Bloodwork takes Central City and Crisis arrives in the latest Flash

As expected, Team Flash’s big battle with the super-goo baddie Bloodwork came to a head this week, just in time to clear the way for this weekend’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. But how did it all play out?

Spoilers ahead for The Flash’s “The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part 2,” which aired Tuesday, December 3, 2019 on The CW.

Bloodwork continued to control Barry, after taking him over last week as Barry seemingly gave in to Ramsey’s temptation to use his black goo immortality to avoid death in the pending Crisis.  But it turns out that while Bloodwork was influencing and using Flash, Barry took this mind meld opportunity to influence Ramsey with some of his goodness and conscience. We realize this week Barry has actually been trying to tip off the team to aspects of his plan along the way (as Cisco and Iris try to figure out how to work together without Barry), and using his control over Bloodwork to keep him from killing the team. It works, and Barry manages to manifest Ramsey’s mother long enough to distract him and toss him in a cell at STAR Labs actually strong enough to hold his powers. Bloodwork also briefly turns into a CGI abomination, Doomsday looking mess of a creature for a minute, too, but let’s just forget that. It was rough.

Of course, eventual defeat didn’t stop Ramsey from taking over half the city with his black goo powers in the meantime, though, as he cut the power to the city and infected wave upon wave of unsuspecting Central City residents. With the lights out and the lumbering infected wandering around, “Last Temptation” managed to channel some truly fun and creepy horror tropes along the way — most notably when Cecile and Allegra were sneaking their way out of a building, using Cecile’s empathy powers as a sort of “zombie detector.” Allegra also gets a chance to play a key role in saving the city — as Cisco comes up with a great McGuffin idea to amplify her ultraviolet powers through the lab’s particle accelerator to basically flash fry the black goo infection out of the entire city.

Though the city’s saved and the black goo infection clear, Ramsey remains infected — and alive — in his cell at STAR Labs. So, he seems to be safely on ice for Crisis, but the door is left wide open for Ramsey to cause more trouble down the line.

It’s not until the final few moments that Crisis comes into light, and the team spends those touching few minutes before the skies burn red reminiscing about their journey to this point. They look back at the simpler days taking down “baddie of the week” metahumans, before the multiverse and “event” happenings were commonplace. It’s a sweet moment, reflecting not only on just how much the show has grown and evolved in six years, but also how they’ve grown in one another’s lives as friends and surrogate family.

Even with Crisis here, the team turns and faces it together. Here’s hoping they all manage to survive this thing.

As for Nash, his underground dig to find the Monitor’s hideout finally has some success, as The Monitor tells him the knowledge he seeks is here. He touches the symbols and is sucked into a blinding bright light. So presumably Nash is the version of Wells that turns into Pariah that we’ve gleaned in those pics and trailers from the crossover? It seems likely.

Up next: The Crisis kicks off Sunday night, so if you wait until next Tuesday you’re gonna miss a lot. So be sure to set your DVR and tune in.