The Flash – “P.O.W.”

Director: Marcus Stokes

Writers: Kristen Kim and Dan Fisk

Don’t worry, that’s not a picture of the new live-action Impulse. It’s longtime Green Arrow sidekick John Diggle, who’s been making the rounds of all the Arrowverse shows to promote what may be an upcoming Green Lantern series. Maybe. I don’t know and don’t really care. The fact of the matter is Diggle basically accomplishes nothing in this episode, randomly arriving at the beginning and leaving in an even more abrupt manner in the end.

Of course, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. This year has been a hard one for Bart Allen. In January, an alternate version of Bart was presented and killed in the first few pages of a Future State issue. In March and April, the regular Flash comic series had Wally West possess Bart’s body — but we didn’t actually see Bart do anything. In May, Bart made very minor cameos in Suicide Squad and Teen Titans Academy — cameos so inconsequential, I decided to not officially review them. And that brings us to July, when we finally got another appearance of a version of Bart Allen. And this is a pretty big one.

The Flash debuted on The CW in 2014, spinning out of the grim, gritty Arrow. After years of Smallville and Arrow embarrassedly burying anything that felt too much like a superhero, The Flash was a breath of fresh air. The first two seasons were engaging, entertaining and exciting. But repetition hampered Season 3, as the show slowly, but surely, morphed into little more than a soap opera in colorful costumes. That’s when I bowed out. To come back now three years later, I’m a little sad to see so many of the same actors stuck in the same rut. Squeeze into an ill-fitting, ugly costume. Stand perfectly still and apart from everybody on your marks. Spout out a few nonsensical lines of dialogue. And, when called upon, pretend to cry real hard. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Hey, I guess it’s a paycheck. Is there an audience for this drivel? Apparently yes. Albeit a rapidly dwindling one.

Anyway, our episode begins with Barry Allen having a troubling dream about his daughter, Nora. In the comics, Barry and Iris had twins — a boy and a girl named Don and Dawn. But on this show, they had a daughter who was born with super speed and became the hero XS (instead of Barry’s granddaughter, Jenni Ognats, from the comics). Nora has previously shown up in a few time-traveling adventures, so Barry isn’t surprised to see her. But he is disturbed by her message of the future changing and the way she dramatically fades away to nothing.

Barry wakes up to a long, confusing and boring “war” between a seemingly infinite number of Godspeed clones. As I previously stated, John Diggle shows up to help, but ultimately accomplishes nothing before he abruptly leaves for mysterious reasons. And there are bunch of pointless side plots that only serve to stall for time, since the budget demands all the real action not occur until the two-part season finale beginning next episode. The only part of this episode that we actually care about comes at the very end. Nora suddenly shows up in Barry’s lab and awkwardly introduces her little brother, Bart, who arrives just about 30 seconds after her. He calls Barry “Pops” and proclaims the lab “crash” as credits role. 

Played by Jordan Fisher, this version of Bart wears a costume very similar to the original Impulse outfit, although with gold lightning trim and silver instead of white. Instead of the long, flowing hair of the comics, this Bart has lightning bolts shaved into the side of his head underneath a curly top. He has also painted his fingernails silver — a rather distracting choice. After Kyle Gallner in Smallville, Fisher is just the second actor to portray Bart in a live-action show. His appearance in this episode is far too brief to give a fair review. But I will say his costume is unflattering. It makes Fisher look fat, which is unfortunate because he’s not, having come from a dancing/singing background. I’ll also question the use of the word “crash.” Impulse used that word in the animated Young Justice because he grew up in a world controlled by the Reach and he was obsessed with literally crashing their mode. It wasn’t just a random word that sounded fun.

Those are my only nitpicks for now. Don’t worry, I’ll have a lot more complaints when I review the next two episodes. For now, I’ll just say that I am glad that Bart has finally shown up on this show. I’m just sad that it’s now a pale imitation of what it once was. There never was a chance for this Bart Allen to be as lovable as the Bart from the comics.

Next time, we begin the two-part season finale of The Flash.