THE FLASH Review: “Success is Assured”

The Flash — “Success Is Assured” Pictured (L-R): Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and Eric Nenninger as Joseph Carver — Photo: Dean Buscher/The CW

The Flash Review: “Success is Assured”

By Justin Carter

And here we are at an ending that shouldn’t really be an ending. With their hand forced by the COVID pandemic shutting down production, the season makes the best of the situation with a would-be finale that is actually not half bad at being a finale. 

Yet again, (nearly) all roads lead to Joseph Carver and Black Hole. Now that Eva is in the real world and rocking a new costume, she’s calling herself Mirror Mistress and focusing on killing him to get back her life. Even though he’s proven to be a thorn in their side, Team Flash still decides to protect him, particularly when Eva nabs Sunshine, Ultraviolet and Dr. Light and attacks him in his safe house. When Mirror Singh tries to get a trade going with Barry in exchange for Iris, Nash pulls a smoke bomb and soon the action-oriented members of Team Flash are defending Carver inside McCulloch Technologies. 

If it weren’t for the situation surrounding it, this would serve as a pretty solid finale to an equally pretty solid season. Everything moves along at a good pace, there’s some solid character development for most of the cast (Cisco is the obvious exception, since he’s still in Atlantis and not in the episode). The highlight of the hour is definitely when it’s Team Flash versus Eva and the aforementioned Black Hole assassins, who’ve turned on their boss now that he no longer has blackmail on them. The assassins all feel like a genuine threat and there’s some neat visual flairs going on, from the abundance of split screen to Mirror Singh cracking open to reveal Eva inside of him, like a faberge egg. (It’s both cool and creepy!) 

The weak link here turns out to be both Caitlin and Iris’ stories, though again, that’s more just a fault of the world we live in. Caitlin was originally planned to be written out for a few episodes to accommodate for Danielle Panabaker’s pregnancy back before this episode was planned to be the finale, and as such her departure feels just unavoidably off. Likewise, Iris’ headaches inside the Mirrorverse feels like it was about to get a payoff next week, what with Iris becoming a Mirror person and then just vanishing. But now, we won’t know what either of those stories entail until October (we hope). 

Still, there’s some real good stuff in this episode that’s worth recommending. Naturally, Eva succeeds and kills Carver by sending a shard of glass that Barry took in the shoulder through him and into Carver’s chest. (Very cool.) She’s quite a good villain for the team to go up against; there’s nothing about her that’s silly or feels out of place, and she wisely doesn’t try to go beyond her aspirations. When she kills Carver, she lets Team Flash live since they’re nothing but ants to her. It’s different from other Big Bads and I hope the extended downtime gives the writing staff a chance to close this off in a good way. 

Additional Notes

• Joe’s back! And just in time. 
• Good news: Sue and her family are now out from under Carver’s thumb after joining Black Hole. Bad news, Eva went and framed Sue for murdering her husband. 
• I very much enjoyed when the show gave a split screen between Sue and Ralph vs. Dr. Light and Sunshine like it was a fighting game. The Mortal Kombat-like poses were much appreciated.