It’s been an interesting few months on The Flash – some things were said, some more will be said now. This is a show I can’t quite decide if I like or not. That said, this has at least had more focus than Arrow’s hit-and-miss season 3. That, and when this show works, it’s great.
How do you top that awesome fight from last week featuring Flash, Arrow and Firestorm taking on Reverse Flash? Simple answer: you don’t. I never thought I’d agree with that (I’m always open to cool action scenes), but this time it feels natural.
Flash and Reverse Flash have been fighting each other for a long time (future counted), so it makes sense for them to sort of throw up their hands and say ‘we’ll let future us worry about it’ and agree to help fix each other’s problem.
I do have to wonder, how is Barry still around if Eobard Thawne’s future is one hundred and thirty six years ahead… but that’s by-the-by. Time travel complicates things. There’s no simple way around it. What baffles me with this isn’t the science involved, in fact it’s my preferred fashion of time travel: if you change the past, then no one except you will know. No, my beef here is that Team Flash doesn’t freak out at the idea. Heck, they seem to fully embrace the erasure of their existence.
Obviously it’s a big decision for Barry, but again that idea is ultimately trounced by what will happen to his memories. If he can return to the future after saving his mother, he will either enter a time where he still has powers but everything else is different, or time will correct itself and he’ll lose whatever memories he had of the alternate timeline and won’t know any better.
Either that or it creates another timeline with a happy Barry who grows up with both parents, while our Barry returns to his future at least knowing that his family exists elsewhere. Oh, and, calling it now: paradox. Reverse Flash’s presence in their timeline and Barry’s is enough to trigger time-altering events that were already on shaky ground.
So hidden amongst all this science-fictiony mumbo jumbo is heavy drama. Cisco confronts Thawne about murdering him in the alternate timeline, which seems to trouble our villain. Though the hints are less than subtle that Cisco will eventually develop powers of his own.
Meanwhile, Barry realises that Joe won’t be his father figure if he changes the past. Also, Eddie attempts to reconcile with Iris, because screw destiny. Bear in mind that this is with both of them on board with Barry’s changing the past thing.
Barry returns to that fateful night, only for future Barry to see him, and ward him off of saving his mother. Barry has to grapple with the realisation that his mother’s death helped shaped him into the hero he is in the future. Ironically Reverse Flash contributes to that in his bid to destroy his enemy. I feel like these two are destined to do this forever. Hopefully that includes keeping Tom Cavanagh because he is a joy to watch.
Then there’s the ending. The ending just sort of… happens. Barry goes forth to stop the singularity from destroying Central City, and then the world. And the episode just sort of ends right there. That’s the end of season 1. Granted it certainly demands a viewing of season 2 if you want to see what happens next, let’s just hope the answers aren’t given in the new DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in a bid to gain viewers. While we’re there, I’m pretty sure that was Hawkgirl looking in terror at the singularity during those crowd scenes.
Will season 2 feature Barry arriving in another alternate timeline with a whole lot of meta-humans to deal with? When Eddie inevitably returns (sucked into the singularity, come on), will he be another Reverse Flash? Let us know what you think in the comments below…
