THE FLASH “Cause and XS” Review

The Flash — “Cause and XS” — Pictured: Jessica Parker Kennedy as XS — Photo: Katie Yu/The CW

THE FLASH “CAUSE AND XS” REVIEW

BY JUSTIN CARTER

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: there’s a piece of media this week about a young woman stuck in a time loop who has to save her friends from dying at the hands of a deranged killer, and she slowly loses her mind as she deals with the anxiety of watching her loved ones get murdered over and over again.

No, this is not Happy Death Day 2U, but this week’s episode of The Flash, as “Cause and XS” puts Nora front and center for her own time loop episode. Barry has to sit this episode out in order to bring Cisco’s metahuman cure to the Speed Force, which takes approximately an hour, long enough for the show’s runtime and for everything to go horribly wrong. Cicada shows up and kidnaps Iris, which then leads to Caitlin getting killed when Team Flash goes to rescue her. Then Nora runs back in time, saves Iris, dooms and gets Ralph killed, then Sherloque, and … you get the idea. This happens 52 times, but we only see a couple of them play out completely, with the rest included in a montage that’s bleak and tiring to watch as it likely was intended to be.

Despite what should sound like a downer episode, things actually are pretty sprightly throughout, thanks in part to Cisco’s storyline where he keeps repeating a bad date. Each time he shows up as what he thinks his date Kamilla is into, so he goes from snobby businessman to gym rat to Instagram model. They’re all various shades of funny, if one can get past the instant cringe of watching repeated dates be botched. Over the weekend, rumors began to swirl around that this would be Carlos Valdes’ last season as a regular. Kamilla’s presence certainly seems to leaning towards that notion.

As a winter somewhat finale, “Cause and XS” gets the job done in paving the way for the last stretch of episodes. There’s some good character work done here for Nora and Cisco especially, and it delivers on its promise of a crazy time loop adventure. See you in all in March when things really pop off.

Additional Notes

• Nora probably could have saved herself a lot of time if she just went around the building in some of her loops instead of taking the same path. This is, of course, assuming that she didn’t in one of the loops we didn’t see.
• In regards to those rumors, I wouldn’t particularly be upset or shocked if Valdes did indeed leave. It seems like every Arrowverse show has been getting rid of recurring actors who’ve been around since day one — look at Legends. Their current cast only has three actors from the pilot.
• Coming in March when the series returns: King Shark v. Gorilla Grodd! The thing I didn’t know I needed until it was floated out back in the season premiere!