The fact that Barry and Zoom’s “final battle” ended up being a contest and not any type of showdown only underscored how impersonal their rivalry was; can you imagine if Barry had settled his feud with the Reverse-Flash by agreeing to a race? It would have felt silly because of how intense and vitriolic their relationship was. But Zoom and Barry have never had that kind of connection, even after Henry’s death, so there was nothing to stop them from having a gimmicky race for the fate of the world.
The Barry / Zoom storyline only got more muddled as the episode went on, and it didn’t help that the show relied on a lot of underdeveloped concepts to solve the main conflict. Zoom is ultimately killed by the time wraiths, who have apparently been after him this whole season, despite the fact that we never saw any hint of that.
And time remnants, which were only briefly mentioned in one other episode, ended up being critical to Barry’s success. In theory, the time remnant idea could work quite well; it gives Barry a chance to heroically sacrifice himself without depriving the show of its main character. But because the time remnants were never really developed in previous episodes, more time was spent after the fact explaining the mechanics of how time remnants work than showing us the emotional fallout of Barry’s remnant dying. It seemed like an element that was shoehorned in at the last moment, rather than the natural progression of something that had been in the story all along.
All of this isn’t to say there wasn’t anything good in the finale. We finally learned the identity of the man in the mask—the original Jay Garrick from Earth-3, who just so happens to be a doppelganger of Barry’s late father. While this is probably one of the more predictable routes the show could have gone with the storyline, it nonetheless feels like a very solid development for the show. Jay Garrick has always been a central figure in The Flash comics, and it’d be a shame if the only time we saw him was when a serial killer was pretending to be him; the fact that it means we also get to keep a wonderful actor John Wesley Shipp around only makes it better. Plus if the LEGENDS OF TOMORROW finale is any indication, it looks like the Justice Society will be playing a key role in the CW DC Universe going forward, and Jay is one of the group’s premier members. And if nothing else, it’s pretty cool seeing John Wesley Shipp, the original Barry Allen from the 90s television show, play some version of The Flash again.
But more than anything, it seems to be the last few minutes of the episode that have gotten fans speculating, and the twist in ends on is undoubtedly a divisive one. After a season-long journey to come to terms with deciding not to save his mother, complete with trips into the Speed Force and conversation with doppelganger, Barry decides he made the wrong choice and goes back in time to save her. While the repercussions of Barry messing with time are sure to be major, I can’t help but find the whole thing repetitive. Given the nature of comic books and their adaptations, whatever changes Barry makes won’t be allowed to stick, meaning he’s going to have to realize that he can’t mess with destiny and he has to learn to accept things as they are… just like what he seemingly learned over the course of the past few seasons.
I’m sure there are some interesting time travel storylines that will follow this, particularly if they decide to draw on the Flashpoint Paradox storyline from the comics which also sees Barry turning back time to save his mother, but from a character perspective it’s exhausting to feel like Barry still hasn’t learned anything over last two years and has to keep having the same lesson shoved down his throat again and again — particularly when it also serves as a reset button for his relationship with other characters like Iris. After the last few episodes have been steadily building towards their love confession and subsequent kiss, it was incredibly frustrating to see that Barry and Iris’s relationship development was almost immediately erased from existence because of changes to the time-stream.
There’s a lot of possibility for great storytelling in Season 3 that builds off of how huge the world has become recently, but THE FLASH also would do well to go back to its roots by putting the focus back on building characters before diving into the nitty-gritty of dimension hopping and multiverses. No matter how grand or breath-taking the setting, ultimately, if the characters aren’t given the attention they need, the story will lose its urgency and the conflict will begin to fall apart; as was sadly the case during this finale.
Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer -- Click to read Kaitlin's posts
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