The Flash S06 EP14 spoiler review

Episode 14 of the Flash, appropriately titled, "The Death of the Speed Force," gave us some major changes to the show as a whole as well as pushed forward a lot of the currently ongoing storylines in the season so far! So with a fair bit to talk about, here is my review of the 14th episode in season 6!
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Starting off with some of the smaller storylines before getting to the bigger stuff, there wasn't a lot of Iris and Eva in this episode but potentially a new advancement by the end of the episode. Kamilla took a picture of fake Iris early in the episode and in the end finds out that the camera registered her as a strange energy rather than a regular person (Assuming it did that thanks to Cisco's modifications). This leads to fake Iris blasting her with the mirror gun, causing her to vanish. Has she been transported to the mirror world? I doubt the show would kill her off so unceremoniously. I'd love to see Flash explore the mirror world a bit more than the show has done so far, hopefully there's more than just an empty city.

Ralph was absent without being mentioned, and Allegra was gone as well, but that made room for Cisco's return from his expedition to catalog all of the new changes on Earth prime. He didn't tell us a whole lot, but did mention that Atlantis now exists on Earth 1 so maybe one day we will get to visit it! His plot revolved his own self views, as he didn't undergo a life changing evolution like Wally and Caitlin/Killer Frost did after traveling the world; though Caitlin talks him into being his own force of change and a good person. Nash had previously come to him for help only to be blown off, and Cisco by the end of the episode went to aid him only to find that Thawne had already taken possession of Nash's body; albeit without the powers. This allows Cisco and Cecil to gain the upper hand and capture him, locking him up in the pipeline where the end of the episode sees him viciously threatening Barry and Cisco that he will kill them. To be honest I don't totally like the direction they've lately been taking Reverse Flash. I really liked his complexity in season 1 of being their ally and genuinely caring for them even if he did want to kill them, but ultimately his goal was the return home. At this point he just seems like a shallow murderer who only exists to kill Barry Allen, which I think is accurate to some of his comic versions but it just isn't what the show has given us before. Such a deep, layered character has been reduced to proclaiming how intensely he will murder the main character and it just seems like a major step back for his development and motivations.

The main action of the episode saw Wally coming back for a long awaited reunion with Barry. I've always thought the show didn't know quite what to do with him, but having Wally be this zen character totally in tune with the speed force and himself really works I think. It was fantastic seeing him among the cast once again, though the episode quickly got into the purpose of his return: there was something wrong with the speed force. He has learned a few new abilities, such as harnessing his energy to create constructs, but also how to communicate with the speed force himself while Barry always needed the speed force to come to him. They visit the speed force together and find out that it is dying because of what Barry did, leading Wally to blow up on him and storm out. Barry visits the speed force himself using the tachyon device, and discovers that when he brought the Spectre's energy into the speed force during Crisis that is what poisoned it; then Barry watches the speed force die in the form of his mother. This goes without saying that this episode involved one of the most impactful deaths in the show because the death of the speed force means the death of a major concept that has been present since day one of the show! Barry and Wally convene about this, after Wally gets a Joe-speech about being a nicer person and not so angry, and they understand that their powers are going to leave them and whatever they have left is just residual. The villain of the episode isn't much to talk about, it was a new version of Turtle but she seemed much less powerful. Barry and Wally were still able to run while in her presence, whereas the old Turtle stopped Flash dead in his tracks. They defeat her, and Wally departs back to his peace corps. Meanwhile, Flash decides that with the speed force now gone he will create his own just like Reverse Flash did.

A whole lot happened in the episode and I liked a lot of what they did. The Iris stuff is something I'm hoping advances more than it has in the last few episodes, though I'm also surprised with how long she's been kept in the mirror world. I do like the idea of Thawne possessing Nash's body following Crisis but his characterization seems to have divulged into generic, crazy, killer villain mode. And the death of the speed force is one of the most important things to happen in the shows history and I can't wait to see what the fallout of it entails as well as how Barry's own speed force comes along. Will the other speedsters be able to access it like Wally? We'll see!