Running on Empty: The Flash Season 7 Released on Blu-ray

COVID was not kind to the production of The Flash. Season 6 had to end abruptly with Iris (Candice Patton) trapped in the mirror universe by Eva McCulloch (Efrat Dor). The lack of closure of the "big bad" story of the season gave the seventh season an awkward start as the first few episodes are really the end of the previous season. After that, we meander aimlessly into a season where Barry (Grant Gustin) and Iris somehow give birth to an entire anthropomorphically personified "forces of the universe" family, including the reborn Speed Force (Michelle Harrison).

Most of the season revolves around finding these lost "children" and giving them a good talking to -- while preventing the Speed Force from killing them all. Complicating this are the arrival of their real children-to-come, Nora and Bart -- aka XS and Impulse (Jessica Parker Kennedy, Jordan Fisher) -- from the future, here to help with a problem from their timeline -- the battle of the multiple Godspeeds fighting each other in Central City, while the main Godspeed, August Heart (Karan Oberoi), wanders the streets with amnesia of the villain he used to be.

As has been happening with increasing frequency, battles aren't won by the Flash's powers of super-speed, but through communication and empathy. While that may be an admirable solution path for a real world set of problems, it's not the stuff of supposedly escapist fare. Unfortunately, for a series that was supposed to be about the impossible, the plots have become incredibly mundane.