Despite being the fastest man alive, Barry Allen is constantly late--he never has enough time. Just like Barry, The Flash is running out of time with only seven episodes left following this one. But for some reason, the showrunners decided to sit, take a breath, and do a completely standalone episode that doesn't play into either of the story arcs in this last season. The result is one of the most uninteresting and least necessary episodes in all nine seasons of the show. Spoilers follow for The Flash Season 9, Episode 06, "The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky."

"The Good, The Bad, and The Lucky"

As Barry (Grant Gustin) and Iris (Candice Patton) prepare for their new life, luck changes for those in Central City.  Cecile (Danielle Nicolet) takes on a case with Allegra’s (Kayla Compton) help, involving a string of unfortunate – and highly unexpected – events.  Meanwhile, Chester (Brandon McKnight) and the team work with Khione (Danielle Panabaker) to figure out her abilities.

I love the cast of The Flash--pretty much every one of them. Characters like Allegra and Cecile are often there to balance out characters like Barry. But while they thrive as part of the ensemble cast for the most part, the characters can't carry an entire episode.

Cecile is on the case

Barry and Iris are going on a vacation, so they'll be out of the picture for the episode, so the story shifts focus to Cecile as she takes on a case to help a metahuman in trouble. We've met this one before--Becky "Hazard" Sharpe. Becky's power is that she makes her own luck. This was previously at the expense of others' luck, but now she's just a lucky gal. It's thanks to the Crisis, she explains. Only now, her luck has flipped and things are going very badly for her as she's framed for murder. It's all explained by a crystal that inverts dark matter and can short-circuit powers.

The episode centers on Cecile's worries about her divided life. With Joe and their daughter already living out in the country (boy, that was fast), Cecile is sleeping at her office and feeling like she's failing as a mother, lawyer, and superhero, and it takes solving Becky's case for Cecile to get her confidence back and realize that she has to make her own luck.

Time's A Wastin'

If you thought the scenes of Cecile and Joe hemming and hawing about the move in previous episodes felt unnecessary, just wait until you watch a whole episode of it. It's genuinely hard to understand why they put this episode here. It's meant to be a breather between the two arcs of this season, yes, but it's the least interesting way to go about it. It feels more like the result of a contractual obligation or scheduling conflict than like an episode that jumped out of one of the writers' heads.

While this is going on, Mark and Chester are helping Khione--the third incarnation of Danielle Panabaker's ice-themed character--figure out what her special abilities are, since it's pretty clear she revived Mark with that minty-fresh kiss. These scenes are a little bit more fun, but we've done this twice already. We've done it twice already with exactly this character. Panabaker has to be exhausted with these "Who Am I?" storylines she keeps getting dumped into. Frost was a fun character that finally gave her some agency as an actor, only they killed her off and dumped her back into this weird position once again.

You could skip this episode entirely and you wouldn't miss anything about the story for this final season. Is that really the kind of episode you want when time has become so precious with these characters?