The Flash P.O.W. review – S7 E15

There’s way too much to unpack with P.O.W. and very little is any good. This was one of those episodes that had me considering finding the exit ramp on this series.

Flash’s fifth season was lately crummy. The series had fallen into a creative rut of introducing a new hero and have Barry train new hero before the writers lost interest and repeated the formula with another character.

Making the new hero Barry and Iris’ daughter, Nora, from the future didn’t make it any better. What did resonate and packed an unexpected emotional punch was Season 5’s conclusion, which saw Nora get wiped from existence by Flash’s archival Thawne.

P.O.W. erased all need to revisit Season 5 seemingly on a just because whim and the writers have exhausted all of their good ideas. More on that in a sec.

Barry has another dream about Nora — no, not the Speed Force using Barry’s mother’s image, but his daughter. This would get even more confusing later on as Barry would also encounter Speed Force version Nora.

We’re back to Barry talking to Iris from a distance, which would be incredibly problematic as the episode played out. With all these visions of Nora, Caitlin suggests Barry just zoom to the future to check on her.

Wait, so I was the one dreaming about Barry and Iris grieving their dead daughter who was actually just chilling in the future all this time???

I could almost understand if Chester or Allegra had that idea. They haven’t seen Barry destroy everything with his time traveling trips. Caitlin’s been around since Day 1, but at this point it’s entirely possible the writers forgot that.

We can’t dwell on that since there’s a war waging on in Central City. This is the least interesting war imaginable since we’re not actually seeing any of it. The Godspeeds are just running around making a nuisance when they pop back in from their future.

Maybe the Calvary…or Spartan can help?

John Diggle arrives with a device Cisco whipped up to help catch a Godspeed. If Cisco is gonna just FedEx the gadget of the week to defeat a big bad, what is Chester doing again?

Ah, fanboying over Diggle. This is the norm for Diggle, who’s used to being around cornball young black guys. Although to Curtis’ credit, I’m pretty sure he’s not still saying freaky deeky like he just listened to Missy Elliot. We’re sure Chester isn’t a time traveler from the 90s? He does kinda dress like Dwayne Wayne…

Also, STAR Labs just has an open door policy for anyone, huh? Flash really needs and episode where protestors just storm the lab in protest for all the crap they’ve created that’s affected the city.

Cisco builds his devices to last and Spartan and Flash catch one of the Clones. Good thing it wasn’t Omega. They wouldn’t have a chance.

Godspeed No. 91 wants to chat and calls Flash Barry. That’s crazy. Barry has always been so careful about not letting random strangers come into STAR Labs and unmasking. How would anyone know his identity? Oh, right…

The Godspeed clones are searching for August Hart — the original Godspeed. If they find him and kill him than this war will be over. Too much of this Godspeed War has been off camera so it’s hard to get that invested in it. Maybe this could have made for an actual season arc instead of being crammed in 4-5 episodes?

Has Barry been faster than any other speedster? Asking for a friend. Good thing Allegra’s Light Brite blast stopped him. Allegra had otherwise been preoccupied with her cousin, Ultraviolet, in a subplot that felt completely detached from this Godspeed war story.

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Ultraviolet’s barely recovered from last episode, but wants revenge on Black Hole right now! Allegra asks her to wait until she helps Flash beat the Godspeeds, but Ultraviolet’s contract is only solid for one more episode so she’s gotta go now.

Diggle gets to give Barry the pep talk instead of Joe. Allegra overhears Diggle basically saying family over everything (except his murderous brother…) and decides to “peace out” on Team Flash to help Ultraviolet. She tracks her cousin down just in time to watch her bleed out in the most melodramatic soap opera death we’ve gotten from the show in years.

Why should we care about Ultraviolet? She left the second she was remotely healed, been a barely developed villain and she ignored Allegra, who sincerely wanted to help because she had to start her Revenge Tour right away? Where should I find this sympathy?

And there was the Joe subplot where he’s helping Kristen Kramer track down her childhood friend turned mercenary traitor Adam (Julian Black Antelope). Adam is of the impression that Kristen died, but that would make her a meta. This show is determined to drag every ounce of irony out of this Kristen storyline, aren’t they?

Barry heads to the future to selfishly break the time stream again — in this new reality will Diggle be married to Nora, the Speed Force inspiration? At least the Godspeeds stopped him.

And here comes Deion in case you forgot one of the other crappy storylines from this season. He’s been using his Still Force powers to keep Iris safe. Whoa, a legit Candice Patton sighting! Who would have thought? Iris has been phasing in and out of the timestream and for some reason kept that from Barry.

So was Barry actually not talking to Iris when she was upstairs “sick?” Didn’t he notice her not being around when he want to bed? Someone please make it make sense. But again, in what would would Iris not tell Barry what was going on? That’s completely out of character for Iris.

Cecile, Diggle and Frost find August Hart, but he has amnesia. To help him get back his memories and vaguely potentially help everyone else, Caitlin suggests dosing him with a shot of dark matter. That will naturally give him powers creating the villain Barry can’t stop now. This is making my head hurt.

Diggle isn’t sticking around to see what happens (smart man). He’s off to finally figure out the secret of what the green glow stick in a box meant. I’d wager something disappointing.

Barry’s back to square one and bummed out. And now Nora zooms in and it’s totally not a dream you guys!! Sigh. She’s back to introduce him to his son, Bart (Jordan Fisher). To spare us the abbreviated build-up, Bart’s already helpfully in his Impulse costume. Making this show this weak should be a lot harder than the writers are making it these days.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Photo Credit: The CW

Check out Godspeed’s origin in The Flash: Lightning Strikes Twice now on Amazon.