The Flash, Season 1, Episode 23: Fast Enough
The first season of Flash, easily my favourite TV series, ends with a bang. It doesn't quite carry the same 'holy shit awesome' quotient as the previous episode, but it certainly punches me with a gigantic emotional blow. It's certainly not the perfect finale, I won't go around calling it that, but it is one hell of a gorgeous conclusion to the epic first season.
The main point of this episode, the big overreaching theme, is time travel, and Barry's decision on whether to go back and prevent the big tragedy of Eobard Thawne killing his mother from happening. Whether he decides to stop all the bad things in his life from happening, or to give it up for the greater good and to continue living with all the friends and new family he's made instead of dwelling on the things he lost in the past. It's beautifully executed, even if Eobard Thawne's time-travel logic doesn't really make a lick of sense.
On a meta sense, fans who know about the Flashpoint arc of the comics are wondering if Barry will go back, save his mother and plunge the world into an alternate crapsack future because of the 'for want of a nail' logic and bring us screaming into New 52 which would be horrible. But that's really obviously not going to happen, what with this show being tied so closely to Arrow, but it's still a pretty nice little climax that works in more ways than one. It's great on its own, but it's got an additional layer for comic book fans.
Meta-stuff aside, this episode alone explores so much about Barry Allen's characterization, his growth over the season, and all the things he's been struggling with, in ways that more than satisfies. His conversation with Joe about how they'll always be family no matter what, and Barry telling Joe that he is his father whatever happens is absolutely poignant, and all the different characters telling Barry to go and be happy while he struggles over what to do with his power to change the timeline... it's far more emotional than any romance thread as Barry struggles over to hand over this 'happy ending' of having a group of friends and a surrogate family for an ideal dream of what-may-have-been with his mother alive and him married to Iris. It's fantastic.
The opening really helps, too, with Barry Allen delivering a calm but angry declaration about how the man responsible for killing his mother is now in front of him. With last episode giving us more than adequate comic book action and fighty scenes, most of the episode focuses on character moments -- not that this episode didn't have fighty scenes, of course, but the main impact was delivered through characterization.
Barry and Eobard-Wells's conversation are absolutely glorious. It did get a bit information-dump-y as Eobard explains his rather vague motivations of taking revenge against the Barry of a previous timeline, as well as some odd explanation about his master plan -- make use of the time window that Barry creates when he goes back in time to return to his future... except if Barry actually does save his mother, then that means Eobard Thawne won't become Harrison Wells and won't be able to engineer everything that happens and whatnot, but I guess splinter timelines and whatnot are a thing. It just doesn't really make that much sense, but hey, whatever.
I also don't really know why Cisco and the others bothered helping Eobard out to create the Time Sphere. I guess they want Eobard out of the way, but why they didn't just stick Eobard's cell full with sleeping gas and pump seventeen bullets through Eobard's head, I don't know. I guess Joe, Cisco and Caitlin are nicer people than I am.
I mean, hell, they even got Eobard some fucking Big Belly Burger while he's in his cell, which is by far the most hilarious visual joke this series has ever done.
But more about Eobard is how great his emotional attachment to the main cast has been, and when he tells Barry and Cisco that they are like his own sons, it does feel real through all of Eobard-Wells' insanity. I absolutely love how complex of a villain Eobard is, and it's a nice juxtaposition of Barry meeting both of his fathers, Joe and Henry, both of whom want what's best for Barry, while Wells, while claiming to care for Cisco like a son, also says with no hesitation that he is sure he will kill Cisco if it needs to be done.
I love the little bait-and-switch as Wells genuinely looks horrified and apologizes to Cisco when Cisco confronts him about the whole 'you killed me' thing, and explains that he is apologizing not for killing Cisco in the alternate timeline, but for the fact that Cisco has became a metahuman.
And that, too, is an absolutely great explanation to the question that's been brushed off with 'as long as it works' regarding Cisco somehow retaining memories about the splinter timeline that was retconned by Barry's time travel. Cisco himself is a metahuman, and his Vibe powers is to see through alternate dimensions... which is a power that the actual comic-book Vibe recently got, which is an awesome revelation. Again, both in the normal and meta sense of the way because Cisco having a metahuman power itself is a great revelation, but as a comic book fan I am surprised that they're not just making Cisco 'earthquake man' and actually using this obscure power of his in a way that makes absolute sense to the plot.
Caitlin and Ronnie also get married this episode before everything goes all shot to hell, which is a nice little moment of happiness for them. Professor Stein, absent throughout last episode, also shows up and takes over Wells' role as the resident senior scientist who understands crazy timey wimey metaphysics and Martin Stein is having an absolute blast either snarking with Ronnie or just making ridiculously funny remarks about time travel.
But the big emotional point of this episode isn't Wells, or Cisco, or Caitlin, or Barry, or Joe. I actually, y'know, cried a little when Barry travels back through time... and decides to defy Flashpoint and not create a brand-new timeline where everyone is happy or anything like that, but instead simply just going back, forcing himself to wait in another room holding back his anger and tears as his mother is murdered in the other room, and then taking the time to get some closure and actually say goodbye to his mother before she died, assuring her that somehow, somehow, he came back from the future and both he and his father is okay. It's really powerful as he gives up revenge, or even trying to take a third option, and just waits behind to let history take its course but not before getting some personal closure.
And in a nice little moment only able to be done with time travel, there's this talk about how Barry keeps taking advice from other people -- Joe, Iris, Henry, Wells -- and it's time for him to make his own decisions. The kicker? Right before the climatic moment with Barry choosing not to fight Past!Eobard, he takes advice of someone, namely his future self. He's still taking advice, but making decisions on his own, if that makes sense.
It's a powerful moment for everyone involved, and I really cannot express enough just how much this is a gigantic character moment for Barry. It's amazing, and definitely redefined Barry Allen as a character within my mind when previously he's just "generic Silver Age superhero that came before Wally West". It's a fucking poweful moment.
We did get an awesome moment when Barry returns to the present day to give a gigantic YOU KILLED MY MOM punch to Eobard Thawne's face that breaks the Time Sphere.
Eddie, too, decides to say 'fuck destiny' and decides to carve his own path, brushing off Eobard's constant nagging that he will never matter and he will never get the girl, proposing to be with Iris himself and generally being awesome at the end when Barry and Eobard goes toe-to-toe once more. It's a great little final fight, and as Eobard has Barry on the ropes and promises to kill everyone, we hear a gunshot and see Eobard looking surprised, as if Eddie just shot Eobard from the back -- which itself, again, is a nice meta joke to how Eobard actually died during Flashpoint -- but Eddie shot himself in the chest, giving Eobard a gigantic figurative 'fuck you' as he shows that despite everything, Eddie Thawne does matter and he too can choose destiny. Eddie's death was awesome as he goes down with a smile while Iris shrieks in the background and Joe does the most horrified "WHAT DID YOU DO". It's heartbreaking.
Granted Eddie's big sacrifice is kind of dulled by all the memes that flooded the internet about how he could've had a vasectomy or shot himself in the balls to get the same effect, but come on.
Eobard's face reverts from his Harrison Wells face to his 'original' face, calls Cisco for help which is a nice little touching moment, before he fucking disintegrates and gets eaten by time itself, which breaks apart into a gigantic time-wormhole that sucks everything, and Barry heads off to stop another crisis as the credits roll.
It's a great ending, an absolutely awesome way to explore the origins of the Flash while keeping it fresh... and it still carries a lot of questions... what, exactly, did FutureAlternateTimeline!Barry do to Eobard Thawne to drive him to such anger? What is the whole crisis thing which ended up not having anything to do with this season's finale? What's going to happen with the time wormhole thing and what effects will it have? Will erasing Eobard from the timeline undo everything he's done as Harrison Wells? And more importantly -- what happened to the Future!Barry that fought Eobard Thawne in the past?
I'm not entirely convinced Eobard Thawne and Eddie Thawne won't return in the future, and I won't even try to guess what they've got planned for season two, but man, this season ending! And we still haven't gotten to nitpicking all the Easter Eggs that we saw in the Speed Force yet. I mean, in addition to the eyeroll-inducing 'one minute and fifty two seconds' joke, too, and the whole Flashpoint thing. Let's do another list, because there's a fair amount of it.
- We've got Cisco making a little bubble time machine that both he and Eobard dubs the 'Time Sphere', and Eobard mentions that 'Rip Hunter' will be proud. In the DC comics, Rip Hunter is the leader of the Time Masters, a group of people riding a time machine called the Time Sphere to keep time in balance. Rip Hunter himself will be making an appearance in the next spinoff, Legends of Tomorrow.
- Speaking of which, as Barry runs through the Speed Force, he sees glimpses of future events to happen in Legends of Tomorrow which you can check out in a trailer in Youtube, seeing the team made up of Captain Cold, Heat Wave, White Canary, Atom, Hawkgirl and Flash himself fighting against a giant robot.
- The Speed Force is predominantly blue, just like how it's portrayed in the comics.
- We get to see Caitlin dressed up as Killer Frost, which may be taken from the original timeline, or foreshadowing future developments of Caitlin actually becoming Killer Frost.
- We also get to see the Flash Museum, a prominent location in the comics.
- Barry is in jail... not exactly a comic Easter Egg, but it certainly raises questions on what this scene is about. A generic 'alternate timeline with reversed positions'? Foreshadowing for a future plot point? I dunno.
- As Eobard prepares to go through the time wormhole, a very distinct silver helmet with wings flies through that Eobard is really afraid of -- the helmet belongs to Jay Garrick, the first Flash in the comics (Barry, despite being the most prominent, is the second) which probably hints on a future appearance.
- Future!AlternateTimeline!Flash that our Flash sees in the past (it's confusing, innit) is wearing the bright red Flash costume with the white chest insignia that the Future!Flash in Eobard's newspaper wears.
- As mentioned above, Eobard's death is a homage to his death in Flashpoint where he gets killed from behind while gloating over Barry, except instead of being stabbed, Eddie shoots himself.
- Without rambling too much, the triumphant finale does kind of echo how Barry Allen dies in the comics during the Crisis of Infinite Earths.
- Not DC, this time, but at one point Martin Stein drops an 'Excelsior', catchphrase of Stan Lee. Y'know, the dude that runs Marvel comics.
So yeah, in addition to an emotionally-charged finale, an action-packed one, we also get hints for future developments. Jay Garrick! Killer Frost! Rip Hunter! Legends of Tomorrow!
But even without all the geeky stuff? The episode still stands fine on its own as being a dramatic thing with most of the geeky stuff being dramatic on its own. So yeah, working on so many levels, this is one hell of a grand finale.
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