After a devastating betrayal, Barry turns to Timeless Wells for help. Meanwhile, Iris leads Team Citizen down a dangerous road in search of answers, and Cisco confides his biggest fear to Kamilla.
Tropes:
- Always Someone Better: Iris's fear is revealed to be that she won't ever be as good a mother as Barry's was.
- Antagonistic Offspring: The Forces are treated as Barry's and Iris's children. Joe even makes the direct comparison to how he and Wally first met.
- Back from the Dead: Alexa is revived by Barry and Iris when they realize they can jumpstart a Force.
- Beyond Redemption: What Barry considers the Forces, especially Nora, at first. Iris disagrees.
- Breaking Speech: Nora, in Psych's illusion, tries to give one to Iris, telling her she'll never measure up to her. She manages to resist and break through the illusion.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Timeless Wells returns in this episode.
- Kamilla also returns.
- Deon and Psych return.
- But Now I Must Go:
- Timeless Wells, at the end of the episode.
- Both Kamilla and Cisco come to the same conclusion that they will soon have to leave Central City.
- Conflict Ball: Barry repeats the point that the Speed Force does not care who gets in its way to kill the other forces, but everyone else on Team Flash expresses doubt that it's not the right thing to do. Barry wants to uncreate them to spare the people they bonded with but, for whatever reason, everyone is treating it like uncreating a force is killing a person anyways. Stranger still, since they're all introduced as villains callously terrorizing and murdering people; Cisco's argument that Deon just wants to be himself comes just after Deon proclaims to be a god, something Barry conspicuously doesn't bring up. Psych is a sadist that rejects Iris's offer of redemption so he can keep torturing people.
- Create Your Own Villain: Barry and Iris were responsible for creating the Forces.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: With the allegory of Barry and Iris being the Forces' "parents", the attempted act of erasing them could be compared to a couple considering abortion.
- A God Am I: Both Psych and Deon have dellusions of godhood.
- Horrifying the Horror: Deon, despite initially putting up a tough guy act, is seemingly horrified by the Speed Force when the latter confronts him.
- Internal Reveal: Deon and Psych learn about their origins.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Alexa wakes up, seemingly confused how she even got there.
- Lured into a Trap: Psych lures Iris, Kamilla and Allegra to Barry's childhood home, where they think they'll find Nora.
- Never My Fault: The Speed Force refuses to take up responsibility for killing Alexa, instead blaming Barry for creating her in the first place.
- Not Good with Rejection: The Speed Force takes Barry's refusal to help her kill the other Forces pretty poorly.
- Redemption Rejection: Iris attempts to get through to Psych, only for him to willfully ignore it.
- The Reveal: It turns out that back in 7x03, Timeless Wells was looking at a future version of himself and Barry trying to prevent the birth of the new Forces.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Barry's plan is to travel back in time to the night the forces were created and undo their existence. He does travel back with Timeless Wells, but ends up not going through with it.
- Shoot the Dog: Barry attempts to do this by preventing the Forces from ever being created, but relents after heeding the words of his friends and family.
- Shout-Out: Wells in 2000 is talking about President Bartlet while watching TV.
- Spotting the Thread: Deon immediately notices that something is off and then quickly recognizes Barry as the one responsible for his creation.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: Iris, Kamilla and Allegra trying to find Nora and being set up by Psych is treated with the same importance as the rest of Team Flash going back in time to try and stop the Forces from being created.
- Undying Loyalty: Despite Cisco disagreeing with him, he still helps Barry to go back in time.
- Unwanted Assistance: Deon does not want Barry helping him to become normal.
- Wham Shot: The Speed Force confronts Deon, performing Thawne's infamous vibrating hand motion.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Everyone besides Barry on Team Flash seems to take the Sentient Cosmic Force to its logical conclusion and argue from the premise that Barry uncreating the other forces is like killing a person. Iris in particular talks like Nora is the person herself instead of just the form the Speed Force assumed. Barry, who has always been firmly opposed to killing people, merely assumes that the forces are just mindless energy that got bonded to human hosts. Deon is quick to disabuse him of this notion, declaring that he is the Still Force in human form, not a human that got imbued with energy.
