Season two of The Flash was not as consistently great as season one was, but it was still one of the most entertaining seasons of television in recent memory. This episode wrapped up a lot of stories, but laid the ground for a completely new journey for season three – not that I think the show will go whole hog on it. Keep reading, but be warned that spoilers live in these parts.
1. Emperor Zolomon
Did anyone else get a distinctly Star Wars feel from a lot of what Zoom was saying to Barry? Things like “Go ahead Barry, strike me down!” It was an interesting choice because, unlike Emperor Palpatine, Zoom is a somewhat sympathetic character. Certainly a totally misguided one, but you can see how the death of his parents would’ve messed with him forever.
Zoom, overall, has been a worthy adversary for Barry this season – he had a nice balance of deranged psychopath, mirror image, and classic comic book baddy. I’m interested to see if this is the last we’ve seen of Hunter Zolomon, or if his Earth-1 counterpart will ever be a player.
2. A desperate Barry
We’ve seen Barry go through a ton over the course of two seasons, but this has to be the darkest we’ve ever seen him. When his crew locked him, it seemed to be the only option, even if that option seemed totally insane to try to stop Zoom without him.
The crazy thing? It almost worked! I liked giving the team a chance to shine a little bit, and show that they’re more than just Barry’s flunkies. It also showed how, going forward, the team should be able to accomplish just about anything they want to or set out to, because between the smarts, the speed, and the tech, they seem pretty amazingly strong. Of course, they had some help from…
3. Time Wraiths and Time Remnants
This week, they pulled all the time travel tropes out of their backpack and threw them on the table. Time Wraiths, Time Remnants – are those cops out? Sort of. But are they bad? I’d argue no. The show wasn’t introducing these things this week, which would’ve felt incredibly fake. They have been building up these concepts and ideas for months now, and while they stretch a far-fetched show even further, the tone they were delivered in was spot on.
The Time Wraiths, in particular, were something that I had forgotten about until about five seconds before they appeared, and I went “OH!” and there they were. I like that they would have ‘more’ issue with Zoom than with Barry, so they let him go – as if they needed four hands to stop Zoom! C’mon!
I’m sure both of those concepts will be back soonish.
4. Earth-Three and the “Golden Age”
Traditionally in DC Comics, Earth-2 was where the “Golden Age” took place, and Earth-3 was the evil Earth. Have we, essentially, seen a reverse of that? I mean, yes, Earth 2 was all art deco and shininess, but it also had evil Caitlin, evil Ronnie, evil Cisco, etc.
And Earth-3 had a speedster named Jay Garrick old enough to be Barry’s father. It is a pretty neat trick they pulled, having John Wesley Shipp play Jay, even if just about everyone saw that coming. I thought for a fleeting second that they would have Shipp put on the 90s Flash costume, which would’ve been amazing (and hinted at earlier this season when Barry saw that while traveling between worlds), but this costume worked well, too.
Also of note – would this Jay have been part of the Justice Society on his planet? Could he…be part of Legends of Tomorrow next season?
I doubt this is the last we’ll see of Harry, Jesse, or Jay, but I wouldn’t be surprised if next season of The Flash had very little to do with alternate Earths, mainly because…
5. Flashpoint…oh no
For those that don’t read comics, “Flashpoint” is when Barry runs back in time and stops his mom from being killed, which, essentially, mucks up the entire timeline for everyone, sending the entire world topsy turvy. In a real sense, it is what caused the last five years of DC Comics, and it was sort of undone this morning by “DC Universe: Rebirth” #1.
Continued belowThis is a bold choice for the show for a few reasons. First of all, we all know that eventually Barry will set it all right, and we’ll come back to this moment – the show has too much invested, long term, to take that all away to do an alternate timeline story. Now, this show loves alternate versions of characters, so I bet that’ll happen for a spell, but I don’t think it’ll happen for the long haul for a few reasons.
– people want to see these characters they know and love being the characters they know and love
– the Earth that this story would affect, Earth-1, is also home to Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, so it wouldn’t just be affecting Barry + co.
– with Supergirl joining the lineup, there will need to be a major crossover at least once a season, and this would probably preclude that.
My honest guess is that this takes up the first 6 or so episodes of Season 3, before setting everything back. But man, that would be a bold move, to essentially take a full season breather, and let the alternate timeline play out for the whole season.
Regardless, I’m excited for next year. Thanks for sticking with me all season, and let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments!
