I swear some posters go out of their way to make themselves unhappy. We got an awesome final showdown with Zoom, a Black Flash tease, the real Jay Garrick has been introduced, and season 3 is opening with Flashpoint, I honestly am pretty stoked.
It was a pretty decent finale, but it wasn't perfect. I wouldn't call the finale showdown awesome, in fact I'd call it kind of silly. But the emotional moments in this episode were what really sold it for me. Gustin was really on his A game.
Overall, the finale suffered because the season as a whole wasn't that strong. It wasn't awful, but it was a marked step down form season 1. The first season was the best material I've seen the CW put out. It still had some of the annoying tropes that all CW shows have, but the performances elevated it hugely, Gustin, Martin, and ESPECIALLY Cavanaugh. And the first season brilliantly wove in the twists and turns of the mystery, and wrote RF as such an interesting complex villain that you were still wondering exactly what his end game plans were and why he hated Barry so much even after we knew who he was.
This season was a little all over the place. The way they wrote Patty and Henry out was very rushed, and frankly, pretty poor writing. Not only that, but when you have a guy that could probably take a jog across a whole country in a matter of minutes, it makes almost no sense that having close friends/family move away would be a problem...at all. Zoom started out strong but ultimately fell very short of the high bar Cavanaugh set with RF last season. His motivations were uninteresting, and Sears himself came across rather one note and a bit bland. They also waited far too long to show us why Zoom was doing what he was doing (we literally didn't figure it out until this episode) and as such, we kept getting what felt like filler episodes until the last third of this season.
The quality acting of most of the cast kept the show interesting, and the last three episodes of this season really brought it, but it was a small case of too little too late. We needed more episodes like this earlier in the season so the plot felt like it had more direction.
Essentially, I felt they ended strongly on what was a rather disappointing season. Not bad, just disappointing coming off what was a very promising first season. And if they learn anything it's that they sorely need an actor of Cavanaugh's caliber to be their big bad next season. The one episode we got of Cavanaugh as RF stood out like a beacon compared to what we had gotten with the rest of the season.
So overall, a strong ending. And I'm really interested to see where they go with Flashpoint, but the season as a whole was definitely step down.
