FLASH SPOILER Review: Episode 3×23 “Finish Line”

Directed by:       David
McWhirter

So here we
are.  The end of another season of the
Flash and I won’t sugar coat it, this wasn’t exactly their best work.  Then again, they had two really good seasons
to follow so that shouldn’t come as a surprise. 
On the other hand, much like a great story being ruined by a crappy
ending:

A decent if
underwhelming story can be saved by a great ending:

Let’s see
how they did.

After we
recap all the insanity of this season we pick where we left off last week.  With Barry holding Iris as she dies.  Except… Just kidding!  It was actually HR using his Doctor Who plot
device pen.  He used the piece of Savitar’s
to find Iris and when he wasn’t able to rescue her he made the switch.  (Hey it took HR a long time to die, long enough to leave some last words for Cisco is
long enough for a guy with super speed to get a doctor… but plot, right?)

Savitar has ran off with the Speed Force Bazooka and stopped Caitlin from killing
Cisco.  He needs some Cisco tech to rise
above this mortal existence. Don’t we all?

After a
quick trip to Eobard’s Time Vault that confirms that the future is restored
(and does something else I’ll get back to at the end) the gang has to figure
out the still really big problem of an enemy that knows all your plans as you
plan them.  Which means Savitar also
knows that the lynchpin event to his very existence has now been undone.  We also come dangerously close to another,
better (and risky) ending before Julian explains where he’s been.  He went to Caitlin’s mother and helped develop
a cure for her Killer Frost problem.

Savitar wants Cisco to modify the Bazooka to help him use the Speed Force to
exist in every point of every timeline simultaneously which would make him a
god via Omni-presence.  He describes this
as “Plan B” but as it turns out this was his “Plan A” all along.  Cisco points out a flaw though, he won’t do
it.  So Savitar offers incentive, build
the device or he kills Caitlin.  That’s
one way to get things done, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile,
Barry is contemplating his other villains and realizes something.  Hate gotten him through things so far but it’s
not sustainable and it’s not really in his nature so maybe he needs to try
something else.

He meets
Savitar across town and offers a new path. 
He offers to help save Savitar from the Time Paradox that’s coming to
wipe him from existence.  I’ll give him
this, this is definitely a different tactic than what they’ve been going for
this year.  Barry brings Savitar to STAR
Labs and it goes about as well as you’d expect. 
Especially when the only person who could help is Tracy and she’s less
interested in helping than Cisco was. 

Much like
Savitar played dirty pool by using Caitlin’s life in exchange for Cisco’s
co-operation, Iris uses Harry Wells to leverage Tracy.  Meanwhile, Iris and Barry are trying to reach
out to Savitar but he’s trolling them a bit by hinting at the future that he
would have.  Savitar has an excellent
point, even if they save his life he’s a destroyed man with no hope of a life
with the people he cares most about.

The best
thing about a really good troll job is this:

Sorry about
that I meant, the best thing about Barry’s troll job is that it was all a distraction
so he could use the Philosopher’s Stone to blow up STAR Labs.  Just in time because Cisco’s finished with
the bazooka, so it’s for Cisco to die. 
Lucky for him, Gypsy arrives on the scene and saves him and brings him
back to the team.

Meanwhile,
it’s time for Savitar open up the Speed Force and get his prize but first he
needs Caitlin to give him a hand with the Black Flash.  So long Zoom. 
So Caitlin zaps Savitar with the bazooka and…

It lets Jay
out from the Speed Force Prison!  Welcome
back, Old Man!  Now the fight is on.  Cisco and Gypsy vs Killer Frost and Flash,
Flash and Kid Flash vs Savitar.  Cisco
and Gypsy subdue Caitlin but he can’t bring himself to kill his oldest friend
which allows Savitar to make the save. 
He and Barry have one last stand off where Savitar threatens to kill
Joe, Iris and Wally but when he goes to make good on that threat Barry stops by
phasing Savitar out of and Barry into his armor and destroying it from the
inside.

But here’s
the problem.  If Barry kills Savitar in
anger, he will eventually be consumed by his darkest instincts and his journey
towards the Dark Side becoming
Savitar will be complete.

Barry
resists the temptation…

And merely
lays out Savitar to reunite with Cisco and Caitlin now that the day is
saved.  But Savitar isn’t quite done and
he gets up to get at Barry one last time only for Iris to shoot him dead… Barry
and Iris are going to need to honeymoon at a Psychiatrist that specializes in
PTSD cause they’re gonna have issues.

We have a
funeral scene for HR… Don’t worry about it, plenty of Harrison Wells left in
the Multi-verse let’s get a Rule 63 Harrison Wells played by Sarah Michelle
Gellar!   

Barry also tells Cisco what HR
told him before he died, that he did it because Cisco believe in him… Cisco
should probably join Barry and Iris in those counseling sessions.

Barry, Julian
and Cisco also have a heart to heart with Caitlin and ask her to come back to
the Team but while she’s no longer Killer Frost, she’s not really Caitlin
anymore either and she’s going to have to figure out who she is before she’s
any good to her friends and family so she’s out for a while.

So the day
is saved!  Yep, Team Flash has totally fixed
everything and have nothing to worry about despite playing with time and Speed
Force like a dog with an old pair of socks things are totally-

What’s that?
Reality and the Speed Force are unraveling? 
How on earth could this happen?! 
Yep, it seems the Speed Force liked having someone held prisoner for all
eternity so someone is going to have to take Jay’s place and well… That’s going
to have to be Barry.  It’s your mess
kiddo, you’ll have to clean it up.

Barry says
goodbye to everyone and goes off into the Speed Force with the spirit of his
mother.  That’s all they wrote for Season
3.

Hmm…

This was
good… Not great, but good.  It was also very familiar, boiled all the way
down this is basically the plot for Fast Enough.  Team Flash tries to defeat the villain by
giving them what they want, it doesn’t work, one of the team sacrifices themselves
to stop someone else from dying and Barry seemingly sacrifices himself to save
the city from being wiped out by a time paradox at the end.

Which, I
guess since Season 3 was basically a rehash of Seasons 1 and 2 then that’s only
fitting.  But it’s not terribly satisfying
and it undercuts the experience.  Another
thing that cuts this episode off at the knees was that scene in the Time Vault
I said we’d come back to.  By showing us
the restored Newspaper, they’ve essentially called the ending out as a stunt and
now it’s just a matter of time before Barry returns.

Had they not
shown that paper, there was always a chance that the character of Barry Allen
had reached his final end.  The writers
and producers could have played with the idea even teasing that that was the
case but we know that things will return to the status quo because they’ve told
us as much.

Another
thing they could’ve have done which I think might have been more daring would
be to play the paradox out, essentially return everyone back to a square one by
removing Savitar from the timeline and finish the season without Savitar and someone
else (Season 4’s villain) is rising up in his place.  This is risky of course, people don’t exactly
like when a show tells them they’ve wasted their time.  Ask the producers of Eureka and the original
Dallas.

As for my prediction
of how they would defeat Savitar, I suppose I was wrong but I will claim
partial credit in that they did attempt to heal Savitar instead of defeating
him.

So what’s the
verdict on Season Three as a whole? 
Eh!  It was okay, they came close
to overcoming the clunky start but with the way the season just rehashed things
it had already done it’s hard to give it much more praise than that.  I’m still looking forward to Season Four but
I might be less forgiving unless they come out of the gate on fire this fall.

Things We Learned
This Week: