The Flash’s season finale finally aired last night. And the recurring theme of the timeline being screwed has reared its head once again. I swear, pretty soon Rip Hunter will be handing laser guns to cave spiders in the year 2005 A.D. and not giving a damn about it because Barry already screwed it all up.
Zoom has killed Henry, and Barry is appropriately pissed about it. He doesn’t “just” agree to a race, either; he wants to kill Zoom. Zoom, on the other hand is a bit too tricky for that to really work. He’s been making use of time duplicates the entire time, taunting Barry for not having the guts to actually kill him. His entire reason for doing all of this is to prove he’s the very best, the fastest, and proposes a race between them to prove it. He also mentions that to do the time duplicate trick, you have to be willing to kill yourself, which Zoom is more than willing to do.
They have a funeral for Henry, but Barry can’t really deal with it, so Joe gives the eulogy. Barry is absolutely consumed by a desire for vengeance. Joe confirms this by talking to him later. So he has Harry tranq him and they stuff him in the pipeline. It was a decision they all came to. Well, all except for Wally, but that’s important later. They didn’t want him to destroy himself just to get Zoom.
Their plan involves using everything they have at their disposal, other than Barry, to send Zoom back to Earth-2 and seal the breaches. And they decide to stick to the plan, even if things go sideways on them. Like, one of them dying or getting taken prisoner by Zoom or something. Hint hint.
The plan goes well, up until it doesn’t. They use their hologram projector with Caitlin to maneuver Zoom into place, which was smart of them since he was going to kill her no matter what she said. Cisco opens the breach behind him, and Harry hits him with the boot. The problem comes when the tranq rifle jams on Joe, forcing him to get closer with a handgun; he gets sucked through the breach with Zoom.
Wally’s not happy with them when he finds out, doubly so when he finds out that they agreed to do nothing even if one of them got taken by Zoom. He’s been super appreciative of Barry since finding out that he’s The Flash, so the fact that he goes and frees Barry from the pipeline in response isn’t much of a surprise. What is, is that Barry still plans to race Zoom and win.
Zoom and Joe have a chat on Earth-2. Joe finally wrangles the identity of the man in the iron mask out of Zoom. It turns out that Zoom figured out how to hop between dimensions far earlier, and conquered, for lack of a better term, Earth-3. He took their Flash, but was unable to steal his speed, instead stealing his identity for use as a hero; Jay Garrick. Barry is able to accept the challenge through Cisco, and the time is set.
Zoom stole a magnetar device from Mercury Labs, with the plan being to use it to wipe out the multiverse. Hence the race; he plans to use their speed combined to charge it, as well as prove hs’s the fastest. He also crows about having gotten Barry’s speed, the ultimate breaking of the Speed Force’s rules. Their race happens, and Barry is able to duplicate himself, using his duplicate to counteract the pulsar sent out by the device… somehow, which also kills the duplicate. Zoom’s pissed, but he knows Barry wasn’t going to kill him, even though he has him dead to rights. Barry, however, knew that the Time Wraiths would, and banked on the Speed Force being more upset with Zoom’s transgressions than his time duplicate.
Afterwards, they’re discussing how Barry made a duplicate of himself, while Harry and Cisco try to get the mask off of the real Jay. Things grind to a halt when they see his face, though. He is literally Henry’s Earth-3 doppelganger; Henry had mentioned that his mother’s maiden name was Garrick, after all. Barry can’t really handle it all, especially so soon after his father’s death. Regardless, Jay gets his powers back, and Harry offers him his aid in getting him home, once they’re on Earth-2 again. Jay takes Zoom’s helmet, noting that after all Zoom had taken from him, it was nice to take something back.
The problem is that Barry really can’t handle anything, even Iris’ decision to wait for him to be back on even emotional footing. Without anyone knowing , he travels back in time and saves his mother from Eobard Thawne, erasing his past self. And screwing the timeline again, for good measure.
And so, The Flash undoes its own tapestry again. I’m pretty sure this is the setup for the disaster Cisco saw. God only knows what he changed this time.
Final Thoughts:
- I’ve always been fond of that sort of petard hoisting that Barry used to get rid of Zoom.
- I’m wondering what this will undo. Anything since before the very end of Season 1’s finale is on the table, possibly even things from before.
- I’m pretty sure Harry, Jessie and Jay are all coming back thanks to the impending apocalypse implied this season.
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