FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 3×15 – “The Wrath of Savitar”

Directed by:       Alexandra
La Roche

Opening on a
race with Barry and Kids this weeks and shortly after noticing that HR does
like phrase things in a creepy way we learn that the goal of this escapade was
to train Wally up to the speed he’ll need to stop Savitar from killing Iris,
which he is now officially fast enough to do. 
Well that’s good!  Let’s just go
ahead and call it a season then, I guess that Wally seeing Savitar everywhere he
goes is just a red herring.  The day is
saved, let’s get wasted!

Good news!
Julian’s back from visiting his family, just in time for Barry and Iris to
announce their engagement and everyone is so happy!  Except for Joe.  He’s happy yeah but he’s more than a little
annoyed at Barry for not asking for his blessing beforehand and this isn’t a
bit suspicious.

But we can’t
worry about that now, there’s a fire across town that Barry and Wally head off
to take care of it.  While they’re on the
way, Savitar takes the time to give Wally another visit and Wally finally tells
the gang.  Barry goes into the Oliver
range of over-reacting because this is all about Iris’ life.  Throttle back a little Barry, you’re racking
up the frequent asshole points the last few episodes.  But instead of throttling back, Barry goes
for broke by kicking Wally out and strong arming Julian into playing Mr.
Microphone for Savitar again.

Savitar is
understandably upset and pulling out the full psychological warfare on them.  In fact, I’m starting to wonder exactly how
Savitar knows so much about each of them. 
But at least they clued them into a line of thought, that perhaps there’s
another piece of the stone out there so it’s time to beat up a Savitar
lacky.  They’ve apparently tagged the
last of Savitar’s lackies with GPS (Cisco going full big brother really makes
my skin crawl) and they track him to his big Savitar altar in the mountains.

Funny how
nobody in the area ever noticed the big evil altar before now.  Barry makes quick work of him and finds out
that the lacky had a box to hold the stone but not the stone.

Meanwhile in
the speed lab, Wally’s on the brink of a nervous breakdown so he and HR decide
the best way to resolve that is by seeing his sister get murdered in the
future.  See? It sounds so normal when I
phrase it like this, in the show it came off like a super bad idea that’s why
Cisco said no at first.

So they go
into the future and Wally gets to see Iris die but in all the commotion he sees
something and it pisses him off.  See,
Iris isn’t wearing her ring in the future that means Barry’s proposal is just a
calculation.  So Wally tells everyone and
they all react the way you’d expect them to react when they learn that the guy
they build their team around turns out to be a dick.  This must happen to the Avengers three times
a week because they’re all assholes.

Anyway,
Barry’s got some serious damage control to do and it doesn’t seem to be going
well judging by Iris saying those magic words all guys love to hear from their
girlfriends/wives: “I need time to think.”

Meanwhile
Caitlin and Julian are competing over the “One of them will betray you”
position in the prophecy.  Julian thinks
he’s got it locked down, but Caitlin had a big trump card: She’s been hiding
the piece of the stone to try and get rid of her powers.  Okay! 
This is all pretty much spiraling towards rock bottom.  How can we make this worse?

Let’s strong-arm
Julian into talking for Savitar one more time while Cisco tries to track
him.  That’ll blow up the team.  But at least they tracked him down to…
Everywhere.  This is seriously a
disaster.

Back at the
West Home, Jesse tries to talk to Wally but really the only person that can get
through to him is his mom.  Which is a
huge problem because she’s dead.  Wally,
talking to people only you can see or hear is not good.  Ask my friend here:

The hits
keep coming because Iris calls Barry home to call off the engagement and Barry
has his Dr. House moment as a result. 
Sorry Barry, they can’t all be positive. 
Back at STAR Labs, Cisco trying to narrow down Savitar’s location from “Everywhere”
to at least “Somewhere” but it’s not working. 
That’s because Savitar’s in the Speed Force, where future Barry put him.

This is not
good but it could be worse, Wally could have stolen the Stone to try and throw
it into the Speed Force…

So anyway,
Wally’s stolen the Stone to throw it into the Speed Force.  Giving Savitar exactly what he wanted,
someone to take his place in the Speed Force. 
Good job, everyone!

So, now it’s
time for Barry to get his ass kicked. 
Savitar does Barry two favors: One he stabs him in the chest with his
big Savitar blade and two he keeps giving Barry vague hints that there’s still
more to Savitar than he knows.  Lousy
favors but Savitar’s a crazed villain so he’s not good at it.

They patch
Barry up at STAR Labs but the damage is done. 
Wally’s suffering for all eternity because Caitlin’s betrayed their
trust.  The team is broken and Iris has
taken off Barry’s ring which pretty much means they’ve done nothing to change
the future.

Talk about
ending on a positive, huh?  What an
upbeat ending!  Oh the bright side, this
week and next week more than likely represent the Act II low point for our
characters so it’s time for them to start picking themselves.

Also on the
bright side, this was a hell of an episode. 
Everyone really gets put through the ringer and they all make sure you
feel it too.  I also love it when they
waste no time answering a question that the previous episode raised.  But its okay that we know that Savitar was in
Wally’s head because the things Savitar knew really raised a lot more
questions.  When I watched the episode on
Tuesday I was almost certain Savitar was going to turn out to be Eddie but now
I’m half convinced he’s a future version of Barry.  This could be really interesting to see play
out depending on how ambitious Berlanti, Kreisberg and the gang are feeling.

 Just a really, really good episode. 

Things We Learned
This Week:

Unanswered Questions: