FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 3×19- “Once and Future Flash”

Directed by:       Tom
Cavanagh

O-KAY!  Quick thing first,
thanks Michael for taking the controls for the last review.  You did me proud.  You even kept it short, I get the feeling I
would’ve gone on some sort of tangent about the origins of the word “Abracadabra”
in the Kabbalah… and here I am; about to fall into that trap now.  Let’s get to the review.

We open on snowy Central City while Barry and Iris contemplate
their future.  Not together and not in
the same way, Iris is essentially planning her will while Barry’s realized that
with all Abra Kadabra’s talk about Barry’s future that maybe he should just
take the hint pop over into 2024 and talk with future Barry Allen about
Savitar.  Iris isn’t listening but that’s
okay since Barry isn’t really listening to her. 
(Healthy relationships require listening.  Not just talking,
kids. I speak from the experience of failure.)

What’s important is that Iris makes Barry promise that he’ll be
there for Joe if she dies.

The next important thing we learn is that apparently this week’s
episode picks up exactly where they left off. 
Killer Frost on a rampage.

So, Barry races off to help the guys not be murdered and try to
talk Caitlin out of murdering them.  The
results are mixed, the Three Stooges live to sidekick another day but Caitlin
escapes.  So the remaining members of
Team Flash gather to recap/argue and that’s when Barry decides to head off to
the future with Wally’s help.

He arrives in an alley and it’s time for my favorite game: Good
News/Bad News!

Good news!  It worked,
Barry is in the year 2024 about two months before he disappears in the Red Sky
Event!  Bad news!  It looks a little bit less like Central City
and more like the kind of place this man would be working:

That’s okay,
because Good News!  Old friends are here
to meet him… Bad news! It’s Mirror Master and Top.  Since Barry is already trailing 3 to 1 in
Good News/Bad News, he decides that retreat is in order and he runs back to the
apartment for even more bad news.  As the
future stands Barry has not changed things. 
Iris is apparently dead and it looks like no one’s moved into the old
apartment since then. 

Future Cisco
arrives and something’s a bit odd about our friend but we’ll get back to
that.  He takes Barry to STAR Labs and
boy nothing screams “Bad Future” quite like a run-down science lab.  But Barry came here for information so he’ll
ignore that the place looks post-apocalyptic and press on.  Future Barry arrives… with anime hair:

See!

We’ll go
ahead and put this down in the “Giant Red Flag” column next to “still trashed
apartment” and “kinda disturbed Cisco” then get on with it.  Future Barry recognizes where and when our
Barry is from pretty much instantly then tells him to go home and be with Iris
while he can before he goes back to wherever he was at… I presume to
binge-watch Attack on Titan some more.

Oh, and one
more thing.  Future Barry doesn’t know
who Savitar is either.

So with this
whole trip basically a big bust, Barry decides to head back to 2017 and even
though he’s now down about 15 to 1 in GN/BN the bad news keeps on coming.  He can’t seem to run fast enough to go
back.  Cisco bright sides things in an
odd way.  “You can’t go back, but
hey!  Why don’t you stay here and be the
Flash for a while!”

This is when
we get out first real big clue as to why Cisco’s just a little bit off balance.  It turns out during his fight with Caitlin,
she froze his hands off, essentially wiping out his powers.  Barry asks to see the others and learn more
about what happened. 

Julian now
works at Iron Heights, taking care of Caitlin. 
Caitlin tells Barry that she joined Savitar and she knows who he is but
she sure as shit ain’t helping.  But she
smirks and tells him that Wally fought Savitar so maybe he knows.

At the West
Home, we see that if Wally knows who Savitar is he is in no position to
help.  He’s been crippled by Savitar and
is in a completely catatonic state.  That
leaves Joe and when Barry goes to see him at Iris’ grave Joe won’t even look at
him.  Barry finally realizes that all of
this is because Barry abandoned them all when Iris died.

Barry goes
back to STAR Labs to confront his future self. 
Future Barry is way past caring about pretty much anything, he tells
Barry that when Iris died in his arms it broke him.  He couldn’t handle anything so he focused
solely on stopping Savitar but by the time he actually did his life was
destroyed and that’s pretty much all Barry has to look forward to now.

Barry has
now officially seen all the future he can handle so now it’s time to go home
and he needs Cisco’s help but after showing Barry exactly the size of the mess
his future self has made Cisco’s a little pissed that Barry won’t even try to
help them put it back together.  See,
Cisco may not have powers or hands anymore but he’s still pretty good at
whipping up tech and he’s the one that’s been keeping Barry from going back
with some of that tech in the hopes of Barry helping him.

So Barry can go back, however he won’t go back.  It’s time to put the team back together,
starting with HR.  HR, despite the fact
that he shares the face name and DNA of an admitted murderer, is not in
jail.  He owns Jitters with the money he’s
made off his reworked erotic Flash fanfictions (Insert 50 Shades of Grey joke
here) and is on the brink of putting together a threesome… Tom Cavanagh
directed this episode, you don’t say!

Anyway he
Julian and Joe are whisked back to STAR Labs where Barry apologizes for his
future self and asks for their help stopping Mirror Master and Top.  Just in time because they’ve knocked over a
jewelry store.

Barry goads
them into a fight which was probably not the wisest course of action since the
pair have gotten pretty good and using their powers in concert with each other
and put Barry in a pretty bad way right off the bat.  The good news is Cisco can rig his time
travel stopping device to defuse their powers but the Better News is that, much like the Act III of a Rocky movie, future
Barry has pulled his head out of his ass and decided to go out there and win.

He’s even
got a new suit.

With two
Flashes for the price of one they make shockingly easy work of the pair and the
day is saved.  Back at STAR Labs future
Barry takes his first step towards really putting Team Flash 2024 back together
and now it’s actually for our Barry to go back. 

But it’s not
all good news, Future Barry would like to help save Iris but he can’t, the most
he can do is give Barry the plans for the device that a woman named Tracy Brand
developed for Barry that trapped Savitar. 
She didn’t develop the device until 2020 but maybe she can help Barry in
2017.  It’s a long shot but it’s the best
future Barry can do.

Barry
explains to the team and they decide that their first priority has to be saving
Caitlin from herself and Savitar.  Which
is probably the smart thing to do since she’s met Savitar and after seeing his
face she swears herself to him.

This was a
strong episode, they covered a lot of ground, some new ground… and covered some
old ground but it’s fine because, as you might RECALL, I was pretty mad with
the last episode I reviewed because it covered no ground.

The episode
really hinged on Gustin and Valdes, which was good.  I can really think of too many other episodes
where Cisco’s been given as much of a spotlight he’s more of an off the bench
player.  But with Patton, Panabaker,
Lonsdale and Cavanagh all off the field for most of the episode they needed him
and he delivered.  As for Grant, he gave
us a good taste of what Barry Allen is like after losing all hope.  I hate that version of Barry Allen, then
again I’m supposed to so good job there.

Mirror
Master and Top are still underwhelming which is fine I guess but if these two
show up again I hope for more than this discount Bonnie and Clyde things they’ve
saddled the characters with. 

Last up we
have the tease… I will be glad to finally have the mystery of Savitar’s
identity solved because quite frankly this has gone on far too long.  There’s only two or three people it could
possibly be and after building this up this long and with only four episodes to
really do anything with it I don’t really see how they’ve set this up to  be anything but underwhelming.  (About the only way I could be blown away was
if this turned out to be the Ezra Miller Barry and even that would only be for
a moment.)  So let’s just wrap this up
and then we can start fresh with Season 4, not exactly the attitude I would’ve
liked to have had with four episodes left this season but there you are.

Things We Learned
This Week:

Unanswered Questions: