Barry vs. a black hole, and Crisis kicks off in the Flash Season 6 premiere

The Flash is back for his sixth season, with everything from a new villain to a James Bond-ish evolution of Dibny. Oh, not to mention the pesky Crisis on Infinite Earths to contend with later this year.

Spoilers ahead for “Into the Void,” the Season 6 premiere of The CW’s Flash, which aired Tuesday, October 8, 2019.

The case of the week this time around was a fun one to kick things off, though it was pushing the boundaries of silliness to keep it together (basically a guy’s brain is half in a black hole, so Barry has to run into the black hole and pull his consciousness back out and toss it in a MacGuffin to fix him? That about sums it up). Regardless, it was mostly an opportunity to have a few random black holes pop up in Central City, and it gave The Flash an excuse to run into one.

It also gave Cisco a moment to rock out to Queen’s “Flash.” It’s amazing to think it took this long.

But, it was all the stuff around it that really mattered. We get a time jump of four months from the end of last season, and though they’re putting on brave faces, Barry and Iris are still reeling from the loss of their future daughter Nora — though Iris certainly seems to be struggling the most with living a life without her. The team has also spent the summer shutting down some bizarro Godspeeds (four and counting) that basically sound like 56K modems once they’re finally stopped. Plenty of mystery to go around with that one. Best guess, maybe it’s something  Reverse Flash has orchestrated from the future?

This season also wasted no time introducing its latest big bad, though with the Crisis pending, it stands to reason he won’t remain a threat through the entire season. Caitlin’s old friend Dr. Ramsey Rosso (Heroes alum Sendhil Ramamurthy) shows up in town, mourning the recent loss of his mother. It also turns out he’s suffering from the same ailment. But, in the wake of her death he’s concocted a new miracle cure — with the secret ingredient being dark matter (you know, the volatile stuff that turns folks into metahumans). Caitlin refuses to share Star Labs’ supply, so he steals some to test the cure on himself. It seems to work, with his infection rate going down immediately. But, then his arm turns black and he starts showing off some meta human abilities. Thus, the new baddie Bloodwork is born.

Killer Frost also gets some screen time this week, and it looks like she’ll be getting a lot more. Frost has a heart-to-heart with Caitlin, and tells her she’d like to have her own life. So, Frost is jumping in the driver’s seat for a while.

The big reveal is saved for the closing moments, though, when the Monitor showed up in the Time Vault to warn Barry and Iris they don’t have a few more years left to figure out what happens when Barry mysteriously vanishes in the “Crisis” (an event teased in a future newspaper, set-up all the way back in the show’s pilot episode). It’s happening now-ish, just a few months away, on December 10, 2019. He also brings a dire message that, no matter what they do, The Flash has to die. Exactly how all that plays out will be the fun part to figure out.

Next week: Fresh off the update that the Crisis is happening this year, Barry put together a plan to try and figure out what happens — and get a peek at the aftermath. He seems to be jumping ahead to the day after he disappears to see what the world looks like in the Crisis’ wake. It, umm, doesn’t look pretty.

The CW