Let’s Talk About That Electrifying CW Flash Season 2 Finale
Last night The CW aired the finale of The Flash Season 2. It had plenty of emotional moments, some easy-to-guess surprises, and one really, really big comic book move. Spoilers to follow.
First of all.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
John Wesley Shipp is the real Jay Garrick!!!!!! The suit!
We basically knew there would be a real Jay reveal at some point during the season (I can’t believe anyone thought otherwise, looking at you Mark Waid), but this was a delightful bit of fan happiness. My only sadness is, of course, that we had to lose Barry’s dad Henry to get it. I really, really liked Henry as a character. Unless…
Of course that brings us to HOLY SHIT BARRY IS GOING FLASHPOINT ON US? I don’t like the idea of retconning basically everything so far on the show but I am very, very interested to see what stories will come of it.
What did you all think?
Hi. Did you ever watch the t.v. adaptation of WITCHBLADE? They did something similar in their first (and only?) season. I like THE FLASH so obviously will give it a chance next season but just the thought that ,”Oh,well this whole season basically didn’t matter” kind of bothers me. Wait and see…
So rumor has it that if Suicide Squad does well, Warner is kicking around the idea to green light a number of ensemble films starring characters like the Joker, and Captain Boomerang. Similar in nature to the Harley Quinn movie which will be introducing numerous female characters into the universe with the potential of spinoffs.
I kinda wonder if this is their new plan.
Make a movie with six or so characters, see who does well and give em a movie where they star with six or so characters, and so on ans so on.
It would be pretty odd, but it would also be a delightful way of building a cinematic universe.
I can’t help but wonder if the Flashpoint is how CW devising to bring Supergirl into the CW-verse… Which would be a shame honestly as I would really like to know more about Kara’s Earth and its differences
Time Remnants still make no sense! https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2016/05/26/dc-on-tv-finales/
I don’t care, they’re still awesome!
My theory is that a future version of the post 2nd season Barry will be the one who waved off season 1 Barry! Thereby closing a crazy, timey-wimey loop. Which will be tragic…but that’s what heroes have to deal with. Sad…but kindof epic.
*Spoilers for The Flashpoint Paradox*
I don’t know why everybody is screaming about a retcon. If you’ve read The Flashpoint Paradox, then you know that the Flash eventually undoes all of the stuff that causes the paradox, and things go back to the way they were. I expect the Paradox storyline to cover a half-season AT MOST.
I expect less, I’m guessing they could wrap it up within a two parter, considering they have to get Barry ready to team up with everyone else by episode 8 or so.
OMG, I have so many feels about this finale. Totally called who the real Jay Garrick was, but it was SO GOOD to see him in the suit!
Time remnants make my head hurt, and I feel like it’s a really lazy plot device on this show. How exactly are they sacrificing duplicates of themselves and not getting erased from the timeline? As a huge fan of time travel narratives, this one simply makes zero sense to me and smells like bad writing.
As for the finale, I’m betting on something similar to the first episode of season 2, where Barry was all alone but the gang came back together at the end to reestablish the status quo. This might take a little longer than one episode to resolve, but I’m betting we get back to the status quo sooner rather than later.
…Then again, it was already established in season one that the Flash was created without Eobard’s tampering. When Thawne couldn’t get back to his own timeline to celebrate destroying the Flash, however, he had to recreate the circumstances of creating the Flash but at an accelerated pace (because speedsters aren’t the patient type). It’s possible that Season 3 will be this original timeline, one where things play out without the Reverse Flash’s tampering, where Barry still becomes the Flash and Cisco still becomes Vibe, and maybe there’s a Legends of Tomorrow crossover where they deal with the fragmenting timeline issue?
As I recall, the AI aboard the waverider/owned by reverse flash is apparently created by main timeline Barry. Its also hinted that this Barry ‘was a founding member of the justice-‘ which could mean anything, or quite alot. Justice League is an obvious guess, but we do have a Justice Society coming up which is also a possibility.
Then of course you have Eobard Thawne with his motivation of killing the Flash. And his talking about how the current Barry is nothing like the man he wants revenge against.
FLASHPOINT, BARRY, FLASHPOINT! (╯°益°)╯彡┻━┻
…why the hell wasn’t Dawson at the funeral?
Because he already went to it. Barry was 20 years late to the funeral.
…
I was honestly hoping for Barry to do that face.
This is the second retcon in as many seasons. I get the urge to have Barry go for the “change the timeline if things don’t go my way” option, but doesn’t that kind of eliminate any stakes for stories, going forward?
Anyway: JAY GARRICK IS FROM EARTH-3! Wait. Does that make Supergirl Earth-4? They didn’t have a Flash on her planet. My head hurts and I have to lie down, now..
Supergirl is on Earth-S. It’s the one where there’s actually a sun, and things happen in the daylight.
I still maintain that the movies are Earth-3.
So the movies have Jay Garrick?
Well, my joke is that Snyder’s movie universe is the live action Multiverse equivalent of the evil doppleganger Earth-3 of the comics’ Multiverse, but actually (if a recent casting call is to be believed) Jay Garrick is being sought for the Flash movie.
Really? Gosh, that turned out to be a weird segway from humor to accuracy. XD
There was a casting call for the movie a little while back that flat out claimed they were looking to cast Jay Garrick, Iris West, Eobard Thawn, and Leonard Snart. Now, I don’t know how true this casting call is. It hasn’t been debunked to my knowledge, but the studios don’t typically put the names of the characters directly on the casting call when its a big adaptation like this. This was basically an annoucement that Reverse Flash, Golden Age Flash, and Captain Cold are all in this movie, which doesn’t seem like something they’d do.
I can kinda see it as a concept….Warner has teased that they plan to make Flash’s movie about time travel. But yeah, that casting list seems alot more like guessing based on the biggest characters in the tv show.
I’m hoping for more Linda Park in season 3. I love the Dr. Light addition to her story, and it’d be cool to get more of that. Would be great for her to become a series regular on Flash or LoT.
I’m still rooting for Linda/Wally, whether she becomes Doctor Light or not.
I hope this gets a one episode resolution where they explain why Supergirl is in his universe now.
Well, it seems like they’re hinting at the possibility of a Crisis event, which could be the huge 4-series crossover in December. So mostly, Kara will start out in her own universe and get pulled into Barry’s in the second half of season 2.
I think Supergirl is still going to take place on its own separate Earth, the same one it currently inhabits. It’s just moving channels not universes.
That being said, I have plenty of fan theories on how they could introduce Supergirl into the Earth-1 Universe.
– #TheFlashandtheFurious
– They did Crisis on Infinite Earths Barry.
– With the two Barrys, we now have #2Flash2Furious.
– What was the darkness in Hunter? It seemed like a sort of force.
– I thought that Jay Garrick would be the same person as Hunter, and that they were then going to have Caitlin fall in love with him. So glad that that story line was avoided.
– What about Jesse Quick? Maybe next season?
– Actually kind of bummed that Harry and his daughter left.
– Now, on to Flashpoint.
– Maybe when Barry solves the Flashpoint Paradox, the changes that will be left over will make Caitlin into Earth-1 Killer Frost.
– Since there is no Earth-2 Flash now, I imagine Jesse will effectively become Earth-2’s “Flash” when her powers awaken (whether or not she goes by a different name). I imagine Wells and Jesse will be back somehow, though they might not appear as often. They’re definitely not cooling down on the multi-verse idea anytime soon.
– I could see Caitlin becoming Killer Frost this way. I like the idea of her getting ice powers, but I suspect she might end up being good. I like the idea of them giving her a different name if she is good. Maybe she’d be “Ice or Icemaiden.”
Could also be that paradox Caitlin will start out bad and become good over the course of the season.
What if Barry finds Paradox!Caitlin hiding in the ruins of S.T.A.R. Labs? She’s tragic figure Killer Frost. She calls herself that because she can’t touch someone without killing them.
Yeeeah. We’ll see. At the moment, I might not be watching anymore. It took them 5 years to realize New 52 sucked and here we go again.
Totally did not see that ending with his mom coming. I should’ve known that Jay Garrick was in the mask, but I didn’t think it’d be his dad lol.
Yeah, I was expecting another Zoom clone, then BOOM. Dad!Flash. It was a pretty awesome reveal.
I totally called it on the real Jay Garrick from Earth 3 being JWS. So I was doing the touchdown dance at that point. Also cheered to see him in the outfit with the helmet. I’m guessing Earth 3 is maybe JSA Earth, to tie into LoT? Then…oh, Barry, bless your heart. Please don’t New 52 the DCTV universe.
Otherwise, I was disappointed that we didn’t see Jessie and Wally hint at having abilities, but hopefully next season.
It also confirms what many thought, that TV Earth-2 is comics Earth-3, with all the evil versions of just about everyone.
There are so many other better crossovers they could focus on, why do they have to do Flashpoint!? Stop punishing us with Flashpoint, DC/WB!
I loved a lot about this episode, obviously with the Jay Garrick reveal being pretty high up there, but I’m going to have to see what they do next year before I really know how I feel about the last five minutes. Because in my heart of hearts, I feel like this is just going to go Flashpoint on us and he’ll open season three in a dark timeline where somehow saving his parents makes everything horrible and he’ll have to fix it by letting his mom die again, in which case I’m really going to be mad. But if they can somehow make it so his mom and possibly dad still survive, and possibly the original Wells too, and still find a reason to keep a lot of the character relationships on the show intact, I’d be all for it.
So… here’s how it’ll happen. He’ll some how take his mother and father into the Speed Force and create Time Remnants of them. Now that there are 2 of them, they can die, keeping the time line intact and still be alive so he has his family. I mean, that’s just my theory. My theories are never right with this show.
I like this theory. If they really want to keep the timeline intact, he has to create a time remnant, and then bring the surviving version to modern day, so that he still goes and lives with Joe and everything. Now, I’m afraid I’m not sure he’ll be able to save his dad. That one seems to be a lack of access to John Wessley Shipp, especially now that he’s double booked as two characters. But assuming we go through Flashpoint and he realizes he can’t change the timeline that much or everything gets screwed up, the actual win-win solution would be to Time Renmant his mom and bring a copy to modern day, setting the timeline back the way it was.
I would really hate it if all the characters who have died are brought back. I think the entire theme of this season has been about acceptance — accepting what you’ve lost and getting peace about it. It’s why the last two minutes of this episode felt like a betrayal of the overarching theme, with Barry taking a step backwards and basically throwing a speed force temper tantrum.
But I am interested to see the potential Flashpoint effects — perhaps Robert Queen as Green Arrow, for instance.
Eh, I have trouble accepting the acceptance plotline because it reeks of Geoff Johnsian forced tragedy. I was never a fan of them killing his mom in the first place (in the show and in the comics), because we already have so many superheroes defined by tragedy that we don’t need to take the ones who weren’t and retroactively kill their parents. Speedsters are the fun superheroes, they don’t need dead parents to drive them. Barry not saving his mom at the end of season one never made sense to me. I was willing to begrudgingly let it go and move on if they had too, but now that we brought it up all season long and then killed his other parent, I actively want them to unkill his mom.
EH, different strokes. I disagree with your outlook on things. I think it made for a more compelling hero (especially on TV) to go the route they did initially. I am much more inspired by heroes who overcome really bad things than those who simply smile and stop crime. There’s a balance there. One of the reasons Wally was more compelling than Barry in the comics was that he DID have to overcome the tragic loss of his uncle and the weight of this incredible responsibility that was thrust upon his shoulders. It’s also one of the reasons pre-Crisis Barry wasn’t the most exciting character from a personality standpoint.
But I think we’re on the same page of disliking last night’s ending, even if it’s for different reasons.
Personally, the balance I was looking for was Arrow was the show about a superhero who has to overcome tragedy, and the Flash was the show about a superhero who was a good guy because he had superpowers and was going to use them for good. Part of my problem is that we have Arrow which is all about a superhero haunted by the death of his father then mother then love interest then other love interest, and we have Flash which is about a superhero haunted by the death of his mother and then father, and then we have Legends of Tomorrow which is about a superhero team led by a guy haunted by the death of his wife and child (oh, and every single member save Stein has a dead love interest or family member). That’s where I start to think there’s a lack of balance.
And you’ve got a point with Wally vs. Barry (and I will always agree that Wally was the better Flash), but I dunno, it doesn’t feel like the same thing here. Wally was a superhero before someone’s death factored into it, and it never quite felt like a tragedy as much as it was a sacrifice that everyone was at least a little bit okay with. Barry wasn’t just a supervillain’s victim, he went out on his own terms. Barry with a dead mom is a victim, trapped in a tragic narrative he can’t do anything about (without destroying the universe); Wally with an uncle who sacrificed himself to save the world has a legacy to live up to, but there’s a certain amount of hope and optimism even in that death. I don’t need the shows to be entirely deathless, but the deaths they choose to focus on have all been about inflicting pain and very little else. And I’m kind of sick of watching people with superpowers and colorful costumes be in pain all the time.
Fair enough. I think, for me, what you refer to as being trapped in a tragic narrative is a mischaracterization of what is simply life. I’m not interested in superheroes who can just wish away all the bad things in life. That’s not inspirational to me. What’s inspirational, in my eyes at least, is when I was a kid and read about Superman facing down death and continuing to fight, knowing he was going to die, because it was the right thing to do. Or Batman coming to realize that vengeance wasn’t the answer to his parents’ murder.
I totally get where you’re coming from, it’s just that we view superheroes from a different perspective. Frankly, most of my issues with Arrow right now have to do with it getting too far from its roots in seasons one and two. I still enjoy it, but the supernatural elements have somewhat hampered what was previously a pretty straightforward street-level superhero show.
Again, I definitely agree that (barring the incredible Jay reveal) the finale last night left a lot to be desired. I think Barry, as he’s been built to this point, would have had more emotional maturity than he showed in the closing minutes.
When I say ‘trapped in a tragic narrative’, I don’t mean your average ‘sometimes bad things happen and we just have to deal’ that we have to deal with in real life; I’m referring to stuff like Barry’s nemesis changing history to kill Barry’s mom when he was a kid, but when Barry tried to change history back to what it was, he’s not allowed to because reasons, and now we’re stuck with a Barry who’s haunted by his mother’s murder and always has been. If Barry grew up to be Flash and then his mother died of cancer and he had to accept that he’s a superhero who can run at near lightspeed and yet there’s still some things he can’t fix, that would be one thing, and it could be compelling. When the rules of time travel convolutely allow the villain to change time to make things worse but won’t allow the hero to prevent that change, that’s when I start getting annoyed because the writers feel like they don’t know how to write anything other than tragedy. That’s been my problem with all the CW shows so far; not a single season finale has felt like it let their character just win. They’ve all been half successes or pyrrhic victories. It was legitimately interesting for the first season of Arrow to end the way it did; 5 times later and it just feels tiring and unsatisfactory.
Ever since this show started all wanted from it was John Wesley Ship in a Flash costume again. I may have let out a big ol’ SQUEEEE when they showed up all suited up. I really, really hope his Jay Garrick makes more appearances on the show next season.