SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
For the second week in a row, The Flash delivered two of it’s best episodes in the entirety of it’s run and both with polar opposite tones; the previous episode, “Cause and Effect”, was light and humorous (for the most part) and this episode, “Infantino Street”, was somber. It looks like, going into the finale, the quality of the episodes is seeing an uptick and hopefully that continues. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t have any problems with it.
Pretty much all of the problems I had with this episode were all about Barry and his attitude and behaviour. He was kind of infuriating, which was a let down considering how endearing he was in the last episode. Amnesiac Barry truly is the best Barry because the one we got in this episode, Arrogant Barry, is by no means likeable.
The first instance of Barry’s arrogance reared it’s head at the very beginning of the episode when Barry and Cisco went to Lyla for the power source. Not only did he assume that she would just give it to him because he asked, but when she refused, he thought it was some kind of petty revenge for the fact that he wiped Baby Sarah out of existence. Because clearly, Lyla could have no good reason to say “no” to him. It takes a special type of narcissism to jump to such a conclusion.
Beyond that, his entire pitch to Lyla as to why she should give it to him was “Iris is going to die.” Snart, later in the episode, summed up perfectly how I felt about the whole thing when he said: “True love. That’s your pitch?”
Honestly, a better reason to give Lyla would have been “We’re trying to defeat an evil speedster.” Why should Lyla care about Iris’ life being in danger when, as she said herself, handing over such powerful and potentially dangerous tech can threaten the life of millions? He did not at all give Lyla the full scope of the situation. He limited the consequences of his not having the power source to just how it would affect just him.
His second display of arrogance was when he time travelled to get Snart. I did love Snart in the episode and it was nice seeing him again, but after everything that happened this season and hearing how much his time travelling negatively impacted more or less everything, one would think that Barry wouldn’t do it again. I am so glad that Joe and Iris were upset with him about doing it.
It wasn’t simply that he time travelled that revealed an obnoxious level of arrogance in Barry however, it was the fact that he said he can get around whatever consequences it would have by returning Snart to exactly where he found him. Does Barry not remember what happened the last time he tried doing that exact thing to fix the problems he created by time travelling? Dante died, Caitlin became Killer Frost and, most importantly, he unleashed Savitar on the world.
But of course, this time when he does that, it won’t end in any kind of catastrophe because it would be inconvenient to the plot if Barry’s time meddling had any adverse effects on anything.
Lyla did end up just giving Barry the power source anyway when he and Snart got caught stealing it. Simply because Barry didn’t leave Snart to die when he could have. That was even less of a good reason than true love and I would have preferred if Barry and Snart had actually gotten away with it. Then, when Barry returned it to ARGUS later, Lyla would pardon him. In all honesty though, I did expect Barry to leave Snart with King Shark. He did say that we would do anything to save Iris.
Unfortunately, his plan to keep Iris away from Savitar failed because HR inadvertently told Savitar where Iris was. I hated seeing him beat himself up about it and I agreed with Cisco that it could have been any of them; none of them would have thought twice about answering when asked “Where’s Iris?” by Barry. That being said, Barry did tell them not to tell him where they were hiding Iris since anything he knew, Savitar would as well. So even if it was Barry and not Savitar, he shouldn’t have said. But again, it was a very easy mistake to make and HR shouldn’t blame himself.
A couple of details made sense when Team Flash assembled at Infantino Street to try and stop Savitar from killing Iris; why Wally wasn’t there and why Iris wasn’t wearing her ring. Wally wasn’t there because Savitar broke his leg when he tried to stop Savitar from taking her and Iris wasn’t wearing her ring because she had given it to Joe to give to Barry if anything happened. As Cisco said in the last episode; “It’s all coming together, in the worst way.”
I expected the speed bazooka to fail (Tracy kept talking about it failing), but I didn’t expect that Iris would die. I thought that they would stop Savitar from killing her, somehow, when the bazooka failed. In fact, at several points I expected the episode to end because I didn’t think that we’d reach the point of Iris’ death yet. I thought that the episode would focus on the theft of the power source and then end. When it didn’t, I thought that as soon as Team Flash assembled at Infantino Street and Savitar showed up, it would end there and that everything that followed would happen in the next episode.
I found it fishy that Savitar was not afraid of the speed bazooka when it was the exact thing that had defeated him before. I thought that he was either being stupidly arrogant or that he had some trick up his sleeve. The latter turned out to be true and we finally found out what the philosopher’s stone is and what it is for; it’s made of calcified speed force energy and nullifies the effects of the speed bazooka. After everything, Savitar still managed to be one step ahead.
I really, truly, did not think that Iris would die. But even though she has, I don’t think that she will stay dead. It’s Iris. They’ll find a way to bring her back. Most likely through time travel because Barry still hasn’t learned his lesson.
Random thoughts:
- This music is really depressing.
- Oh. It’s because today is the day that Iris dies.
- Cisco: “No he dead.” Lol!
- I thought that “Smart Snart” was funny Cisco.
- Again, this HR and Tracy ship is moving pretty fast.
- Snart: “They didn’t show the shark because they couldn’t afford to make it look good.” Self-deprecating jabs!
- Barry: “You’re gonna just let me have it?” I know right.
- Tracy didn’t need to explain how the speed bazooka works again.
The season finale of The Flash airs tomorrow, May 23rd, at 8 PM on The CW.
