Personally, this is an episode I’ve had bookmarked for a while. There was a large amount of hype around this episode as Kevin Smith directed it. I’ve always been a fan of Kevin Smith and the idea of him teaming up with the writer of X-Men First Class to create an episode of my favourite TV shows was really exciting.

Apart from that though I was really excited about this episode in general after the epic episode we got last week. I thought this episode started great with them picking up right where we left off. I like how the characters found out pretty early that Barry was still alive. I thought it was a smart move to make as us as the audience already knew what had happened.

I really loved the introduction to the speed force. Having read parts of the New 52 of the Flash, seeing a physically representation of the speed force was great. I really loved how they used Joe, Iris, Henry and Barry’s mother as the physical representation of the speed force. I thought the way it was set up and what it actually accomplished was fantastic.

I really loved Cisco this episode, I thought he was extremely well written. Everything from the Walking Dead reference to just his short lines of humour were really spot on. “Glad your back Barry because we are about to be dead”,”Are you like magic now?”. Also I really liked to see more of Cisco’s powers. We knew he could Vibe across dimensions but seeing him Vibe into the speed force was amazing. I really hope we get to explore a lot more of Cisco as Vibe next season because they are really setting him up to be great.

For me, that taking a villain of the week aspect wasn’t really needed this episode. I felt that there was so much going on with Barry in the speed force and Jesse in a coma that we had plenty of material to be explored. We did get a bit of fan service with an appearance from Jason Mewes with this however which was nice to see.

I though Grant Gustin was fantastic as always. This was one of my favourite performances by Grant Gustin. We really got to see him act to a brick wall in a sense. While it was the characters we know already, they weren’t playing the ones we know. They overall were really bland and it was up Gustin to bring the performance. And he really did. We really got to see Barry as a character reflect on his time as the Flash and we got some fantastic emotional moments that he nailed. I really loved the scenes when he met the speed force as his mother and they have a conversation before Barry quotes the whole children’s book in the next scene. It really reminded me of one of my favourite Earth 2 scenes when Earth 1 Barry talks to his Earth 2 mother. I thought the emotion he brought in that scene was topped by what he did in these scenes. I think that Kevin Smith would of really loved directing this scene because he loves the relationship between Barry and his mother.

The ending to this episode was one of my favourite I’ve seen through the Flash. I think they really tied this episode up really well with providing a fantastic reflection from Barry on the episode that we just went through with Barry finally visiting his mothers grave. The final scene with Zoom was also great. I was thinking that this close to the end the episodes really had to be Zoom heavy but this one wasn’t and I thought that they did a fantastic job keeping Zoom out of it for the most part while still building to the end. I also think a few hints were dropped for future episodes with Henry saying he is staying, I think his going to be dead by the end of the season.

I really loved this episode. After an extremely amazing episode last week, for me this topped it. While I’ll admit that the villain of the week story was pretty weak, there was simply so much amazing aspects to this episode that this is one of my favourite episodes of all time. Last week got a 10/10 and I don’t see much different this week.

10/10