THE FLASH 5.18 Review “Godspeed”
This post contains spoilers for The Flash.
Check out our last review here.
We don’t spend enough time talking about how incredible Tom Cavanagh is, but “Godspeed” does a pretty solid job of reminding us why we should be. Danielle Panabaker’s directorial debut is a great kickoff as we see all of our superhero shows start to hit the ground running towards their respective finales. The action may be a bit sparse, but the emotional punch it packs more than makes up for it. It’s an episode of conflict but, before everything goes to hell, Nora is given a chance to explain herself.
In the future, Nora West-Allen has a best friend. When you’re a little bit much, you don’t make a whole lot of them. Lia (Kathryn Gallagher), however, compliments Nora’s excessiveness quite nicely. When the two of them stumble upon the first speedster Central City’s seen since the Crisis event, they work together to find out what he’s planning. An attack from Godspeed shorts out the power dampener that Iris put in Nora early on, and it turns out that part of her rage at her mother might have been that she could have probably saved her friend had she had more training.
The two friends would face Godspeed again, but Lia doesn’t make it out alive. In her despair, Nora turns to the Reverse Flash for training. While it’s not the smartest move, there is some logic behind it. She believes that she needs to get in the mind of a super villain to stop a super villain. It’s hard to fault her for the decision when she was completely alone in the world.
What you can fault her for is continuing to return to Thawne for advice after she revealed herself to her parents, and after she found out what he did to her grandmother. Iris is firmly on team Nora, refusing to fail her in the present the same way she did in the future. But it’s the notion that she kept going back to Thawne after new choices presented themselves that keeps Barry from trusting his daughter.
With a serial killer on his plate, Barry decides that he can’t have someone he doesn’t trust around the team. Though he’s acting more out of rage than logic, it’s hard to fault him for taking Nora back to the future and reminding her that if she returns to their time he’ll know. Not talking to Iris about it probably wasn’t a great plan, but that’s going to come into play on next week’s episode.
Barry visiting Thawne in prison feels like one of the most iconic shots in The Flash’s tenure (header of this post). I can’t get past Barry’s reflection looking back at him with Thawne looking on directly behind it. His rage is so incredibly justified, and I’m giddy thinking about the crisis of conscious he’s going to have before ultimately deciding to save his arch nemesis who has clearly been mistreated in prison. That is peak Flash and there is no boring side arc that can stop it from being incredible. “She just wanted to spend some time with her dad. Don’t hold it against her. Consider it a condemned man’s last request,” is just some next level Reverse Flash mind games and I’m into it.
“Godspeed” takes a couple of beats to drop some important Crisis teases as well. The first being that no Speedsters (outside of the incarcerated Thawne) made it out of Crisis on Infinite Earths in this timeline. What happened? We don’t have any idea outside of the comics yet. But the second tease is Barry’s message to Nora, which includes some world-war-level scenes playing out in the background. Hundreds of characters die in the comic, including Flash and Supergirl. We already know who will be going in their stead, but it’s stressful to think of how high that body count’s about to get.
As mentioned, Barry gets to deal with one pissed off wife in next week’s episode. Iris wasn’t consulted, didn’t get to say goodbye, and is going to the future to get her baby girl back. We’ll likely be spending a little extra time in Central City 2049 while Thawne’s clock continues to wind down, but new Cicada will still be waiting for us when we get back.
You know what to do if you had thoughts on this week’s episode!
