The CW’s Flash and Arrow season finale’s were this weak (PUN INTENDED!!). It left me, the resident Nerd Caster, officially unmoved, uncaring, and without excitement for next season. Both finales were ok episodes in general, but nothing earth shattering and frankly, pretty predictable.
Let’s start with Flash. Barry Allen, the fastest man alive and probably most “woe-is-me” character on TV. He gets super powers, fucks with time, ruins shit, blames himself (Rightfully so), and then procedes to focus on fixing the issues that effected himself and his friends, but what about the rest of humanity he messed with?
Right off, I hate time travel in anything…period (except for Back to the Future, which was awesome). The only thing that keeps me interested in this, is that his actions for traveling time do have consequences and not just changing the timeline. The gods of the “speed force”, which is how Flash travels time, send wraiths after him and other speedsters (like Barry) when they mess with time too much. These wraiths simply, just kill the speedster, end of story, dead.
This latest season picks up from its previous season. Flash decided to go back in time (AGAIN) and live in an alternate time line with his parents where they are still alive. Apparently, Barry only cares about himself and didn’t give a shit how this would affect the rest of the world, thus creating flashpoint.
Flashpoint is the name given to the new/original (?) timeline Barry comes back to, thinking it is going to be the way he left it. However, it has changed, and only Barry recognizes these changes as all the other characters have been living in this time line have no clue what Barry has done.
Mr. Allen feels bad with his selfish deed, as he now created Killer Frost (Kaitlyn) to changing the sex of the Diggle family’s female child Sarah, to male kiddo Diggle Jr. Barry lets John know what he has done and that in the original timeline (which like I said before Barry fucked up) he originally had a baby girl and not a baby boy. This causes John and Lyla to think about what it would be like if they had the baby girl and not the baby Diggs and give The Flash a whole lot of shit for screwing the time line.
This same stuff goes for the other characters in the show that Barry confronts with the differences. After Flashpoint settles down, we then get introduced to Savitar! The speediest of speedsters, cause, of course, every season of this show has to pit fast dude against fast dude (and it’s getting old). For the remainder of the season, we see Kaitlyn transition to Killer Frost (sort of) and wonder who is Savitar? Is it another Wells from some sort of different time line or dimension or from like maybe Earth 51?
So the two speedsters go back and forth and we finally find out that Savitar **SPOILER ALERT** is actually future Barry Allen time reminisce bull shit. I will spare the details, but apparently, this time reminisce Barry Allen came from the future to ensure that he is created by killing off the real Barry’s main squeeze Iris West (boo hoo).
For me, the suspense of knowing who Savitar is/was, really didn’t keep me coming back to watch. It is at the point where I am watching just because I have invested my time into the show and I find that I enjoy the episodes focused with Snart (Captain Cold), much better. If it wasn’t for the side characters being so enjoyable, mainly, Cisco, Julian, and Kaitlyn, I probably would have given up on this show.
The other issues I have are:
- At one point Barry loses his memory so Savitar will forget everything as well, causing him to never kill Iris. This results in Wally losing his powers because since Big Bad Savitar gave him his powers, he now never got them (confusing? I know, watch the show, that’s all I can say). So Savitar gets defeated, would Wally lose is powers, because Savitar never existed in the first place?
- Since Savitar now never exists, how does Julian ever meet Team Flash?
This puts the whole season into question on what is real and what is not and is kinda old. Like, is this time line Barry even in the original one he started out with before he had powers? Since he has messed with time so much, this show is ridiculously convoluted and all over the place. It also gives a very convenient way for Barry to fix something (even though it will screw up something else).
In the end, I am internally fighting if I am going to watch next season or not. In all honesty, I will probably give the next season about 3 episodes and if they don’t wow me. I think I have to give up on this show.
Let me know what you thought of this season of Flash in the comments below
