The Flash season 8, episode 10 review: Reckless

“I’m not gonna lie to you guys. This is gonna hurt.” Spoilers for The Flash season 8, episode 10 follow.

The Black Flame continues to come after Team Flash, this time setting its sights on Frost instead of Chester.

Meanwhile, Iris stays in Coast City to help Tinya and keep her time sickness at bay.

Here’s everything that happened in The Flash season 8, episode 10 “Reckless”.

Black Flame hunting

As the Black Flame continues to haunt the team, with it focusing its fury on Frost this time, Team Flash tries to come up with a way to capture it, obviously. And well, they seem to have a way to do that. Instead of just straight killing Frost like it did to the others (and like it tried to do to Chester), it simply attacks her and leaves her with a bad burn. As to why, that’s for whatever god(s) exist to know and the audience to wonder about. It’s not explained well or, if it was explained in this episode, I just didn’t catch it. Either way, it’s a complete 180 degree turn for it to torture rather that just outright kill, which is poor writing in and of itself.

The hauntings themselves just simply make the Black Flame an uninteresting villain. Instead of actually being interesting and forcing the team to actually search and be detectives regarding the the mystery, it’s disappointing. One, it’s a missed opportunity for the show to do something that it hasn’t done in a long time, if at all. Two, it makes the Black Flame feel small. It’s supposed to threaten the entire city and yet, it aiming for multiple members of the Team in back-to-back episodes, makes it feel like it isn’t covering all the ground in Central City that the show wants us to believe that it is. Instead of threatening, it feels slimy as it just wriggles out of every trap they set while barely actually hurting anyone.

However, this does lead to a solid mother/daughter conversation between Frost and Carla Tannhauser that allows them both to grow as characters. We get to see into Frost’s mind as to why she’s so protective and prone to putting herself in danger and we get to see Carla grow as a mother. She’s not always been the best mother to Caitlin, but she’s tried to get better, so it’s nice to see her trying to do the same with Frost as well.

Time Sickness in The Flash season 8

As for Iris being in Coast City, Time Sickness is still the dumbest plot the show has come up with over the past few seasons, which is really saying something because the last couple of seasons have had some really bad moments, but at least there’s a story excuse not to drop the Tinya plot. And here’s the thing about this plot, there are some really good scenes in it and it’s only when actually working with the characters in the scene and ignoring the plot. The plot actually ruins the scenes in the end though.

For instance, the second to last scene of the episode is about Tinya reuniting with her mother and it’s honestly a great scene. It starts out making it seem like it will simply be a remake of the scene of Billy finding his mother in Shazam! but that’s not the case here. While that scene is devastating, this scene is heartbreaking in a relatively positive way as Tinya and her mom begin to bond.

Instead of continuing to build that though, Iris has a sudden bout of Time Sickness and erases Tinya’s mom, somehow, it’s not explained. It ruins the scene all for the sake of building on the already weak plot of Iris’ Time Sickness.

This week’s episode of The Flash season 8 has some high points with its characters, but falls flat everywhere else.

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 10? Let us know in the comments below!