The Flash - Season 1

[JoeZhang]

OK - now answer this - why do they let Thawne go?

Because the deal was he tells Barry how to save his mother, they let him go.

OK but why stick to that deal? They have been running an illegal gitmo-style prison all season, breaking the deal with a sociopath is small fry - why would you let a sociopath who previously traveled in time to kill family members, has killed many more people leave with a time machine.

 

[Icemizer]

Well since Future Flash left Thawne in the past in the first place current Flash letting him go just seems to follow the pattern.

 

[Christopher]

OK but why stick to that deal?

Well, they kinda didn't. The Flash supersonic-punched Thawne and shattered the time sphere. Hard to say whether he intended to break the deal all along or just changed his mind once he chose not to save his mother, but ultimately, they did not let Thawne/Wells go.

 

[Tyberius]

OK, so the way to travel through time is to create a wormhole by running mach 2 through a particle accelerator into hydrogen.

What other gases were in the tunnel? Nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide ?

Is the hydrogen special? How fast was it moving? Also mach 2? What happens if you hit hydrogen in the open air? Does it kill Barry? Why doesn't the other gases kill Barry when he hits them in the accelerator?

 

[Servo]

Barry has no claim to Iris, and that news paper from the future says that he's going to get there eventually, so there's no reason to rudely temporally cock-block Eddie.

The newspaper was from the original timeline. That all changed when Eobard changed the past. They spelled out in this last episode why Iris and Barry never got together in this timeline - it was because they lived together and grew up like brother and sister, so Barry never felt comfortable admitting how he felt about her. By the time he did, she'd moved on and fallen in love with Eddie. In the original timeline, Barry never lived with Joe, and as such he had no problem telling Iris how he felt long before she ever met Eddie.

 

[JD]

I was thinking about the whole singularity thing, and I think part of the reason they had it wasn't so much for the threat to the world, at least before the end, but simply to give Barry a limited time to go back and save his mom. I think they just assumed he'd be able to go, save his mom, and be back home before time was up.

 

[Christopher]

I suspect the singularity wouldn't have erupted if Eddie hadn't killed himself and created a paradox. The ripple that generated in the spacetime continuum was probably enough to rip the wormhole back open and create the black hole.

 

[JoeZhang]

Something suddenly occurs to me - how does Barry get back? Because we saw the rift does not exist that side.

 

[CorporalClegg]

That's a total cop-out. By that logic Marty McFly should not have restored the timeline after Biff stole the Almanac, because "two wrongs and all that".

False equivalency.

Even if we accept BttF2 was a good film (It wasn't.) You're comparing two stories vary different in tone and scope. Also, Marty isn't a superhero.

But that's not really relevant. Marty went back and fixed one mistake, one which he was ultimately responsible for.

Saving Nora would not have restored the original timeline as you say because Thawne still kills RealWells and builds the collider way earlier than it originally was. It would no doubt still explode and the metashit would still hit the fan.

Barry is only fixing the part about the timeline he doesn't like. That's a wrong that doesn't right the universe.

 

[Guy Gardener]

An accelerator fires particles at inordinary vectors and unusual velocities that are not common in nature.

Barry running at Mach two probably bumped into a billions of hydrogen atoms that were just chilling out, but there was only one hydrogen atom propelling itself at close to light speed, hugging the rails of the accelerator.

It's like the difference between jumping in puddles and the police using a high pressure water cannon to knock you on your ass.

 

[Gryffindorian]

I suspect the singularity wouldn't have erupted if Eddie hadn't killed himself and created a paradox. The ripple that generated in the spacetime continuum was probably enough to rip the wormhole back open and create the black hole.

I was thinking of this as well. The singularity/vortex that was engulfing Central City must have emerged when Eddie shot himself.

Perhaps the only way to fix this is for Barry to time-travel and undo what Eddie did.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Fix what?

The Flash let his Mommy die because his life is sweet.

Barry's life was sweet before Wells was erased by time, and Eddie was still shtupping his missus.

Now it's double sweet, after just the apparent murder of two more people.

No Thawne, and an unobstructed shot at Iris.

Um?

The colour of his suit is representative of all the other peoples blood Barry happens to be drenched in?

 

[Awesome Possum]

I suspect the singularity wouldn't have erupted if Eddie hadn't killed himself and created a paradox. The ripple that generated in the spacetime continuum was probably enough to rip the wormhole back open and create the black hole.

I was thinking of this as well. The singularity/vortex that was engulfing Central City must have emerged when Eddie shot himself.

Perhaps the only way to fix this is for Barry to time-travel and undo what Eddie did.

I'm guessing the timeline is going to be changed and only the Flash will remember, possibly Cisco as well. Maybe it will allow Dr. Wells and Reverse-Flash to be separate characters.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Nah, you're thinking of good time travel rules.

These are bad time time travel rules.

Central City and the world and the universe has not changed, Thawne's contributions as Harrison Wells will continue to exist even though he shouldn't have been there because he doesn't exist anymore. It's that he could have existed up to the point that Eddie shot himself that he didn't not exist until it was absolutely impossible, just like how Roddy McDowell didn't replace Al as Sam's observer on Quantum Leap until Al's death in 1942 was an absolute certianty.

This implies a plastic quality to time, it allows the odds to play out until there are no odds, just facts.

Think of it as when a bride changes her name. She's suddenly a different person as far far as paper work is concerned, but her previous contributions to the world under her maiden name are not scrubbed out.

 

[theenglish]

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the opening arc is going to have to end with Barry fixing the events when he returned from the past. It will also end with allowing Wells to escape back through the anomaly setting up the premier of Legends. It is possible that the Legends team may be involved as well and/or Jay Garrick.

I just can't imagine the show going forward in any positive way with the level of destruction to Central City caused by the Flash Team. Barry would be devastated to the point where there is no way he could redeem himself or overcome his guilt.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Looking back at the season, something that I'm impressed with is that the show wasn't afraid to resolve all of the sorts of plot threads that another show might have teased out for seasons and seasons, even the entire run of the series....Barry went public as a hero and got his official name, his entire main supporting cast (including Iris) knows who he is, Zoom was exposed, Barry went back in time to try to save his mom....

 

[Awesome Possum]

Looking back at the season, something that I'm impressed with is that the show wasn't afraid to resolve all of the sorts of plot threads that another show might have teased out for seasons and seasons, even the entire run of the series....Barry went public as a hero and got his official name, his entire main supporting cast (including Iris) knows who he is, Zoom was exposed, Barry went back in time to try to save his mom....

It did in a single season what Smallville took a decade to do.

 

[theenglish]

Looking back at the season, something that I'm impressed with is that the show wasn't afraid to resolve all of the sorts of plot threads that another show might have teased out for seasons and seasons, even the entire run of the series....Barry went public as a hero and got his official name, his entire main supporting cast (including Iris) knows who he is, Zoom was exposed, Barry went back in time to try to save his mom....

It did in a single season what Smallville took a decade to do.

I think this is due in large part to Flash's willingness to embrace its comic book roots and the nature of long form stories that have been a part of comics since the seventies. In comics there are always more stories to tell.

 

[FreezeC77]

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the opening arc is going to have to end with Barry fixing the events when he returned from the past. It will also end with allowing Wells to escape back through the anomaly setting up the premier of Legends. It is possible that the Legends team may be involved as well and/or Jay Garrick.

I just can't imagine the show going forward in any positive way with the level of destruction to Central City caused by the Flash Team. Barry would be devastated to the point where there is no way he could redeem himself or overcome his guilt.

The thing I don't get most about this alteration of the timeline and supposedly Barry needing to fix anything. Isn't this already the alternate timeline?

Thawne admitted to Barry that he travelled back in time in order to kill Barry's Mom in front of him and have it be so dark an event he never became the Flash. So in the original timeline Barry was the Flash and his Mom wasn't murdered in front of him as a child.

 

[Christopher]

Thawne admitted to Barry that he travelled back in time in order to kill Barry's Mom in front of him and have it be so dark an event he never became the Flash. So in the original timeline Barry was the Flash and his Mom wasn't murdered in front of him as a child.

That's what Thawne believed to be the case. But given that the older Flash -- the one who was presumably from that original timeline -- prevented Barry from saving his mother, maybe there's more to the story than Thawne believed. At this point, I don't think we can assume that Thawne was right about everything that happened that night.