The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season Blu-Ray review
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-Ray I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.
Arrow might have kicked off the Arrowverse, but The Flash was really the show that made The CW a haven for DC Comics fans. With Arrow wrapping its seven season run with an abbreviated final season, The Flash established itself as the lead dog this year.
Season 6 review:
Much like The Walking Dead, which benefited greatly from the addition of Angela Kang, The Flash showed a drastic increase in quality with the promotion of Eric Wallace as showrunner.
Instead of doing the traditional season long villain, Wallace took a better approach and split the season in half. The first half dealt with Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) facing his pending death.
This allowed for some excellent dramatic moments as he gradually shared the news with Team Flash — his wife Iris (Candice Patton); pals Cisco (Carlos Valdes), Frost (Danielle Panabaker), Ralph (Hartley Sawyer), Nash (Tom Cavanagh) and surrogate father Joe (Jesse L. Martin).
Knowing he’s months away from dying, Barry attempts to provide the team for life without him. This is a plot point that’s been teased since the first episode of the series and it was paid off very well.
That support system was necessary as Barry battled a dangerous new villain, Bloodwork (Heroes’ Sendhil Ramamurthy). Unlike the various speedster villains and mysterious ghouls like Alchemy and The Thinker, Bloodwork was more of a horror movie style villain capable of dispatching essentially a zombie army against Team Flash.
Post-Crisis, Barry and company dealt with a new threat Eva McCullough (Efrat Dor), a different take on the Mirror Master. The back half of the season played out much differently and made for a nice contrast from the battle with Bloodwork as McCulough began replacing characters important to Barry with mirror duplicates acting on her orders.
Wallace showed this approach should probably be the model going forward for the other full 22-episode Arrowverse shows.
Despite getting cut short due to the Coronavirus pandemic, Season 6 represented a strong turnaround for a series that seemed like it was starting to lose its momentum. It offers hope that Season 7 will retain the series’ upward trend.
EPISODES
- Into The Void
- A Flash of The Lightning
- Dead Man Running
- There Will Be Blood
- Kiss Kiss Breach Breach
- License To Elongate
- The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part 1
- The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part 2
- Crisis on Infinite Earths: Hour Three
- Marathon
- Love is a Battlefield
- A Girl Named Sue
- Grodd Friended Me
- Death of the Speed Force
- The Exorcism of Nash Wells
- So Long and Goodnight
- Liberation
- Pay the Piper
- Success Is Assured
SPECIAL FEATURES
- “Kiss Kiss Breach Breach – Noir” (Special Episode)
- “Kiss Kiss Breach Breach – Noir” Commentary by showrunner/executive producer Eric Wallace
- The Best of DC TV’s Comic-Con Panels San Diego 2019
- Deleted Scenes
- Gag Reel
The biggest feature is a separate disc of the five-part Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. That’s a great bonus as it’s enough content to warrant a stand-alone disc.
VIDEO/AUDIO
With a full 1080p full HD video and DTS-HD master audio for English 5.1, the video quality is impressive. It’s not reference quality, but you won’t have any issue with how it looks or sounds. This is basically the same high quality you could expect when watching the broadcast HD version.
Own The Flash: The Complete Sixth Season on Digital, Blu-Ray and DVD August 18th on Amazon and Target.