Title: The Flash: “Love is a Battlefield” Review
Release Date: February 11th, 2020
Network: The CW
Genre: Superhero, Drama, Action
And we have our first dud of The Flash season 6. It was a great run while it lasted.
Up to this point, The Flash season 6 has been a little darker in its tone. We’ve seen some serious stuff happen, including last week’s excellent cliffhanger that saw Iris get trapped in the Mirror Dimension. That may be why this episode was so jarring to me. We went from “Man, Crisis was a huge deal and now we have this interesting secret organization that’s killing people” to “Here’s Katee Sackhoff over-acting the hell out of things”.
Look, Katee Sackhoff is a good actress and a lot of people who have seen her in Battlestar Galactica would probably agree. Completely unrelated to this but she was who I wanted to see as Captain Marvel back in the day. That being said, she plays Amunet Black with too much campiness. I get that Amunet is supposed to be crazy and over-the-top but we were hitting new levels this week. I started having flashbacks to The Flash season 5 with Cicada and Batman and Robin with Mister Freeze. Those are not fun memories.
It’s a bit frustrating as well because I believe Amunet has the potential to be an awesome character, especially with Sackhoff in the role. I only wish she would dial back the absurdity two or three notches. To be fair, when Goldface entered the picture, it seemed like that’s exactly what happened.
Speaking of Goldface, I loved the character in his introductory episode last season so I’m ecstatic to see him back on the show. However, the bickering between Goldface and Amunet was probably where the episode officially lost me. I get what the writers were going for with their relationship and (somewhat) comparing them to what’s going on with Barry and Iris. Unfortunately, it wasn’t executed very well. Like Amunet, Goldface has the potential to be a great character. Maybe officially pairing them up will do the trick, who knows?
The Frost/Allegra storyline was sort of just there. I don’t care about Allegra any more now than I did last week. While it is entertaining to see Frost slowly become a better person, I don’t think this was a breakout moment for her either. Shockingly, I found the scenes between Frost and Nash to be the most interesting.
Much like every new Wells that has come to the series, Nash is the outcast of the group who has to earn the team’s trust. The reason this is more compelling this time around is Crisis on Infinite Earths and Nash’s role in lighting the fuse. He started something that ended with the deaths of every other Wells in the multiverse. Now, it looks like he’s going to have to face that fact. On top of that, we still have to see what exactly happened with his Earth’s version of Allegra. As storylines go, I’m optimistic about Nash going forward.
I’m going to go ahead and say the same for Iris. I know, I know. That wasn’t really Iris. But this Mirror Iris made some good points in her fight with Barry.
As a character, Iris has really grown. It’s not something that happened over the course of an episode or a season but throughout the show’s six-season run so far. She isn’t a side character who just gets saved by Barry anymore. Ironically, she probably does need to be saved from that mirror. But most of the time, she has it handled. She’s also not one-half of The Flash either like season 4 tried to push as a narrative instead of giving her a worthwhile arc. Now, Iris is her own character who doesn’t have to be attached to Barry in every storyline. To me, that opens the door for other cool stories in the future like what we saw in “Marathon”.
This episode didn’t have many laugh-out-loud moments but it was hilarious to see The Flash continue the running joke that Iris can’t cook. Going into this week, I saw a theory online joking that this was how Barry would discover something was off about Iris. I can’t believe they were (somewhat) right.
So, where do we go from here after the show’s first disappointing episode of season 6? I honestly don’t know and I’m… kinda excited by that. This series is always better when we don’t know the process. Black Hole and Mirror Master could be the main antagonists of season 6b. Or we could see them be defeated with 4-5 episodes to go and finally see Barry face off against Red Death. Or you can replace Red Death with Godspeed, who we had some setup for in the first episode of the season. It’s all up in the air.
Verdict: “Love is a Battlefield” was the first dud of The Flash season 6. Other than Mirror Iris and Barry’s arc, most of the other storylines fell flat. Sure, there were some good moments but nothing that kept you invested for the episode. Hopefully, the series will bounce back next week now that we can put the focus on what exactly is going on with Iris.
The Flash: “Love is a Battlefield” Review
Barry and Iris’ arcs
I’m feeling confident about Nash’s character going forward
Excited to see where the series goes with this Mirror Master story and the Mirror Dimension
Too much campiness
Amunet Black and Goldface’s storyline
The Frost/Allegra arc was… just there
