The CW’s The Flash was among countless other shows that abruptly stopped production last year. Every season managed to pull off its ending, but the sixth was struck with the curse of COVID-19, leaving the weight of redemption to the opening of the first episode “All’s Wells That Ends Well” this year. Read the full recap of season 6 before diving into the next!
Towards the end of the previous season, Team Flash was left with three radical tasks: rebuild the Artificial Speed Force (ASF) using Nora West-Allen’s (Jessica Parker Kennedy) journal, rescue Iris West-Allen (Candice Patton), Kamilla Hwang (Victoria Park) and Chief David Singh (Patrick Sabongui) from the Mirrorverse, and stop Eva McCulloch (Efrat Dor) from hunting down crime-syndicate Black Hole members. Not that Team Flash was against her ideas but her villain-like aggressive manhunt was also turning the City into a frenzy.
Episode 1, “All’s Wells That Ends Well,” opens with Chester Runk (Brandon McKnight) waking up Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) from a cryogenic pod that’s built to ‘freeze’ his speed until the City needs him for anything. Chester is also seen reading Quantum Gravity and The Universe by Dr. Meena Dhawan who is in fact the Negative Flash, a former employee of S.T.A.R Labs, A.R.G.U.S and the Black Hole, first seen in The Flash Vol 5 #3!
With just over 1% of his speed left, Barry gushes towards Eva to prevent her from killing more Black Hole members. His residual speed serves him no purpose as she manages to kill Black Hole member Sam Scudder/Mirror Master (Grey Damon), who first appeared in The Flash Season 3, Episode 4, “The New Rogues.” Meanwhile Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) and Cecile Horton (Danielle Nicolet) try to make Rosa Dillon/Top (Ashley Rickards), Mirror Master’s girlfriend reveal whatever she knew about the Black Hole or Eva. It turns out Top masterminded an attack on the City with Eva and have a jet carrying Black Hole tech explode over it. Cecile also finds out she’s an empath like herself, just that Top learned to do much more with her meta powers than she ever did.
At S.T.A.R Labs, Chester, Barry, Dr. Harrison Nash Wells (Tom Cavanagh) and Allegra Garcia (Kayla Compton) begin to test a fusion sphere and stabilize the ASF. After an unsuccessful attempt, the Council of Wells visits Nash to guide him on the right path, telling him that the fusion sphere requires an organic receptor (read: him) and not just the multiversal particles that flow through him. He asks Allegra to force the particles out of him and into the fusion sphere despite the Council’s fair warning of failure. When the sphere overloads, the particles bounce off of it and hits Barry, leaving him the carrier of the Council.
With a few minutes left to stop both the City from the Black Hole jet and Barry’s brain from overloading with Wells’ brainwaves, Nash finally decides to sacrifice himself to the fusion sphere. “How can I be the Flash without a Wells on this team?” Barry tears up.
“You’ve always been the Flash,” Nash tells him. “You always will be… with or without me.”
Some of the plot’s recurring Wells’ take turns to bid adieu to Barry.
Of all the goodbyes, H.R. Wells’ felt promising. “This… this is not goodbye. It’s just… till our next communication.” This could mean something, right?
Nash transfers all the multiversal particles from his body to the fusion sphere and disintegrates in one of the most shocking and heartbreaking farewells that made Episode 1 look like a season finale. Team Flash doesn’t get time to mourn as Barry speeds off to stop the jet from exploding mid-air above Central City. Team Flash fails to locate Eva afterward but the good news is that the Speed Force is now alive. Meanwhile, Eva discovers an external drive that belonged to her late husband and finds a video file named ‘For Eva’ that forms a significant revelation: the real Eva died during the S.T.A.R Labs particle accelerator explosion back in Season 1. So the one who’s out and about is her mirror duplicate who was unaware of this until she watched the clip.
Do you think this is the end of the Council or Wells for that matter? What do you think is going to happen next? Why does it matter that the real Eva is dead and Mirror Eva replaced her? Check-in every week for The Flash recaps!
Watch The Flash Season 7 Tuesdays on The CW.
