The Flash - season 3 (1 Viewer)

[Garysb]

Spoiler: Series Finale Leaked Footage

There is footage on youtube showing filming of the finale. It appears that Barry is saying good bye to everyone including Jay Garrick(John Wesley Shipp), Iris ( She Lives!) Caitlin and Jesse Quick are the only ones not in the scene. Barry then walks off with his Mother!!!! My guess is Barry has to go into the Speed Force as punishment for all the time travel craziness he has caused. I am also guessing the one who looks like his mother is one of the Speed Force people he has met before.

That should say Season Finale not Series Finale. The spoiler is a description of the footage not the actual footage which can be found by searching youtube "Flash Season 3 Finale Footage" The footage is all silent recorded apparently by someone watching them film.

 

[NeilO]

Okay, I just watched tonight's episode. Now, I have to admit that The Flash has done some absurd timeline stuff, but this is a step beyond. I am really doubting whether this season will make any sense once we are done.

 

[Garysb]

They need to explain a lot because there are too many holes in the story. Why didn't 2024 Barry say he did not know who Savitar was? Why didn't anyone else in 2024 tell Barry who Savitar was? How could Joe from 2024 have anything to do with any version of Barry knowing that he killed his daughter and crippled his son?
Are they going to do a mind wipe so no one remembers except Killer Frost.

 

[Joseph Bolus]

Yeah ... I'm trying hard now to figure out if "Future Flash" is a remnant of the *original* Flashpoint timeline. (He would almost have to be.) And, obviously, the whole 2024 timeline was wiped out when that Flash gave "current" Flash the info on Tracy Brand.

Anyway, that "Ice Bridge" sequence with Killer Frost was the best use of "freeze powers" since "The Incredibles"!

 

[NeilO]

They need to explain a lot because there are too many holes in the story. Why didn't 2024 Barry say he did not know who Savitar was? Why didn't anyone else in 2024 tell Barry who Savitar was? How could Joe from 2024 have anything to do with any version of Barry knowing that he killed his daughter and crippled his son?
Are they going to do a mind wipe so no one remembers except Killer Frost.

2024 Barry did say he didn't know who Savitar was and the current Barry might not have figured it out unless he went to 2024. Only Killer Frost knew who Savitar was. That exact 2024 future has already been changed by Barry going to 2024.

But the question is whether Savitar and his knowledge is constantly being changed by the actions of the current Barry.

There really are too many time paradoxes going on for this to make complete sense.

 

[Matt Hough]

There really are too many time paradoxes going on for this to make complete sense.

Which is probably why I'll be leaving the show at the end of the current season. The story has folded in on itself too many times for comfort, and it's just not enjoyable to watch trying to sort out all these various timelines, futures, Earths, etc.

That will leave me with just Supergirl from the CW universe next season.

 

[Sam Favate]

The writing has really been convoluted this year. Too many misdirections and nonsensical "surprises." It's a mess.

 

[Garysb]

2024 Barry did say he didn't know who Savitar was and the current Barry might not have figured it out unless he went to 2024. Only Killer Frost knew who Savitar was. That exact 2024 future has already been changed by Barry going to 2024.

But the question is whether Savitar and his knowledge is constantly being changed by the actions of the current Barry.

There really are too many time paradoxes going on for this to make complete sense.

Yes I wrote that wrong. I meant to say why did 2024 Barry tell Barry that he didn't know who Savitar is.

I guess what you are saying is that the Barry of 2024 that met 2017 Barry did not go to the future when he was 2017 Barry and by 2017 Barry going to the future he changed the future. Maybe. If that is true then how did Savitar know everything that 2017 Barry was going to say after 2017 Barry came back to 2017. Maybe it would make more sense if Salvitar was a much older version of Barry like the one who left a message that he is not to be trusted in the crossover earlier this season.

 

[Doug Wallen]

I don't see how the next three episodes will be able to straighten all of this out. I have been trying to interest my wife in this show. SHe was paying some attention to this episode and when I said "Future" Flash, she said, "Didn't he see future Flash last week?" All I could think of was Flashpoint. She had a very puzzled look on her face. I have given up trying to explain things. I will finish up this season, not sure about next season though.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I was busy most of yesterday evening and was too tired by the time I got free to watch this episode last night. After diligently avoided spoilers all day, I had the big reveal ruined for me by YouTube's autoplay feature. After watching a video about something else entirely, the next up video was titled "Savitar is Future Flash - The Flash 3x20 Ending Scene [4k Ultra HD]"

After 2024 Barry's very telling line about Savitar killing most of the time remnants he'd created, future time remnant Barry was my leading guess going into this episode, so it wasn't as bad as if it'd been someone genuinely shocking. It is frustrating that spoilers are basically unavoidable now unless you watch shows more or less live.

Okay, I just watched tonight's episode. Now, I have to admit that The Flash has done some absurd timeline stuff, but this is a step beyond. I am really doubting whether this season will make any sense once we are done.

Time travel is this show's Kryptonite, which makes it inexplicable why they keep going to that well over and over and over again. "Legends of Tomorrow" is a breezy enough show that I can shrug off the Arrowverse's nonsensical and inconsistent model of time travel and just have fun with the characters.

But here, where the ramifications of time travel have major plot and character consequences and serves a more significant role that just getting the characters from Point A to Point B, it's a real Achilles heel.

They need to explain a lot because there are too many holes in the story. Why didn't 2024 Barry say he did not know who Savitar was? Why didn't anyone else in 2024 tell Barry who Savitar was? How could Joe from 2024 have anything to do with any version of Barry knowing that he killed his daughter and crippled his son?
Are they going to do a mind wipe so no one remembers except Killer Frost.

2024 Barry didn't know who Savitar was. He created Savitar, but he is not Savitar. Savitar and 2024 Barry are discrete, but 2017 Barry is the past of both Savitar and 2024 Barry.

Anyway, that "Ice Bridge" sequence with Killer Frost was the best use of "freeze powers" since "The Incredibles"!

That was awesome. Proper Iceman effects in a way that even the X-Men feature films never really adequately gave us.

2024 Barry did say he didn't know who Savitar was and the current Barry might not have figured it out unless he went to 2024. Only Killer Frost knew who Savitar was. That exact 2024 future has already been changed by Barry going to 2024.

But the question is whether Savitar and his knowledge is constantly being changed by the actions of the current Barry.

This is the problem. Based on what we know, Savitar existed in the pre-Flashpoint timeline but didn't kill Iris since she had the byline on the 2024 "Flash Missing Vanishes in Crisis" headline.

Paradox #1: Pre-Flashpoint Future Barry creates the time remnant of himself that becomes Savitar in his campaign to stop Savitar. No Savitar = No Time Remnants = No Savitar.

Solution: In the pre-Flashpoint timeline, Future Barry created the time remnant that became Savitar for some other purpose.​

Flashpoint created Kid Flash, who was Savitar's ticket out of the Speed Force prison. Once Barry and Reverse Flash restored the murder of Barry's mother and created the post-Flashpoint timeline, Savitar had motivation to lure Julian Albert into becoming Doctor Alchemy. In the pre-Flashpoint timeline, Julian never became Doctor Alchemy, which is why he wasn't in Central City. Savitar used Doctor Alchemy to transfer Wally's powers from Flashpoint to the Wally in the post-Flashpoint timeline. He then lured Wally into freeing him from the Speed Force, setting up the chain of events leading to Iris's death.

When Barry traveled to 2024, we saw how things would have played out in the post-Flashpoint future had he never traveled to the future. In this future, Barry never figured out who Savitar was and didn't know he created him. The only one to know Savitar's identity was Killer Frost.

Paradox #2: The 2024 we saw shouldn't have existed. Without any outside intervention from another time traveler, if Barry traveled to 2024 this time, he would have always made the decision to travel to 2024. 2024 Barry should have remembered traveling to 2024 when he was 2017 Barry.

Solution: ???
​

Regardless, 2017 Barry returns to 2017 with the hologram cube on Anne Dudek's character and a determination to avoid 2024 Barry's mistakes. But Savitar still knows exactly what everybody is going to do. It's still all the past for him.

Paradox #3: Based on what we know, Savitar should either have originated in the pre-Flashpoint timeline or the post-Flashpoint timeline we saw when Barry traveled to 2024. If the first is true, his knowledge of the future should have been negated by Barry traveling to the past to create Flashpoint. If the second is true, his knowledge of the future should have been negated by Barry traveling to the future and getting the holocube. Either way, he shouldn't have known what was going to happen in that warehouse, certainly not word for word.

Solution: ???
​

I guess what you are saying is that the Barry of 2024 that met 2017 Barry did not go to the future when he was 2017 Barry and by 2017 Barry going to the future he changed the future. Maybe. If that is true then how did Savitar know everything that 2017 Barry was going to say after 2017 Barry came back to 2017.

Exactly. We know from Flashpoint and Martin Stein on "Legends" that as the new timeline solidifies the memories of the new timeline gradually overwrite the memories of the original timeline. But this is a slow process, occurring weeks or months after the timeline was changed. Barry just got back from 2024, so Savitar should still be in the lag period.

 

[Doug Wallen]

Adam, you're making my head spin.

A tv show shouldn't be this complicated. I think LOST was easier to understand .

 

[Thomas Newton]

Adam, you're making my head spin.

ON NEXT WEEK'S "Flash": Flash, Kid Flash, Reverse Flash, Zoom, Garrick, Jesse Quick, and Savitar all run around Doug's head at light speed, causing it to pop off. Why the good characters cooperate with the evil ones is not explained, although HR posits that Doug must have eaten "anti-catnip", a mythical substance that repels humans in the same way that catnip attracts cats.

ON "I Zombie", WEEK AFTER NEXT: A new, headless zombie with a name tag reading "Doug" shows up. How can this zombie still walk around with its head missing? How can it consume any delicious B-R-A-I-N-S? And how can the regular zombies keep their species a secret with Doug's headless body so blatantly flailing about?

ON NEXT MONTH'S "Flash": Barry regrets his actions in helping to remove Doug's head, and considers undoing them by creating the alternate timeline known as DougPoint (complete with even more temporal paradoxes). Doug's head senses this, and explodes.

 

[David Weicker]

First of all, as a long time comic reader , I don't care about continuity (or pretty tied-up answers). The show is enjoyable on its own. Of course, I grew up watching episodic TV (I don't like the term 'procedural') before everything was ruined by the overuse of serialization (not everything has to fit)

As for some of the recent problems people have, it is based on Barry 2024 saying he doesn't know who Savitar is. I just assumed that Barry 2024 is lying. Either he learned his lesson and refuses to (can't/won't) actively change the past, or he has already become Savitar and is misleading Barry 2017. Revealing the scientist is only a possible change (and if he is Savitar, it brings her out of the shadows)

If they don't answer questions I can still enjoy the individual episodes.

 

[NeilO]

Either way, he shouldn't have known what was going to happen in that warehouse, certainly not word for word.

The word for word thing is really annoying to me. Paradoxes aside, unless you have an eidetic memory, how many conversations does anyone remember word for word and can then coach another person to recite word for word. And if this Savitar is at least 7 years from the future that makes it even harder to believe that he remembered this.

 

[NeilO]

By the way, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg tells EW how they did have this planned from the top this season. No real new information or clarification, but it was interesting to read.

 

[Garysb]

How about if the Flash that disappeared in a Crisis is the one that became Savitar. We have been seeing that headline since Season 1. Everyone who reads comics thinks it is a reference to Crisis On Infinite Earths but since this is the TV show it probably isn't. When he disappeared he got messed up and scarred and went crazy. That headline has to pay off sometime. The Flash that Barry visited in 2024 was from February 2024 per the newspaper 2017 Barry found when he arrived in 2024. The headline about the Flash disappearing was from April 25, a few months later.

 

[Thomas Newton]

As for some of the recent problems people have, it is based on Barry 2024 saying he doesn't know who Savitar is. I just assumed that Barry 2024 is lying. Either he learned his lesson and refuses to (can't/won't) actively change the past, or he has already become Savitar and is misleading Barry 2017. Revealing the scientist is only a possible change (and if he is Savitar, it brings her out of the shadows).

I'm not a reader of the Flash comics, so I don't know how the Savitar storyline unfolded there. This is just uninformed speculation.

The problem I see is not Barry 2024's refusal to disclose Savitar's identity. As you say, even if he knows it, he may be refusing to actively change the past. Or he may have become so fatalistic that he thinks that nothing he can do will change it, so he no longer even tries. Remember that when we saw him, he had stopped trying even to protect the city.

The real question is, what happened to Barry that would make his future self so malicious that he would murder Iris (the love of his life), just to play some sort of upmanship game with his earlier selves? It's easy to believe the murder of Isis causing Barry 2017 to sink into despair and self-pity and become Barry 2024. It's not so easy to imagine Barry 2024 becoming Savitar.

Unless, perhaps, Savitar isn't the future version of our Barry, but is an evil version of Barry from another universe. That would make it harder to explain how he knows our Barry's timeline, but easier to provide a credible motivation for the murder of Iris. Here's a thought ... who else do we know who was obsessed with besting other speedsters? Is Savitar-Barry some other universe's Zoom?

 

[Garysb]

One theory I read is the Barry who is Savitar is the Barry from the original timeline that we have never seen. The one before Reverse Flash killed Barry's mother the first time where Barry became the Flash in 2020. Maybe he was on another Earth when Reverse Flash killed Barry's mother the first time so he wasn't erased from existence but is now a time aberration and that is why he was caught in the speed force. He never had a relationship with Iris as he grew up with his parents, not Joe and Iris, and so was willing to kill her because he knew 2017 Barry loved her.

 

[Garysb]

Sizzle Reel plus commentary.

 

[Jeffery_H]

Like I said in the prior post with spoilers, it's all coming true now and there were only two ways it could have gone. Now it remains to be seen if the theory about Iris pans out from the comics or goes a different route. So far, REALLY liking this season and show as it's playing very true to the comics for the most part (unlike Supergirl).