THE FLASH Review: “Love is a Battlefield”

The Flash — “Love Is A Battlefield”Pictured (L-R): Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and Candice Patton as Iris West – Allen — Photo: Michael Courtney/The CW

THE FLASH REVIEW: “LOVE IS A BATTLEFIELD”

BY JUSTIN CARTER

With Valentine’s Day landing in a few days, it of course makes sense that Flash would dive right on into that with an episode titled after a well known love song. Love stories have always been baked into the show’s DNA, and the trio of tales here all work very well. 

The B-story, because it’s the shortest of these, sees Killer Frost work on becoming a life coach for Allegra. With V-Day coming up, Allegra is pining for a guy she ghosted back when she was still trying to get a handle on her life and didn’t want him to reject her for being a metahuman. It’s cute, and the story finally confirms what’s been teased in recent weeks, that a version of Allegra is Nash’s daughter, something Frost notes when she parrots his “parent-like” advice back to Allegra.  

Elsewhere, the A-story is all about Iris, opening up the episode coming out of the mirror she was so abruptly yanked into at the end of last week’s episode. The following day, she’s acting very weird; not only can she actually cook now (still love that gag), but she knows Italian and just feels generally off. When Amunet and her ex Goldface show up in town both fighting each other over a powerful plant with telekinetic powers, Barry and Iris team up to take them down. Iris keeps acting weird, going so far as to hop into a seedy bar and knock someone unconscious to find Amunet, and then finally explodes at Barry for preparing her for a future of loneliness post-Crisis that didn’t actually happen. 

If there were anyone able to work as a weird parallel to Barry and Iris, it would definitely be Goldface and Amunet. Katee Sackhoff continues to be delightfully unhinged, and she and Damion Poitier are a lot of fun together when they start bickering in the middle of a heist like That Couple we’ve all seen while out and about late and night. The romcom vibes are heavy in this superhero outing, complete with a shootout in the middle of a flower shop and Goldface and Amunet hooking up at the end. (To “Love is a Battlefield,” because of course.) 

Of course, at the end of the episode, we finally find out just why Iris is acting so weird, and it turns out it’s not her. The real Iris is trapped in a mirror world while the one we spent all episode with is her mirror opposite (to some extent). Next week looks like we’ll get our answers as to just what is going on with her, and the other side of the mirror.

Additional Notes 

• Goldface went to Yale, which I’ll accept, but am I to believe that between he and Amunet, she was the one who turned him on to NWA?
• “Your American accent sucks!” “So does yours!” “…I’m from Connecticut!” 
• Barry really doesn’t want anyone calling his suit a onesie. 
• Have you seen Birds of Prey yet? You should.