Still reeling from this week’s absolutely crazy episode of The Flash ? If so, who can blame you? If “Out of Time” was just episode 15, what could they possibly have planned for the season finale? What happens next?
First, let’s quickly recap what exactly happened – and what then, really, didn’t – in this last episode of The Flash . In the beginning of the episode, while running, Barry sees himself, something Dr. Wells tells him they would look into after dealing with the metahuman of the week, one Mark Mardon, the Weather Wizard, as Cisco is happy to call him, having been waiting for that since week 1, and he’s back in town for a bit of revenge for his brother’s death. That puts Joe right in some serious danger – and he’s not the only one.
After Barry saves Joe from Mark’s lightning in the car, Mark’s attempt to attack Joe at the police station results in Singh in the hospital, likely paralyzed, and so Joe decides to take matters into his own hands and seek out the man alone. Eddie joins him, but all he can do is watch when Mark snatches Joe away in a gust of wind. The Weather Wizard then sets out to destroy the city with a tsunami, one Barry can only stop by creating a wall by running as fast as he can – or rather, possibly faster – back and forth, which he does, after Iris admits she has feelings for him, they kiss and he reveals he’s the Flash.
See? A lot happened just with that. However, then there’s the matter of Cisco’s investigation into Dr. Wells leading to him facing off against the man himself, who reveals that he’s Eobard Thawne, a distant relative of Eddie, and that fateful night, he wasn’t there to kill Barry’s mother. He was there to kill Barry. Harrison/Eobard vibrates his hand into Cisco’s chest and kills him. But to run fast enough to stop the Weather Wizard, Barry accidentally ran back in time . So what will he change?
In the next Flash episode, “Rogue Time,” Captain Cold is back , as you can see in the extended preview the CW posted, and that is just bound to make things more complicated for The Flash. He’s living the same day all over again, but what does that exactly mean on this show? What can be changed? What can’t be? It looks like he’s about to find out just that.
“Whatever tragedy you think you just averted, time will find a way to replace it,” Dr. Wells warns.
Barry’s time travel means that Dr. Wells’ secrets are back to being just that – secrets – and Cisco is once again alive, and as Entertainment Weekly has reported, Tom Cavanagh has teased that a scene in “Rogue Time” will show that his character is sorry about what happened and defends his actions.
“To [Wells], [Cisco is] already dead. It’s just a guy trying to get home. What’s good about it is that it’s not exactly [duplicitous]. He doesn’t lie to them, almost never lies. He’s furthering his agenda, but he’s also furthering Barry’s agenda. As he’s working with them, he is appreciative. All that stuff you see is not a mustache twirling villainous starting point. It’s actually genuine.”
But what does this mean for Dr. Wells moving forward? According to executive producer Andrew Kreisberg, it sounds like he might have to settle for just accomplishing one of the two things he wants.
“He wants to get home. He wanted to kill Barry. He thought it was going to be a neat and easy thing and instead he’s found himself trapped here for the last 15 years. All he wants to do is get back. Every day in this time is an assault on him. He really is trapped. If he can kill Barry in the process, two for two.”
Of course, when it comes to time travel, there’s always the question of rules – and which rules a show will follow. For The Flash , based on what Access Hollywood has reported that Kreisberg has said about the issue, there are some things that can be changed – and some that cannot.
“I think that like Wells said in [a] previous episode, there’s different versions of time travel. There’s the sort of fixed loop and then there’s the version where time is more plastic and mutable and I think that one of the fun things is discovering, as always, like a Doctor Who , what’s a fixed point in time and what can’t be changed and what things always have to happen and what things are changeable, and are mutable and it’s sort of a mixture of both.”
It seems like that’s what Dr. Wells is addressing in the preview of the next Flash episode. Could trying to change one thing just make everything else that much worse? Knowing how Iris feels and how she reacted to him being The Flash, will Barry tell her? Will Cisco’s investigation lead him back to that same place against Dr. Wells? Remember, Barry didn’t know about Dr. Wells or Cisco’s death before he traveled back in time because he cut Caitlin off on the phone before she could even tell him Dr. Wells can walk. Whatever happens next, it’s going to be one wild ride.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.
[Image via the CW]