Spoilers The Flash - Season 3
- Thread starter Commander Richard
- Start date
I really liked the premiere but I wish we would have spent like 5 episodes in this timeline. Things felt rushed and I wanted to see the new Cisco or Caitlin. I guess we still might since the timeline wasn't completely restored.
The end reminded me of Voyager's Year of Hell where you had Annorax trying to change history to get his wife back but he would never be successful. I wonder if we might see some of that plot here in season 3 with Barry and Iris being together being the thing that can never fully restore the timeline. Might also explain Supergirl being in this time (and now I hope it's a new "incarnation" of Supergirl rather than the normal one). I'm excited to see where this will go.
The end reminded me of Voyager's Year of Hell where you had Annorax trying to change history to get his wife back but he would never be successful. I wonder if we might see some of that plot here in season 3 with Barry and Iris being together being the thing that can never fully restore the timeline. Might also explain Supergirl being in this time (and now I hope it's a new "incarnation" of Supergirl rather than the normal one). I'm excited to see where this will go.
A lot of people seem to take the ending of "Year of Hell" as the reiteration of a loop. I think it's meant to be the opposite: It's showing that Annorax walked away from his time-travel project this time, that he chose instead to prioritize making the most of the time he had with his wife. Earlier in the episode, he'd expressed regret for all the times he'd worked through the night while his wife was sleeping, so showing a final scene where he chooses to set aside his work in favor of being with his wife is an indication that things have changed and the timeship won't exist anymore. After all, if it did still exist, then Voyager would never have gone back to normal.
There's no need to "explain," because Supergirl is still on her own parallel Earth. We know from advance photos and episode descriptions that characters from Earth-2 and Earth-3 (Real Jay's world) will continue to feature in The Flash, so that means crossovers between different Earths will be an ongoing phenomenon, and that in itself is sufficient to account for Supergirl's interaction with the Earth-1 characters. She'll just cross between universes like the other guest characters.
After all, since parallel Earths are timelines that already diverged sometime in the past, there's no reason why changing the history of Earth-1 should affect any of the other Earths' histories.
Johns is to DC, what Bendis is to Marvel. Both have a lot of hits, stay on titles for extended periods of time and have a lot of clout with the their respective companies. However, they also have a fair share of clunkers, bad characterization for certain characters and a tendency to ignore other writers (past and present, even when they are working on the same event) works, in favor of their own interpretations and stories. This leads to frustrated fans and creative teams.
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Bendis doesn't have the clout he used to have, and did he ever set policy like Johns does?
I surely hope so! Really looking forward to E2-Wells getting back into the story, noticing all the differences, drawing the right conclusion and giving Barry a piece of his mind.
Barry lets his mom get killed a second time. Unbelievable.
This time he called the hit. He's bad.
That is the essence of the Flashpoint story that this show has been using as its template from the start, but given that they already did this beat at the end of the first season, I agree it feels a bit redundant here.
You're going to be disappointed, then.
They've already revealed that we'll be seeing Savitar this year along with Dr. Alchemy, although Savitar has been said to be the 'bigger bad' of the two.
Adding to the underwhelming-ness of the story, is that the entire drive for Barry since the show began was getting justice for his mother and Henry out of jail. And he succeeds in undoing evil Reverse Thawn's alteration of the timeline, and the episode doesn't focus on him enjoying the life he missed out on. We don't get to see him with mom and dad, interacting with them, soaking in the joy that they'll both alive and together. Instead we get stalker Barry following Iris around, overbearing Barry interferring with Nu Flash, unhelpful Barry, with his aid not really doing Joe any favors.
That has to be the biggest let down of the premiere.
That has to be the biggest let down of the premiere.
I finally got to see the premiere, and wow, am I disappointed.
Everything felt rushed and plot driven. The Flashpoint Universe was completely unexplored. No background was given for any of the characters. It should have been 3 episodes, minimum. When Reverse Flash was screaming who's the villain now, Barry hadn't even seen or done much for that statement to even make sense. We barely saw any of the reimagined characters or their world. Everyone fell into place and believed him way too quickly. Wally's death was contrived, the memory losses were left unexplored; The threat to the world nonexistent. I was expecting something better and more epic; they wasted the "getting his powers back" aspect of the original Flashpoint story last year, and wasted some more of it on Earth 2, but at least they could have done stuff like show us the original Harrison Wells, or make the time travel more difficult, or have Jay Garrick be the one to explain that he has to change it back, because of the unforseen rise of The Rival or something.... since the timeline rewrite only would have affected Earth 1, the rest of the multiverse should have remained intact, or changed only by its associations (or lack thereof) with Earth 1...it would only make sense, to me, that someone familiar to Barry, should have been the one to show him the error of his ways, and coming from the face of his father, it would have had much more weight. The entire episode felt like a waste of potential.
The time travel was wonkier than usual, too.... I was expecting Barry to become the version of himself that waves his past self off at the end of Season 1, completing the loop and making a full circle story with the show's beginnings. Doesn't Eobard still have to stay in the past and become Harrison Wells? How did they both end up in the present? Did the Reverse Flash just get the hugest win ever, a trip back to reality and an unencumbered personal timeline?
Barry should have become the Flash from Season 1 and waved his past self onward, completing the circle, instead of letting it play out traumatically scarring his mother worse before her death, with a second round after she thought she was safe.
Way too much makes very little sense, and what did make sense was absolutely wasted.
Everything felt rushed and plot driven. The Flashpoint Universe was completely unexplored. No background was given for any of the characters. It should have been 3 episodes, minimum. When Reverse Flash was screaming who's the villain now, Barry hadn't even seen or done much for that statement to even make sense. We barely saw any of the reimagined characters or their world. Everyone fell into place and believed him way too quickly. Wally's death was contrived, the memory losses were left unexplored; The threat to the world nonexistent. I was expecting something better and more epic; they wasted the "getting his powers back" aspect of the original Flashpoint story last year, and wasted some more of it on Earth 2, but at least they could have done stuff like show us the original Harrison Wells, or make the time travel more difficult, or have Jay Garrick be the one to explain that he has to change it back, because of the unforseen rise of The Rival or something.... since the timeline rewrite only would have affected Earth 1, the rest of the multiverse should have remained intact, or changed only by its associations (or lack thereof) with Earth 1...it would only make sense, to me, that someone familiar to Barry, should have been the one to show him the error of his ways, and coming from the face of his father, it would have had much more weight. The entire episode felt like a waste of potential.
The time travel was wonkier than usual, too.... I was expecting Barry to become the version of himself that waves his past self off at the end of Season 1, completing the loop and making a full circle story with the show's beginnings. Doesn't Eobard still have to stay in the past and become Harrison Wells? How did they both end up in the present? Did the Reverse Flash just get the hugest win ever, a trip back to reality and an unencumbered personal timeline?
Barry should have become the Flash from Season 1 and waved his past self onward, completing the circle, instead of letting it play out traumatically scarring his mother worse before her death, with a second round after she thought she was safe.
Way too much makes very little sense, and what did make sense was absolutely wasted.
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That part bugged me as well. I'm not sure what to make of this episode. I'll try to withhold judgment until we learn more.
I think you expected a panel by panel recreation of the comicbook Flashpoint story and that was never going to happen because TV Flash is a different kind of animal. It was only one episode and as the end suggested it's far from over, i expect the repercussions to last for at least the next couple of episodes but it surely will not be this universe changing event it was in the comics (for that to be done all Berlanti shows would have to change and that's not something they will do for any amount of extended time).
Why would we want to? It's clear this won't be permanent and we saw enough of the changes to get the picture. This is not a 20+ issue comics series but a TV show with only about 22 episodes per season so if they spent the entire season in Flashpoint exploring these new characters people would jump ship faster than Flash could run because we knew the characters before so getting to know new characters with the same actors would be boring as hell
Easy there.. it's just one episode. You are describing events that would take up half a season, not very fair on the writers or the show i think.
Why wouldn't they once he revealed he was another speedster? Granted that one was quick but then again it's the TV trope and reality of TV show production that you can't spend half a season slowly gaining trust if that event would be limited in scope. I liked the idea of Iris sensing that she belongs with Barry no matter the universe or changes that happened and i hope this wasn't just the one scene but plays out more deeply later on.
Flashpoint Wally is still alive, they said so in the episode ("just" heavily wounded), the memory lossed were explained by Thawne as the effect of time settling into this new reality and overwriting the old reality, i.e. everything Barry has experienced in his life pre-Flashpoint.
What threat should there be? Barry changed a personal event and it had repercussions for others he knew (and possibly for many more who are living other lives or have different character traits now ) but why should this be a threat to the world? If i were to become a surgeon because somebody a continent away who had superpowers changed the timeline i wouldn't know that i was something else in the previous life.
Still can happen.. i assume that the Flash from the original event who waves off season 1 finale Barry has gone through Flashpoint and resolved it. He understands now not to mess with the timeline of events and has truly accepted the fact that this is how his life is going to be and what made him the person he is. He knew what would happen and so warned of season 1 Barry not to do it now (he knew he would still do it later but that had to happen to as it's part of his original timeline).
However no show with time travel ever resolves everything logically with all the time loops and paradox events that seem to happen.. all of them give up at some point trying to make logical sense about it and only aspire to make it internally consisten to deliver drama. It's just fans of the show who nitpick this to death but that's also part of our culture
Barry built the cage out of the same materials that Zoom built his cages out of.
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