The Flash Season 7 Is Making Barry Allen’s Power Useless

Barry Allen’s speed in The Flash is becoming useless in season 7, and that’s an issue the show needs to fix soon. Recent episodes of the Arrowverse series haven’t done a good job at reinforcing his reputation as the Fastest Man Alive.

Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) struggled considerably against his metahuman opponents in season 6, but for good reason. When the Speed Force died, he was left with only a fraction of his speedster powers. For a while, the character had to lead his allies into battle despite not being able to run at full speed. However, they managed to survive the season and everything it threw at them. After an attempt to build an artificial Speed Force went wrong early in season 7, Iris (Candace Patton) helped him revive the original version. As result, Barry has the Speed Force back, and is finally able to get the most out of his abilities again.

The problem, though, is that Barry’s speed hasn’t been doing him much good in season 7. Despite the fact that the new Mirror Master (Efrat Dor) isn’t a speedster, it was confirmed that she’s faster than the Flash. It was for this reason that Barry couldn’t beat her in their big fight. She only stopped fighting them because he convinced her that what she was doing was wrong. Barry had to do the same with Abra Kadabra (David Dastmalchian) in the following episode. He even admitted to the villain that he couldn’t win. In episode 5, the hero was overwhelmed by Psych’s nightmare-inducing powers. In the aftermath of their encounter, Barry agonizing over his belief that he was incapable of defeating Psych, and in the end, they had to count on Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) to do most of the work by using DaVoe’s chair.

For episode 6’s time travel story, the Scarlet Speedster was sidelined by the injuries he sustained against Psych, but looking at the way things have been going, there’s a good chance that he wouldn’t have stopped Deon (Christian Magby) anyway. What all this boils down to is that the Flash’s powers have been rather pointless in season 7. But that shouldn’t be the case. Thanks to the Speed Force, Barry possesses what is one of the most useful powers in the Arrowverse, and that’s why it’s hard to understand why he wasn’t able to take down Psych, Mirror Master, or Abra Kadabra.

Barry’s speed not being good enough to save the day is unfortunately becoming a recurring theme. Lately, Team Flash has to had to rely on their own enemies’ compassion to win, and that’s not a good direction for the show to take, or at least not on a regular basis. The main character failing to win and then having to talk the villain out of fighting isn’t an exciting or fun formula for a superhero series, and one that will hopefully be abandoned in the near future. The Flash needs to remind viewers that Barry can be a force to be reckoned with in combat.

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