The mid-season finale of The Flash is here, and it does a few neat things: it establishes a clear course for the Spring finale, brings certain characters to the forefront, and puts doubt in a lot of the concepts that the season has been doubling down on.
1. Christmas cheese
I will excuse everything around Christmastime a higher than usual level of cheesiness. There’s something so enduring about folks sharing eggnog, opening gifts that always seem to have a fully wrapped box lid, so that it can be easily removed without tearing the paper (has anyone ever done this outside of a TV show/movie?), and carolers singing on your doorstop – it warms even the coldest heart, despite being fully aware just how cheesy it is.
H.R. drunk on eggnog, Caitlin making it snow, Wally getting a costume – it is all a little too neat, a little too silly, but it works. This show is at its absolute best when it is bordering on cheesy. The CW elements of the show will never go away – the romance, the beautiful people at every turn – but neither should the bottomless well of optimism that is at the heart of the program.
Taken together, this will, of course, be the tackiest moment of the season – especially Julian coming over with a carnation on his lapel – but it also serves a very important place in the season’s development: because of what Barry saw in the future, this might be his last Christmas with Iris, and might be the last time the gang is all together for a happy occasion. This is a moment to cherish.
2>. The ghosts of Christmas past
Cisco and Julian are both visited visions of their pasts, with people they loved calling out to them to open the Philosopher’s Stone and bring them back together. We obviously don’t have a ton of experience with Julian’s past, but Cisco’s is really interesting. He and Dante, by his own admission, were not that close, and struggled to have a relationship. Cisco’s grief is burdened with guilt – what cozy bedfellows those two make – and he is trying to make up for lost time by bringing Dante back.
Cisco is doing exactly what Barry did with Flashpoint – attempting to bring back a loved one without consequence, and this show has shown us, time and time again, that cannot happen. When something is lost, bringing it back usually has disastrous results. We are told this time and time again, but the allure is too strong – who wouldn’t want their loved ones back?
And Julian’s character continues to grow, from nuisance to villain to unsuspecting puppet of Savitar. The scenes between he and Barry were the best the two have had this season, and the gap between Julian’s perceived reality and what is actually happening puts him in this nice, ambiguous place as a character. Sure, he shows up to the Christmas bash, but that could have been a purely selfish move. I like him being an ally to the team, but I also like him at an arm’s distance.
I don’t know if this was intentional or not (it probably was, I’m not that smart), but this episode was very much an analogue to A Christmas Carol – Savitar shows Barry the ghost of Christmas future with Iris’s death, Cisco sees the ghost of Christmas past with Dante, and Iris represents Christmas present. We have to see if, like Marley, Barry can prevent Christmas future from being a reality.
3. Go get her, Joe
Can we just bask in the glow that is Joe West’s finally putting the moves on the DA lady? Of course, it is a little weird for his kids to be like “yeah, it’s about time y’all got to fucking,” but the thought was sweet. Joe, out of all the characters on the show, is the most selfless; dude’s never doing anything for himself. It is nice to see the show let him get a win.
Although, there was a weird part of me that thought they were going to taste each other’s eggnog (not a euphemism), realize they are the same recipe, and find out their grannies were sisters or something, making their romance suspect and gross. Why does my brain to this to me?
Continued below4. The Silver Age, come to life
This episode was one of the best this season, in part because it got back to the show’s roots, deep within the Silver Age. Let’s discuss what we saw: multiversal travel, an indestructible magic object being thrown into the Speed Force, Jay Garrick and Barry Allen (and later, Wally West) all working together, the Earth-3 Trickster*, someone creating snow with their cold powers, a costume given as a gift. This was the most Silver Age hour of television the show has ever produced, quite possibly, and it managed to deal with some really, really dark shit without sinking back into the tone of the first part of the season. Good job, The Flash.
*Ok, so clearly the 1990 Mark Hamill Trickster was somewhat modeled after the Joker, especially as Jack Nicholson had just played him in Tim Burton’s Batman. Is that why the Earth-3 Trickster was modeled after the Batman Returns Penguin? That was what they were going for, right? I can’t wait to see another Hamill-played Trickster who is aping Jim Carrey’s Riddler!
5. The future
So, let’s get into it: Barry sees a moment, five months in the future, where Savitar is back, and he kills Iris. There are a few things to unpack here: first of all, this means that either the plan to throw the Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force fails, or Savitar can easily find his way out, or another speedster has found the Stone, and freed it. Now, was it just me, or was Jay acting a little off at the end of the episode. While I don’t think that the show would actually have Jay go dark and free Savitar, something was off with him. I truly think it was because he, at some point, saw his own future and it messed with him, so he was warning Barry from personal experience, but I wouldn’t be shocked if that was the case.
The back half of the season is going to be all about Barry trying his best to ensure that this future doesn’t happen, and while that isn’t the sunniest way to spend half a year, I prefer trying to stop the future than trying to change the past.
What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments!
