'The Flash' Season 6 Episode 17: Was the death of Mirror Iris the biggest sacrifice this season?
Spoilers for 'The Flash' Season 6 Episode 17 'Liberation'
The death of Mirror Iris (Candice Patton) was the closest the show came to killing off a major character. And while Patton fans will be heaving a collective sigh of relief that it wasn't the real Iris West-Allen who died in her attempt to escape the Mirror world and save Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). It is almost sad to see Iris sacrifice herself as she starts breaking into fragments in Barry's arms. That she was more human than a mirror version made it a sort of bittersweet ending to the character.
Which leads us to the question: Was this the biggest sacrifice we'll get to see in Season 6?
Well, yes and no. To support 'Yes', the mere fact that the writers gave a more human touch to Mirror Iris meant a more personal loss to Barry. It was the second time he saw Iris die, assuming we count the anti-matter wave that had a fair share of consuming characters before the heroes defeated the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett). As far as the other characters are concerned, there really isn't a reason to kill most of them as they chip in with their roles.
'No' has a lot to do with Gustin's thoughts on team Flash recreating the artificial Speed Force. According to Comicbook, Gustin was quoted saying: "Barry will have the Speed Gauge that Cisco and Caitlin developed to register how much energy he is using and make sure he is not wasting his speed, but in the meantime, this artificial Speed Force isn’t going to come together as quickly as we would like it to. And when they eventually do find a way to get it to work, it comes with a pretty big sacrifice for the team."
'Liberation' gave a first glimpse of the Speed Force machine Cisco has constructed and despite the positive start, it fails. And that means there is still no idea of the sort of sacrifice that we're looking at. Hopefully, it won't mean killing off one of the members of Team Flash.
What are your thoughts on the death of MirrorIris?
'The Flash' Season 6 airs Tuesdays 8 pm ET on the CW.