The Flash season 8, episode 19 review: Negative, Part One

“That’s so…ordinary.” Spoilers for The Flash season 8, episode 19 follow.

The Flash continues to train Meena in the use of her powers so that the Negative-Speed Force doesn’t eat her alive.

Meanwhile, Deon begins to make his endgame play by taking out several players along the way.

Here’s everything that went down in The Flash season 8, episode 19 “Negative, Part One”.

The Flash season 8, episode 19 review

Reveals

After everything that happened in the last episode, Barry is still training Meena in the ways of using her speed and, well, she has an understandable panic when she can’t control her powers. So, to get her to calm down, Barry reveals his true identity to her and, well, it’s the first time that he’s done so in a long time where it actually feels earned. Everything that Meena is going through is something Barry himself went through when he first became a speedster so simply showing her who he is, without going into the details of his struggles, it shows Meena that even the seemingly most ordinary can be a hero. It’s what she needed to hear and it was done really well.

Honestly, the fact that Meena has only been in the past few episodes is a massive disappointment. She’s genuinely great, as is her relationship with Eobard, so she definitely deserved more appearances thus far. Hopefully she stays around for season 9, especially as her suit is one of the most comic-accurate suits that show has ever produced, which is great.

Slow down

Starting off the episode with a bang, Deon kills Reverse-Flash in his cell on Lian Yu. It was definitely a twist on what everyone probably expected to happen because of the cliffhanger in the previous episode. However, even though the twist was a nice play on expectations, it still felt so quick and because of that, there was really not the kind of impact that seeing Reverse-Flash aged 100 years in a few moments should have.

But, apparently, the Deon we’ve been seeing since he turned on Barry isn’t the normal Deon. It’s a negative version of the Still Force using Deon as its face. Plus, there are Negative versions of Psych and Fuerza. So, all of them that appear in this episode are actually Negative Forces with the exact same face as the normal Forces – because that’s not confusing at all to the audience! And really, using evil versions of the Forces that loosely tie back into Iris’ time sickness, it’s just so uninteresting. We’ve seen these fights before and they weren’t interesting then. They aren’t now.

Down with the Sickness

But after several episodes of disappearing into, time, I guess? Iris is back with no explanation as to why she got pulled into the timestream or why she’s back. She’s just in the future now as she has materialized in front of Bart and Nora. And so, instead of trying to actually explain a way to fix this time sickness, she just sees visions of 2022 and is transported in front of Barry’s lightning as he’s fighting the Negative forces, becoming the “sacrifice” Deon was talking about in the process. Why? Who knows at this point. It’s terrible no matter the way it’s spun, but hey, at least it leads to a horrifying scene of Eobard being forced to tear off his face to reveal the true Reverse-Flash underneath.

In the end though, there are way too many side plots to even matter at this point. Cecile is getting new powers that are yet another thing that is poorly explained. And then there’s Caitlin and Chillblaine still trying to resurrect Frost. That’s in this episode too. There’s too much going on to properly focus on anything and it drags the episode down a lot.

The Flash has some good highlights in the penultimate episode of the season, but too much is still weighing down the show.

The Flash season 8 concludes next Wednesday, June 29, with its season finale airing at 8:00 p.m. ET. on The CW.

What did you think of The Flash season 8, episode 19? Are you looking forward to the finale next week? Let us know in the comments below!