The Flash 614: Welcome Home!

Wally West is back, and what an entrance! He splits into multiple copies and strips apart a crashing helicopter like it was LEGO. After his brief time as a superhero -and as a Legend- he’d gone back to his Zen retreat and it turns out he’s learned a bunch of new powers from his spiritual advisor. It’s not all flowers made of lightning though, apparently he’s learned to astral project into the Speed Force and that’s why he’s in town: He’s noticed the Speed Force is acting up, which is confirmed by Barry’s powers fritzing out while cleaning the kitchen. Barry, however, doesn’t want to talk about it.

The new meta of the week can slow down time. Attentive fans might remember we already had one of those: Turtle. Well Cisco has deemed this one…Turtle 2.0. Even Barry notes that it’s not a very imaginative name, but Cisco is all business now, still feeling guilty for Crisis. He doesn’t seem to have even enjoyed his travels, but his complaining has one upside, we learn Atlantis is on Earth Prime now! With that and Gorilla City, it seems we’ve gotten all the cool stuff from Earth-2. Wonder if Jesse is still around?

Speaking of feeling guilty, Wally confronts Barry about his evasiveness and learns that Barry thinks the Speed Force is upset with him because he attacked it while he was infected by Bloodwork. Later we learn that wasn’t it at all, the Speed Force got infected when Barry used the Spectre’s power to enter the Speed Force during Crisis. Well, with all the things Barry has broken over the years, it was only a matter of time before he destroyed the Speed Force itself. We get a super melodramatic scene of Barry watching his mom -as the SF- die yet again. It’s honestly very forced.

One more person returns this episode: Thawne, somehow, ends up possessing Nash. After Nash’s visions for the last few episodes, it was expected, but it’s still a little tiresome to see Thawne yet again. But it does give us an incredible scene: Cisco goes to talk to Nash, and just from the way he closes the door we immediately feel it’s not Nash at all – it’s Thawne. Tom Cavanagh’s incredible acting has been half this show’s success, it is amazing how he can switch between so many characters. Fortunately Thawne doesn’t have his powers in this body, so Cisco survives the encounter.

Thawne ends up in the Pipeline but as usual, he cannot stay quiet. His angry rant reminds Barry that Thawne built his own Negative Speed Force, so he decides to build one of his own! Let’s see if this once again turns out to be part of Thawne’s schemes.