The Flash – Death Rises review S8 E12

Jeffrey Lyles April 29, 2022April 29, 2022 0 Comments Brandon McKnight, Candice Patton, Carmen Moore, Christian Magby, Danielle Nicolet, Danielle Panabaker, Grant Gustin, Jesse L. Martin, Kayla Compton, Mika Abdalla, Natalie Dreyfuss, Rick Cosnett, Robbie Amell, The Flash

Is this Deathstorm arc of The Flash actually good? If nothing else it’s at least not boring.

Last episode had a mini cliffhanger of Deathstorm coming for Caitlin, but Flash arrives and tosses a lightning bolt to scare him off. And wonders of wonders, Caitlin actually accepted responsibility for bringing Deathstorm back. #Progress.

Well maybe not so much as Frost and Allegra blow off Caitlin’s legit guilt by just excusing it away. It is OK for a character to just be wrong and not have other characters act like it’s not a big deal. Taking an L is how characters evolve on these shows. If every negligent or bad decision they make just gets swept under the rug how do they grow as responsible characters?

Iris is back from Tinya’s teleportation magic trick. This is odd since Tinya seemed so sure she knew what she did. Wouldn’t see know it was only temporary? Iris is worried she might cause Barry to vanish and doesn’t want him touching her. Welcome to this stage of married life, Barry.

Turns out Iris’ time sickness is affecting the Still Force and Deon too, which gets worse when Deon mysteriously vanishes. That’s not a good sign.

I’m not a huge fan of how the writers make the bad guys these hardcore murders killing scores of random citizens only to be inept when facing Team Flash. Cecile wants to help track down Deathstorm using her empathy powers as sort of a Cerebro. I was immensely proud that the writers resisted the urge to make another Marvel reference on their DC series.

That doesn’t work so well prompting yet another Possessed Cecile scene, which are never good. Allegra gets deathstormed with a visit from Esperanza. At least Allegra immediately no sold the shock of seeing her dead cousin and realized it was just Deathstorm screwing around again.

Deathstorm nabs Caitlin again prompting Flash to try a new trick — skipping on lightning. That’s…actually a clever use of his powers and not nearly as eye roll inducing as the lightning lightsaber from last season. Shudder.

It still doesn’t matter as Deathstorm can’t be dealt with just yet. He’s still got to visit the carnival from Shazam! and try and make Caitlin his death bride. She’s not ready yet though so he leaves while Team Flash surmises Deathstorm was created by Ronnie’s grief and it’s been trying to travel to get to Caitlin ever since.

Or Robbie Amell finally had a gap in his schedule to do an arc on The Flash seven years later…but yeah, that sounds better.

Chester thinks he can come up with something cosmic to stop Deathstorm since he’s literally out of the world. I wonder how frustrating watching The Flash is for actual scientists. It’s frustrating for me listening to the writers throwing out as many scientific terms as they can find on Google while having Chester talk in hopes of confusing us regular viewers. But for scientists who know this stuff sounds silly? It must be maddening.

Like most episodes this arc it’s on to someone else besides The Flash to do something heroic to stop Deathstorm. In this case it’s Frost who’d gone a whole episode without showing up Barry so she was probably due. At least Barry gets to do his weekly warning that someone probably shouldn’t risk their life to stop a villain.

That payoff will have to wait for next week though.

Onto the “post-credit” scene as we’re teased with someone watching Iris. Who could it be? Oh, it’s Eddie Thawne. This shock reveal would have had more impact if Eddie hadn’t shown up just a few episodes back.

So did all these twists and reveals make this a good episode? A lot happened, but it also felt like an installment that will get summed up neatly in another week. Maybe in the grand scheme of the season this episode will look better in hindsight. For now, it just felt like another installment of treading water and making Iris a third tier subplot.