**This review contains minor SPOILERS**
Watch the SPOILER review on YouTube
Despite “The Flash” pretty much giving its all last season as it seemed poised to end its run, the show was given a last-minute reprieve, which results in this final season mostly being a hodgepodge of stuff they hadn’t gotten around to yet and some other odds and ends. The result is an uneven season, that if nothing else, has more high points than low.
Like most seasons of “The Flash,” this season features both “Graphic Novels” and Interludes. The first set of episodes finally introduces Red Death. While it made sense for the Arrowverse to use Batwoman in this role, it was a little disappointing not to see Batman used like the comic book counterpart. The overall story was weak, and just never really clicked. The show then switches gears for a four-episode batch that makes up the intermission. These standalone episodes were hit and miss, but it was nice to have simpler stories that were wrapped up in single episodes. The final arc introduces the long-awaited Cobalt Blue. While the story itself had some good ideas, the overall execution was confusing and ultimately rushed. In the end, the finale felt a bit on the over-bloated side as opposed to feeling like the proper conclusion to the series.
Most of the character arcs were fine, more or less continuations of what we’ve seen before from the leads. The biggest wildcards were Chillblaine and Caitlin. Chillblaine’s character arc was all over the place and he was so inconsistent that it seemed apparent they had no clue what to do with his character without Frost in his life. As for as the Snow family, the new iterations of this character was initially pretty subpar, but she slowly grew into one of the more interesting aspects of this season.
The show looked about the same as always, with the effects mostly being fine for what the show needed out of them, but there were still signs of cutting corners. And while the action sequences still mostly consist of Barry running up buildings and throwing lightning bolts, there were a couple nice hand to hand fight scenes thrown in the mix.
Feeling more like a tacked-on epilogue to season 8, the 9th and final season of “The Flash” is more like the show running in place than racing towards the finish. Some cool returning characters and the show wrapping up some loose ends kept things interesting, but the same old story beats and character arcs dragged the show down.
** out of *****