Beautiful, wonderful, awesome and exciting!
What a great finale to an equally great first season.
The scenes between Barry and Eobard, Barry and Joe, Barry and Nora and Iris and Eddie were all very well done. And although the "scientific" explanations for all of the time travel / paradox / singularity / black hole shenanigans were a little unclear and pretty much just constituted some hand-waving, I was okay with what they provided.
As I understand it, there was/is/will be:
1. Timeline A (original timeline) where Barry grew up with both parents, Barry and Iris were childhood friends and got married when they were older, Barry was still a forensic scientist with the police, Barry was head of the forensic (?) team, Iris was a journalist, Joe was the chief of police, Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan invented the particle accelerator (although I'm not sure it exploded in this timeline or whether it operated correctly, but still somehow created The Flash), Barry became The Flash, Barry created (or co-created) Gideon, Barry was a founding member of the Justice League/Society/Something together with at least Green Arrow and Hawkgirl, Cisco was a superhero and everything was generally hunky dory. Until, some years after everyone died, super Flash fan Eobard Thawne re-created the events which gave The Flash his super-powers, travelled back in time to when The Flash was in his prime, deliberately or inadvertently became the Reverse Flash and battled on a number of occassions.
This led to a final confrontation during which (or just before), Eobard learned that The Flash was Barry Allen, travelled back in time to when Barry was a child to kill him, The Flash followed him, saved younger Barry and Eobard killed Nora instead but was then stuck in the past. What happened to future Barry who saved child Barry appears to be a mystery since the newspaper from the future indicates that he may not have returned to the future (although theoretically, the newspaper headline for the next day could have been "The Flash Returns").
2. Timeline B (as seen during season 1) where Barry grew up with Joe and Iris, Henry was imprisoned for Nora's murder, Eobard killed Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan, but assumed Wells' identity, Eobard deliberately manipulated events to ensure that Barry became The Flash as soon as possible because The Flash and the Speed Force were the only way for Eobard to return home (which for an as yet unspecified reason, became Eobard's top priority over and above killing The Flash, whether because he had a family in the future or whether he truly did consider the past to be "barbaric" or whether, in his own twisted way, he had genuinely come to once again admire Barry and wanted The Flash to exist) and everything played out as we saw it this season.
3. Timeline C (to be seen in season 2?) where Eobard was never born because his ancestor Eddie died prematurely which means that Nora should never have died and everything should generally have played out like in Timeline A, except for the paradox that if Eddie had never met Eobard then he never would have had a reason to kill himself and therefore Eobard should still eventually be born and the cycle just keeps repeating itself.
Anyway, it's all very interesting and I can't wait to see what they do in season 2.
Other random thoughts and quibbles:
- I wonder what is going to happen to Ronnie. He doesn't appear to be in Legends of Tomorrow, even though Martin Stein is. I'm guessing that he'll play a big role in saving the day at the start of season 2 and may not survive or may be trapped in an alternate timeline.
- Eddie's body was sucked into the black hole, so maybe he'll return. Or maybe an alternate Eddie will return from a reality where he was Cobalt Blue for some reason?
- Presumably, Harrison Wells' death will be "undone" in the new timeline and he'll be around to mentor the STAR labs staff and Barry. But, will Barry (and anyone else) retain memories of the "evil" Wells and have trouble dealing with him on a day to day basis?
- Barry somehow ends up in prison sometime in the future or in an alternate reality.
- Caitlin will become Killer Frost in the future or in an alternate reality.
- If everything isn't reset, then Barry and Iris appear to be done and dusted for at least some time. There is no way they can push the romance now since Iris definitively chose Eddie over Barry and Eddie sacrificed his life to save everyone else. The scenes between Barry and Iris in this episode were the best. They had genuine platonic, sibling like chemistry and although it was clear that Iris loved Barry as a brother, she does not see him in a romantic way.
- If everthing isn't reset, then Central City will be dealing with some pretty big events which were once again caused by STAR labs. The singularity appears to have killed at least hundreds, if not thousands, of people at the point that The Flash entered it. I would expect such a major event to have an broader impact on the city and its citizens. If STAR labs receives the blame, I wonder if they will run into funding issues and whether they might be forced to work with Mercury labs or even the government to continue their metahuman tracking and capture/rehabilitation services?
- I don't understand why future Barry stopped past Barry from intervening in the far past. Future Barry theoretically couldn't have known what was going to happen since in his timeline, he grew up with both of his parents, so wouldn't two heroic speedsters have been better than one in that instance? Was future Barry concerned about corrupting the timeline too much? Unless future Barry was an "alternate" future Barry from the then current timeline (i.e. the one where Nora died) and future Barry knew that Nora had to die for everything to play out the way that future Barry believed that it should based on his (altered) past?
The reasons behind future Barry telling past Barry to basically stop were a little unclear to me. But, perhaps more is to be revealed? The scene where Barry is hit by lightning definitely seems to have some interference by The Flash and we don't yet know why The Flash had to be in place to help his past self become The Flash, so perhaps it's tied into that.
- My partner had issues with Barry going into the past and thought it was selfish, reckless and out of character. But, I thought it made sense. Barry was simply trying to reinstate the original timeline where, as far as he knew from the information provided by Wells, the newspaper article and Gideon, things were pretty great (up until the moment when The Flash disappeared of course).