“Crisis on Infinite Earths” continues to have far-reaching impact on The Arrowverse, especially on The Flash. The sixth season of The CW series has seen Team Flash dealing with changed villains, the newly streamlined timeline, and for Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), little hiccups with his powers. This week, the return of a familiar face in Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) brings the reason for those issues and opens up a whole new set of challenges for the Scarlet Speedster. Here’s what you need to know from this week’s episode, “Death of the Speed Force”
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Spoilers for The Flash, “Death of the Speed Force”, below.
A helicopter begins to rust and fall out of the sky over Central City, but a speedster rushes to the scene and saves the passenger before dismantling the aircraft, saving the day. It’s not Barry. It’s Kid Flash, aka Wally West. He’s back with a new sense of zen and some new powers, too. Cisco also returns from exploring the world, his last stop having been Atlantis. After the celebration, Barry and Wally speed clean up and he has an issue with his speed and Wally reveals that he’s really returned because something’s wrong with the Speed Force.
Wally confronts Barry about the Speed Force issue and brings him into the Speed Force where they find her — the representation of Nora Allen — and she’s dying. She tells him it’s his actions that is killing her. Without Wally helping him, Barry enters the Speed Force again, alone. Speed Nora explains that it wasn’t the battle with Bloodwork. It was when Barry had the Spectre send him to the Speed Force that caused this catastrophe. Speed Nora tells him she loves him and dies.
Cisco doesn’t feel like his trip around the world changed him in anyway and that he’s just back where he started from, which prompted him to be rude and dismissive of Nash when he came to him for help with his weird “visions.” Cisco later goes to see Nash, but is possessed by Reverse Flash now, but he doesn’t have speed or powers, but Cecile takes Reverse Flash Nash down and they imprison him in the Pipeline. Reverse Flash knows that the Speed Force is dead and he wants to use that loss of power to kill Barry and everyone he loves.
As for the villain of the week, at Jitters, Maria Volkova — the woman from the helicopter — is attacked by a mysterious meta and killed, literally turned into an aged mummy. The meta villain is Turtle 2, aka Frida Novakov. She’s the reason Cisco returned to Central City as he’s been hearing about her in all of his travels. She later attacks the CCPD, but Wally and Barry best utilize their remaining powers to stop her via antidote Cisco makes.
The episode closes with two big moments. The first is that, with the Speed Force dead, Barry decides to work with Caitlin and Cisco to build an artificial Speed Force and restore his speed. The second is that Kamila has figured out Mirror Iris isn’t right thanks to a photo she took, but before Kamila can do anything, Mirror Iris shoots her with the Mirror Gun.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
