Yes, I just spoiled the reveal in the title of this review. But why are you coming to this page if you haven't seen the episode?
We've finally come to the big reveal of this season and the theory that future Barry is Savitar turned out to be the correct theory. Savitar told us a long time ago that he is the future Flash, but when he said that, I think we all assumed that there was a comma. Like, he was telling Barry that he is the future. In other words, he was telling Barry that he was going to defeat him and take over the world. Or something like that.
Nope. He was instead secretly revealing to Barry that he is the future version of Barry. I know a lot of you picked up on this long before they revealed it. If you are one of these people, give yourself a pat on the back. I didn't pick up on it until people started theorizing, and even then I wasn't sure I fully bought into it.
But now that it has been revealed, let's talk about it. Personally I have been annoyed with this season because of this guessing game that they've been making us play. The way to set up a good villain is not to put him in a fancy suit with strong powers and make the viewers play a guessing game for 85 percent of the season. I'd much rather know the villain from day one and spend the whole season building the villain up and setting up for an epic showdown at the end while having a lot of smaller showdowns in the meantime, much like they did in both seasons of Daredevil or in the first season of this show.
With that out of the way, having future Barry be our villain carries with it a lot of interesting questions. It's more than just your typical villain who's trying to take over the world or has decided to attack the hero for no apparent reason or for super cliché reasons that have been done time and time again. This is our hero vs. himself. And not in a mental or metaphorical way. In a literal way. Future Barry has come back to ruin the life of former Barry.
But why? What did Barry go through that was so horrific that he decided to go back in time to ruin his own life? And what timeline is this specific Barry from? Because we've set up quite a few of those.
If this ends up going the route of the old Planet of the Apes movies where they created their own destiny in a weird, confusing way that makes no sense when you think about it then this could be a complete disaster. But if this is Barry from a slightly different timeline that has somehow learned to work time travel and the speed force to jump timelines or something like that, then this could be brilliant. But we're going to need a lot of answers here soon because the idea of future Barry going back in time and trying to kill his past self has the potential of completely blowing up if they don't do it right.
Outside that, the stuff with Joe and Cecile I didn't care for. More CW romance nonsense that they overload us with in every show they've ever made. Some of us come here to watch a superhero TV show and not a giant romance drama.
The stuff with Tracy Brand was OK. Although it's kind of lazy writing to spend the whole season trying to figure out how to beat and unbeatable metahuman only to find a scientist at the end of the season that has all the answers.
What I liked most from this episode was the stuff with Caitlin/Killer Frost. She's been one of the best characters on this show, yet we've all known from the beginning that she was going to become Killer Frost, but to see it happen is emotionally traumatizing in a good way. That's how you build up a good villain. Make us care for the character, then have something happen that turns them bad that we buy into.
On that note, I am kind of annoyed that her metahuman powers automatically turn her evil without any inciting incident. That's just her powers. Evil ice woman. I'd rather have her discover her powers, then have some sort of inciting incident that turns her rogue. Something that Barry or Cisco do that push her away and cause her to lash out rather than her powers turning her evil for no reason. But as is, it's still emotionally effective. I just hope they let it play out naturally rather than having her be bad for an episode or two and dropping it. I want Killer Frost to be the season four baddie instead of a villain of the week.
Moral of the story here is that while I'm thankful we've finally revealed Savitar because it needed to happen a long time ago, I won't be able to have a solid opinion on this one way or the other until we get more answers. We've answered the big question. It's just that in doing so, we asked a whole bunch more questions, so we'll see how this turns out.
We've finally come to the big reveal of this season and the theory that future Barry is Savitar turned out to be the correct theory. Savitar told us a long time ago that he is the future Flash, but when he said that, I think we all assumed that there was a comma. Like, he was telling Barry that he is the future. In other words, he was telling Barry that he was going to defeat him and take over the world. Or something like that.
Nope. He was instead secretly revealing to Barry that he is the future version of Barry. I know a lot of you picked up on this long before they revealed it. If you are one of these people, give yourself a pat on the back. I didn't pick up on it until people started theorizing, and even then I wasn't sure I fully bought into it.
But now that it has been revealed, let's talk about it. Personally I have been annoyed with this season because of this guessing game that they've been making us play. The way to set up a good villain is not to put him in a fancy suit with strong powers and make the viewers play a guessing game for 85 percent of the season. I'd much rather know the villain from day one and spend the whole season building the villain up and setting up for an epic showdown at the end while having a lot of smaller showdowns in the meantime, much like they did in both seasons of Daredevil or in the first season of this show.
With that out of the way, having future Barry be our villain carries with it a lot of interesting questions. It's more than just your typical villain who's trying to take over the world or has decided to attack the hero for no apparent reason or for super cliché reasons that have been done time and time again. This is our hero vs. himself. And not in a mental or metaphorical way. In a literal way. Future Barry has come back to ruin the life of former Barry.
But why? What did Barry go through that was so horrific that he decided to go back in time to ruin his own life? And what timeline is this specific Barry from? Because we've set up quite a few of those.
If this ends up going the route of the old Planet of the Apes movies where they created their own destiny in a weird, confusing way that makes no sense when you think about it then this could be a complete disaster. But if this is Barry from a slightly different timeline that has somehow learned to work time travel and the speed force to jump timelines or something like that, then this could be brilliant. But we're going to need a lot of answers here soon because the idea of future Barry going back in time and trying to kill his past self has the potential of completely blowing up if they don't do it right.
Outside that, the stuff with Joe and Cecile I didn't care for. More CW romance nonsense that they overload us with in every show they've ever made. Some of us come here to watch a superhero TV show and not a giant romance drama.
The stuff with Tracy Brand was OK. Although it's kind of lazy writing to spend the whole season trying to figure out how to beat and unbeatable metahuman only to find a scientist at the end of the season that has all the answers.
What I liked most from this episode was the stuff with Caitlin/Killer Frost. She's been one of the best characters on this show, yet we've all known from the beginning that she was going to become Killer Frost, but to see it happen is emotionally traumatizing in a good way. That's how you build up a good villain. Make us care for the character, then have something happen that turns them bad that we buy into.
On that note, I am kind of annoyed that her metahuman powers automatically turn her evil without any inciting incident. That's just her powers. Evil ice woman. I'd rather have her discover her powers, then have some sort of inciting incident that turns her rogue. Something that Barry or Cisco do that push her away and cause her to lash out rather than her powers turning her evil for no reason. But as is, it's still emotionally effective. I just hope they let it play out naturally rather than having her be bad for an episode or two and dropping it. I want Killer Frost to be the season four baddie instead of a villain of the week.
Moral of the story here is that while I'm thankful we've finally revealed Savitar because it needed to happen a long time ago, I won't be able to have a solid opinion on this one way or the other until we get more answers. We've answered the big question. It's just that in doing so, we asked a whole bunch more questions, so we'll see how this turns out.