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Spoilers The Flash - Season 3

"hey, we need to break into a building that dampens metahuman powers"

"Hey, we need a safe place to stash Iris"

Um, first problem solves the second?
Yeah, I was laughing at that too. I mean HERE'S the tech they need to keep Iris safe - but hey, it's Silver-Age level comic book writing we're dealing with in this last episode overall.
 
That would seem like a huge plot hole. I guess we have to assume that the loss of Iris is so tragic that it will push Barry to create time remnants anyway out of sheer desperation and hopelessness.

Yeah, but that's the thing, the "original" Savitar was forked off a desperate, hopeless Barry, one who was in a very bad place so he went all bad, but even if current Barry is somehow forced to make a time remnant, that time remnant will be forked over from this Barry, the one who spent the entire season learning not to be desperate and hopeless...
 
Yeah, but that's the thing, the "original" Savitar was forked off a desperate, hopeless Barry, one who was in a very bad place so he went all bad, but even if current Barry is somehow forced to make a time remnant, that time remnant will be forked over from this Barry, the one who spent the entire season learning not to be desperate and hopeless...

Maybe if Barry is less hopeless this time, then when he creates a time remnant, he creates a "nicer" version of Savatar. LOL.
 
Another plothole is the connection between Barry's memories and Savitar's. If Barry does something that he didn't in the other timeline, why should Savitar remember that if he is a time remnant of the original timeline?

By the same logic, if Savitar is so connected to Iris, then Barry could simply NOT use time remnants to battle Savitar. And where is the Savitar that killed Iris in the first timeline? Isn't this a Savitar that already experienced life after he killed Iris?

If Barry can change Savitar's memories, then he can destroy Savitar by not creating him in the first place. If Barry cannot destroy Savitar that way (see Reverse Flash), then Savitar would exist whether he kills Iris or not.
 
I like the theory that it was HR and not Iris that died (the holographic tech, feeling useless, responsible for blowing it, etc), but how does that work? HR was on our Earth and blew the secret of where Iris was hidden. Savitar pretty much goes straight there and gets her. Not really any time for him to swap places, and Cisco would have had to have been in on it (if Flash did it, Savitar would know).

As we've already mentioned, there's a point where Savitar lets Iris drop to the ground and the camera stays off her for a certain length of time while Barry is firing the bazooka. It's possible she was swapped out for an impostor at that point, though as I've said, it's hard to see how that could be done without anyone noticing.


Different question: can Barry create a time remnant of Iris, and let Savitar kill that instead?

I suggested that in a spoiler box a week or two ago, but Barry didn't have time to create one, the way things worked out.



It actually changed in some pretty big ways.

Yes, obviously, but not in a critical way. This is fiction. The writers aren't forced to follow some external logic; they decide everything that happens, so they decide what changes are critical enough to prevent the change. This is a commonplace trope in many time-travel stories, including Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Continuum, 12 Monkeys, Timeless, and of course Legends of Tomorrow in season 1. Naturally, in a work of fiction, you want to make it possible but difficult for the characters to achieve their goals. So you establish that only the right changes will be critical to making the change that the heroes or villains are trying to achieve. There's a momentum to history that's hard to overcome -- "Time wants to happen," as Rip Hunter put it -- so most changes will only alter the small details but fail to prevent the key outcome. You have to change the the right critical factor -- or make enough smaller changes that add up -- in order to bring about a fundamental change.

There is a certain logic to this. Most events are the result of many factors interacting, so removing one factor may only alter how the event happens instead of keeping it from happening at all. For instance, in T:TSCC, the characters were able to alter when and how Skynet emerged in the future, but not prevent it from emerging at all, and in 12 Monkeys (the show), they were able to change some details of how the world-destroying plague happened and create a future where some individuals had different life histories, but still didn't prevent the plague. If multiple different causes add up to bring about an event, you might have to change many or all of them, rather than just one. Or you'd have to change the right one, the one that's more important than the others.
 
As we've already mentioned, there's a point where Savitar lets Iris drop to the ground and the camera stays off her for a certain length of time while Barry is firing the bazooka. It's possible she was swapped out for an impostor at that point, though as I've said, it's hard to see how that could be done without anyone noticing.

Two words - Jessie Quick
 
Another plothole is the connection between Barry's memories and Savitar's. If Barry does something that he didn't in the other timeline, why should Savitar remember that if he is a time remnant of the original timeline?

By the same logic, if Savitar is so connected to Iris, then Barry could simply NOT use time remnants to battle Savitar. And where is the Savitar that killed Iris in the first timeline? Isn't this a Savitar that already experienced life after he killed Iris?

If Barry can change Savitar's memories, then he can destroy Savitar by not creating him in the first place. If Barry cannot destroy Savitar that way (see Reverse Flash), then Savitar would exist whether he kills Iris or not.
Look - this whole 'time predestination loop' storyline has been FULL of plotholes from day one. In a few you had Wally sitting on the sidelines and then running in; Joe up there with a gun, etc. Hell, last night we had Barry with the Speedforce Bazooka (which never appeared in any of the previous interactions of this scene.

Look, Iris isn't dead - and we'll end the season on a hppy note with a teaser to the Season 4 storyline. (I'm sure they'll be some sort of Flashback that shows Savatar did stab the 'real' Iris, or he did, but somehow she was either protected - or the would isn't fatal; but whatever it is - it will be as inconsistent as the rest of this season's plot line with regard to this story. It's a silver-age comic book. You'll never make rational sense of it - especially with the way they're handled time travel in the 'Arrowverse'. ;)
 
Two words - Jessie Quick

Again -- neither Jesse or anyone else on the team would be willing to let someone else die in order to save Iris. Everyone is so fixated on the mechanics of how it might be done that you're all overlooking the question of whether the people involved would find it morally acceptable. Any one of these people would sacrifice themselves to save Iris, but they would not sacrifice somebody else, or agree to help somebody else sacrifice themselves.
 
Jessie can heal. or vibrate fast enough so the blade doesn't hit/damage anything important.

Oh, I thought you meant that Jesse would've rushed in HR or Iris-2 or one of the other candidates. You didn't exactly give a lot of detail about your proposal, so I thought you were elaborating on someone else's idea.
 
Oh, by the way, the bit where Barry said this must be where Waller kept her Suicide Squad is more evidence that this is the same ARGUS headquarters we see in Arrow, which is presumably in Star City or nearby.

Did folks notice that one of the cells had a sign reading "Cheetah"?
 
Yes, obviously, but not in a critical way.

Well, they're saving the critical bit for the finale. :D
I don't actually mind any of that, I've long made peace with logic and consistency taking a back seat here (and on Legends), but it's still just impossible not to notice the very arbitrary way in which time traveling and its effects works on this show.

This is fiction.

I was hardly liable to confuse it for real life ;)
 
I noticed the Cheetah sign too. Thumbs up to that. Who knows? If we could see Superman, maybe they can negotiate Wonder Woman.

It will be interesting on how to deal with it. The biggest plothole to me was having Barry affect Savitar's memories, which goes against everything we saw before with Reverse Flash being able to survive as a time remnant. That means the time remnant is not the same person, which means that nothing Barry does should affect Savitar's existence.
 
I don't actually mind any of that, I've long made peace with logic and consistency taking a back seat here (and on Legends), but it's still just impossible not to notice the very arbitrary way in which time traveling and its effects works on this show.

As I said, it's hardly exclusive to this show; it's been a standard trope of most of the time-travel-themed TV shows of the past decade. So we should be used to it by now.

And as I also said, it isn't arbitrary; it actually makes a lot of sense that it would take more than one random change to make a fundamental difference in the entire course of history, since most any historical event is the result of numerous converging factors. Redirecting a few pebbles won't prevent the whole avalanche. Not unless they're the right pebbles at the right moment.
 
Until this morning I was buying into the theory that HR took the place of Iris while Savitar was distracted. But the preview for next week has HR in it, so unless this is a trick, he's not the one who died. Also, it would ruin the poignancy of the moment if it wasn't Iris who was killed. Perhaps Barry defeats Savitar simply by refusing to go dark, thus eliminating the bitterness that leads to Savitar's creation. No new powers or weapons, just his goodness winning out (as Snart suggested). If so, the death of Iris would presumably be erased.
 
They hid Iris on Earth 38. They deliberately lied to Savitar and everybody else. Jesse Quick agreed to impersonate Iris stealing HR's face changing tech, survived and pretended to be dead. Not in on the plan, Cisco turned Killer Frost back to their side, and convinced her to reveal Savitar's secrets to ensure he never gets created. Not in on their plans, H.R. took Savitar's blade, made a replica and used a neat trick you'd never think of to actually replace the piece on Savitar's suite with the non-lethal replica. Barry, not in on of any of those three plans, runs to the past, changes the timeline and causes everyone to be replaced by talking apes.
 
Alternate ending:
volX10J.gif
 
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