Flash Forward #6 Review

Sit Down and Relax

Written By: Scott Lobdell

Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Luis Guerrero, Troy Peteri

Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: February 19, 2020

We've come to the end of our Wally West six-issue mini, where a lot of us were hoping that we'd get some kind of redemption to our favorite Flash for the accidental deaths of his friends in Heroes In Crisis. Has it exactly lived up to those ideas? Well, no, but we've been doing some dives into Wally's psyche and we've been getting the idea that a lot of this mess with the Dark Multiverse infection was somehow going on during his time that he disappeared in the creation of the New 52 Multiverse, not to mention the disappearance of his children, Jai and Iris. Let's jump into this issue and see if it ends on a high note and if we can look at Wally West the way we used to before so many of his friends died because of him. Let's check it out.

Even though I was going into this book hoping for big explanations about Wally West and what's been going on with him since his return at the beginning of the Rebirth era or even his disappearance beforehand (even though we briefly touched on that during this series), what we get instead actually might work better for a lot people than exposition that tries to make everything make sense, but usually only digs itself deeper into nonsense. This my friends is a story about family and what someone like our hero Wally West would do for said family, especially since that's all he's wanted since the end of the Flash War in The Flash #50........ and you know what? To my surprise after reading this issue. That's all I really want for Wally West too. 

In this issue we see that this Dark Multiverse world that was created by Wally West through the fears of him losing his children and what is causing the Dark Matter infection throughout the regular Multiverse won't disappear as others do because of it coming from Wally West and every time it begins to decay through entropy, Wally's unmoored powers keep it going. This all leads to a more cosmic conclusion to this story, where it seems the Universe, the Multiverse or even something more has plans for Wally and makes him into something that can change the face of everything we know about DC Comics and while I wasn't exactly hip on this metamorphosis, it is something new and creates two new ideas for an object and a character. Not to mention that by the end Wally gets what he wants, even if it's not exactly how he wanted it initially.

All in all, the art in this issue continued to be amazing as we've seen through the rest of the series and even though the grand scheme of fighting back the Dark Matter infection felt like a moot point by this finale, I was happy with what we got here because it not only adds a cool new dynamic for the world of Earth-0, but adds to the overall Multiverse with what role Wally West will play going forward. It really leaves you intrigued with what DC Comics can do with these characters going forward and I can only hope that they give the West Family a break from destruction for a while because I need to see this new status quo explored a bit before terrible things start happening to everyone again.

Bits and Pieces:

Was this the outcome I was looking for when I first picked up Flash Forward #1? No, but that's not necessarily a bad thing because what we do get is a new status quo for our favorite Flash and the idea that things going forward can be opened up and explored in interesting ways. I loved the art in this issue and while I was happy with this conclusion, I wish that we would have dealt more with what the endgame was throughout the series than really doing nothing for the majority of this mini.

7.8/10