The Flash season 8, episode 9 review: Phantoms

“Put Star Labs on Lockdown. No except me gets in or out.” Spoilers for The Flash season 8, episode 9 follow.

Team Flash now know at least what they’re searching for with the recent killings in Central City. And yet, they still can’t stop more people from dying.

As they try to do so, Iris and Sue Dearbon head to Coast City to search for a new meta.

Here’s everything that went down in The Flash season 8, episode 9 “Phantoms”.

Death by cold in The Flash season 8

Now knowing what they need to search for, Team Flash has made it their mission to find this new metahuman serial killer. Such a great premise and start to an arc and yet, it’s pretty much squandered with this episode. An episode like this one can absolutely work, but it needs to be much further into the story where it feels like the team is closing in on the killer, which is very much not the case here. The team is nowhere close to catching the killer and this episode is saying that they already feel like a threat to it, when that isn’t the case. It just makes this meta feel dumb, especially as it’s seemingly just after Chester.

As such, this is very much a Chester-centric episode and there’s a lot that could work, but it just doesn’t completely come together. Chester being haunted and tormented by this new meta is interesting, but the whole arc about him being haunted by a ghost just feels like it comes out of nowhere.

First, he’s not the type of character to believe in ghosts. Second, it feels like character regression. He had finally mourned and come to grips with who his father was and suddenly, he starts to feel guilty about not being able to save his father? It’s well-acted, but thematically, it just doesn’t come together completely.

However, it does work in the way of building this meta as more than just cold flames. It feeds on the pain and suffering of the ones that it’s hunting. How the episode explains this is poorly executed exposition, but it’s still an interesting addition to this villain that opens up a lot of interesting paths forward for it.

https://twitter.com/CW_TheFlash/status/1509319564613627909?s=20&t=UnpZAnJj1m8exlVZAxFxlQ

To the West

As for the other half of “Phantoms”, this just entirely feels like an excuse to get Iris to do something. Character-wise, the episode tries to make it work by making Iris focus on her potential “time sickness” complications (time sickness is still stupid). That said, everything about this storyline in this episode is just boring. And it wastes Sue Dearbon which is an unforgivable sin (jokes, but still).

Seriously, Iris and Sue going out to Coast City to search for a new meta should be fun and interesting. And yet, nothing about it is either fun or interesting. Coast City looks exactly the same as Central City. The Coast City Jitters looks exactly the same as the Central City Jitters. Even the search for the new meta in Coast City, it feels like something we’ve seen so many times before on this show. It’s just a missed opportunity.

The Flash tries to do some interesting stuff this week and, while not a failure of the episode, it just feels like a lot of missed opportunities, making it feel bland as a whole.

The Flash season 8 airs new episodes on The CW on Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET.

What did you think of The Flash season 8, episode 9? Let us know in the comments below!