting things that the show has done with the character so far, right? Right? Well, if you had been watching the rest of this season, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that giving Godspeed a personality actually makes him worse.

He comes across as little more than a whiny little kid complaining how he deserves speed and doesn’t have it. He even goes from “I am the god of speed!” to something along the lines of “I deserve real speed!” very, very quickly and it’s all just very over the top in the worst way, making it hard to watch.

On the other hand, the few scenes that we see of August when he is still suffering from his memory loss are actually really compelling. It’s incredibly interesting seeing someone wrestle with their demons even if they don’t remember them. This only really encompasses one scene, but it’s the best scene of the episode, which is immediately thrown out when he gets speed and immediately turns evil for no reason whatsoever.

But hey it’s the finale, that means that they’ll finally give us a good fight scene with Godspeed to wrap things up, right? Right? Nope. When the entire Flash Family runs up to a massive group of Godspeeds, it seemed like a prime time for an awesome fight, but they all went out like chumps when the convenient writing made it so that the villains were suddenly sapping the speed out of Team Flash and the Speed Force, with the reason basically being “just cause.” And then the final fight scene – which sees Barry temporarily battle Godspeed one-on-one – turns into a war with lightsabers. LIGHTSABERS. Now, I should say that I’m a massive Star Wars fan, but The Flash isn’t Star Wars. So this just feels like a really baffling decision in every way.

Oh, and Thawne is back. It makes absolutely no sense but Tom Cavanagh steals the show in the scenes that he’s in and shows exactly why the comparison of Godspeed to Thawne was embarrassing.

Tell, don’t show on The Flash season 7

The past several episodes of The Flash season 7 have also broken the cardinal rule of scriptwriting, “show, don’t tell.” Unfortunately, basically everything with the Godspeed war has been lip service, with most of the terrifying events being relayed to us through dialogue, lessening the severity of it and lowering the stakes drastically.

This is the same problem with Bart’s relationship with Godspeed. Now, at least, we see Bart and Jay interact, kind of, in this episode. But it doesn’t really add anything to Bart’s monologue in the previous episode as we still never see why Jay meant so much to Bart. Nonetheless, it’s nice to actually see the relationship exist.

The most egregious thing, however, is when Barry and Iris change their minds, off-camera, extremely suddenly. In one scene they have one opinion and in the next they have another. There’s no real discussion of the process as to why they changed, the plot just needed them to, so they did. This leads to Eobard Thawne’s return and the pair then explaining how they brought the Reverse-Flash back instead of actually showing it, again. It’s beyond frustrating and just extremely contrived writing.

Wrapping up B-stories

And just like every other episode of The Flash season 7, the subplots here just feel like an afterthought. Existing solely to get Joe, Chester, and Allegra into the episode, they don’t really add anything at all and one of them is arguably even more confusing than before.

Suddenly Kramer is a meta and she resigns from the CCPD, opening the position back up for Joe. This storyline is now at its end with absolutely nothing resolved and it feels utterly pointless in every single way.

As for Allegra and Chester, they have yet another quick conversation which changes Allegra’s mind and she can suddenly power up the thing they need to push back Godspeed. It just yet another thing regarding Allegra’s character and her arcs these past several episodes which have been rushed and poorly-executed and, at this point, it’s just pointless to even criticize it even more than it already has been.

The Flash ends a lacklustre seventh season with a confusing and poor finale that is short on redeeming qualities. Here’s hoping season 8 is better.

What did you think of The Flash season 7, episode 18? Did you enjoy the seventh season? Let us know in the comments below!