SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
The future is not so bright for Team Flash if they fail to save Iris. Just like he said he would at the end of the last episode, Barry travelled to the future to find out who Savitar is and how to defeat him. The news of Caitlin’s transformation into Killer Frost didn’t at all delay his travel plans. Luckily, his time travelling ability means that he can return to exactly the moment when he left and he won’t miss a beat in saving Caitlin from herself. Or so he thinks.
With Wally’s help Barry opens a worm hole and travels to 2024; the year in which The Flash is reported to have disappeared and by which time he’s already trapped Savitar in the speed force. Before he leaves he promises Iris that he’ll be there for Joe if she dies. I found Barry to be a tad inconsiderate when having that conversation with Iris. It’s Team Flash, we all know that they’re going to save her, but even so when she was telling him “If I die” he shouldn’t have been so dismissive of what she was going to say.
His future self – who will henceforth bee referred to as Emo Barry – apparently lives alone in a dilapidated Star Labs and is no help to Barry at all. He doesn’t know who Savitar is and does not believe that Barry can save Iris. Having not gotten the information he had gone to the future for, Barry decides to return to the past. He’s seemingly able to achieve this without Wally’s help, which begs the question of why he needed it in the first place. However, he finds himself unable to leave.
He then pays a visit to Julian and discovers that he is keeping Killer Frost locked away in a cell. I don’t know if I find it sweet, creepy or sad that Julian is still there with Caitlin/Killer Frost. In any case, Barry finds out that Killer Frost teamed up with Savitar and knows who he is, but she refuses to tell him. I wish the writers would stop playing this game with us; having people on the show who know who Savitar is but won’t say. This is the second time! In a row! Killer Frost tells Barry to go and see Wally; he fought with Savitar after Iris’s death and likely knows his identity.
Barry finds Wally in a wheel chair and catatonic, having had his spine shattered in his fight with Savitar. He tries speaking to him, but Wally is unresponsive. He asks Cisco where Joe is and finds him visiting Iris’ grave. Here, Barry learns that his future self didn’t keep his promise to be there for Joe. The two haven’t spoken for a long while and Joe is very upset with him.
I found it unfair that Barry, in his grief, is expected to be the pillar of strength for all of Team Flash. He lost the woman he loved. Yes he made the promise to Iris to be there for Joe, but on top of that Team Flash apparently can’t function without him being there. The team did lose three members and Joe and Wally would’ve been broken up about Iris, Joe about Wally as well later and Julian about Caitlin, but the only one of them that tried to keep the team together was Cisco. Why couldn’t Barry grieve the way that he wanted to without having to worry about taking care of everyone else?
It was also unfair of Cisco to put it on Barry to help bring the future Team Flash back together. The best way to help them would be going back and try to prevent any of that from happening in the first place. It was kind of selfish of him to try and keep Barry there. I wasn’t surprised that he had done something to prevent Barry’s time travelling. But Barry stayed and got the team back together, including Emo Barry, so that they could take down Top and Mirror Master.
After all of the doom and gloom of the episode, it was nice to see Team Flash happy and in a celebratory mood after their defeat of Top and Mirror Master. Emo Barry tells Barry about the scientist who helped him trap Savitar in the speed force. The only problem is that she did it in 2020, after Iris had died. Emo Barry gives Barry a device with the scientist’s information on it to give to her past self, in the hopes that she can give Barry the tech he needs to defeat Savitar before he can kill Iris.
Barry returns to his own time and tells the other’s about Caitlin joining forces with Savitar, spurring the team to find her before that can happen. It turns out it’s too late for that because the episode ends with Caitlin meeting with Savitar, who gets out of his suit and reveals his identity to her. I’m thinking that maybe in next week’s episode, they will win her back over to their side and since future Killer Frost wouldn’t volunteer Savitar’s identity in this episode, she will in the next one. We already know from the preview for this week’s episode, that they do find out who he is.
Random thoughts:
- Are those equations right?
- No Julian! Her kisses are death.
- HR and Cisco singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” was hilarious.
- Will “Throwback Thursday” still be a thing in 2024.
- This Emo Barry is painful to look at.
- Barry: “I can’t get back to the past.” Gotta get back. Back to the past. Samurai Jack.
- HR’s a chick magnet?
- Team Flash assemble!
- Why does Barry keep getting the math wrong? 2024 is seven years away from 2017, so why is he saying her went eight years into the future. Also, if the scientist got the tech to trap Savitar in the speed force completed four years ago, in 2020, then that’s three years after Iris died, not four.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 PM on The CW.
