After a three week break The Flash returned last night with Barry traveling to the year 2024 to try and gain any advantage he could over Savitar. What Barry wasn’t expecting is how bad things would get in the future after the death of Iris. Barry had become so obsessed with finding out how to save Iris that when he does fail it will fracture the team in the future. This season Barry has forgotten about what he has learned about himself since becoming the Flash the he is doing more harm than good for the team. Being obsessed with saving Iris has made him forget to be the superhero that he is and sacrifice his feelings for the good of others. Grant Gustin and Carlos Valdez did an amazing job of transforming to their future selves and showing the hurt and anguish Iris’s death brought to the team.
Caitlin’s transformation into Killer Frost became complete at the end of the last episode but it was this episode that showed how far Caitlin had fallen. With Barry so preoccupied with saving Iris he forgot about saving his friend, and let her succumb to the powers of Killer Frost. The confrontation between future Frost and present Barry really showed how much he let down the team by obsessing over the loss of Iris. There was nothing left that resembled Caitlin anymore and had no remorse at all for Barry.
Overall while this episode didn’t advance the main story line at all, it did a great job setting up the importance of stopping Savitar to prevent the possible future. What I did appreciate about this episode was that Barry’s idea of traveling to the future to find an advantage was not as easy as it sounded. The writers took the same approach which was done in Back To The Future II and showed that dynamics change and so do people. Barry’s goal was to find out who Savitar really is but something so simple couldn’t be achieved because Iris’s death was so traumatizing to everyone that Barry from the present had to fix Team Flash in order to be able to move forward.
The burning question for viewers of the show is who is Savitar? It seems that we will get that answer next week in “I Know Who You Are” but with the scene between Killer Frost and Savitar in last nights episode may have given it away. The reaction Frost gives when Savitar exposes himself makes it someone who Caitlin/Frost knows and trust which would lead us to believe it is either Julian or Ronnie. Also while Barry is in the future and confronts Frost she wasn’t willing to give up his secret meaning she has a bond stronger with Savitar than her old friends. Ronnie seems to be the most likely since at the end of the first season Ronnie is presumed to be dead after sacrificing himself to safe Central City but it was never confirmed. It could be that Ronnie was sent stuck in the Speed Force the entire time.
Check out the trailer below for next weeks episode “I Know Who You Are”