The Flash The Flash Season 1 Episode 23: "Fast Enough"

Basically when you encounter your future self and it tells you not to do something, you don't ****ing do it. That's time travel 101.
 
It was a powerful scene. Future Barry telling him to stay put, and him closing the door as he is listening to his mother getting murdered. It was a heartwrenching moment. I'm pretty content that it didn't end in some Flashpoint scenario, with him successfully saving his mother.
 
Is there a reason Barry punched the Time Sphere? Was it an accident or did he not want Eobard to go back in time?
 
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).
 
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The show didn't know how to pull off Flashpoint so they didnt. But my question is why didn't future Barry want him to? I think future Barry might've already experienced Flashpoint and knew what would happen

I can get that future Barry saw the error of changing the past,but it still makes the season (for the most part) feel anti-climactic, since the audience (and present day Barry) aren't privy to the reasons why.

It's like why go to so much risk only to do nothing?

I didn't really see it being something "selfish" on Barry's part. Thawne changed the timeline to begin with. It was just going to be an attempt to undo the damage already done.

It also seemed there really wasn't much to lose on Barry's part (apart from the whole "black hole cataclysm" thing.) He'd have:

A living mom
Dad out of jail
Doesn't move in with Iris,thus not being foster siblings,thus no "ick" factor to them ever getting together.
Still becomes the Flash 5 years later than before.
Presumably he'd still be mentored by the real Wells and meet Cisco/Caitlin (unless,they might've moved on by then?)

The only real loss (it seemed to me at least) was not getting raised by Joe.Which admittedly would be a tough thing to give up,but in the grand scheme of things I'm sure they'd continue to be good friends/neighbors/work partners/potential in-laws in the future.
 
I'm surprised that so many people liked the finale. I thought it was a disaster. I'd like to meet the writer who figured it would be a good idea for Barry to knowingly risk destroying the earth to save his mom and ask him what he was thinking. And why was everyone at STAR labs seemingly okay with this? Their big fear was for Barry; personally, I'd be terrified at the prospect of the planet being needlessly obliterated.

Why did they release Thawne anyway? They literally just learned not to trust criminals an episode ago!

What was up with the wedding? Why'd Caitlin and Ronnie have to marry right then? Don't they have other friends and family who'd like to attend? The whole thing was so cheesy and weird.

ETA: I feel like the time traveling stuff didn't make any sense but I'm not positive.
 
I'm surprised that so many people liked the finale. I thought it was a disaster. I'd like to meet the writer who figured it would be a good idea for Barry to knowingly risk destroying the earth to save his mom and ask him what he was thinking. And why was everyone at STAR labs seemingly okay with this? Their big fear was for Barry; personally, I'd be terrified at the prospect of the planet being needlessly obliterated.

Why did they release Thawne anyway? They literally just learned not to trust criminals an episode ago!

What was up with the wedding? Why'd Caitlin and Ronnie have to marry right then? Don't they have other friends and family who'd like to attend? The whole thing was so cheesy and weird.

ETA: I feel like the time traveling stuff didn't make any sense but I'm not positive.

If you knew there was a chance of saving your mother would you not attempt to do it?

I think that this being a young and inexperienced Barry, made the move without truly knowing the repercussions.
 
If you knew there was a chance of saving your mother would you not attempt to do it?

I think that this being a young and inexperienced Barry, made the move without truly knowing the repercussions.

Plus, he might rationalize it as setting history to a more corrected course with his mom alive.

They're also trusting Thawne/Wells' plan would ensure the world wouldn't be destroyed by a singularity. Otherwise he wouldn't have a future to return to.
 
Plus, he might rationalize it as setting history to a more corrected course with his mom alive.

They're also trusting Thawne/Wells' plan would ensure the world wouldn't be destroyed by a singularity. Otherwise he wouldn't have a future to return to.

I agree with this. Barry was trying to "correct" the timeline. He was trying to undo a messed-up timeline that Eobard created by killing Nora.

As far as anyone knew, the "original" timeline was a pretty wonderful place. Barry was still The Flash. Barry and Iris were married. Joe was chief of police. Barry was head of the CSI team. Barry had created (or co-created) artificial intelligence. There was a "team" of superheroes working together to make the world a better place.

And it was in Eobard's interest for Barry to succeed in creating a wormhole capable of accessing the space/time continuum (or whatever it was) because that was also Eobard's only way home because he was incapable of acquiring or storing enough Speed Force to travel back to the future as a "speedster".

As for the other issues the OP raised, I think they only released Eobard so that he could go home. They were simply keeping up their end of the deal which Barry had made in exchange for Eobard teaching Barry how to travel back in time to stop Nora being murdered.

And I don't think Caitlin or Ronnie would have any other family or friends who could attend. I presume that everyone outside of Team Flash still believes that Ronnie died when the particle accelerator exploded. The same episode that Ronnie and Martin managed to stablise themselves as "Firestorm" is the same episode which revealed that they were being hunted by the US army who wanted to duplicate what happened to Ronnie and Martin to create super-powered soldiers. That caused Ronnie and Martin to go on the run to both avoid capture and to try and learn more about their connection (and possibly, how to permanently sever it without killing either or both of them).

Maybe Caitlin let Ronnie's family, if he has any family, know that Ronnie was alive. But, even if she had done so, the wedding was a last second arrangement fast-tracked by the potential "end of the world" (or at least, end of that particular reality). Caitlin being organised explains the wedding dress, but since everyone else was just in regular clothes, I think they did the whole thing with maybe an hour of planning (if that).
 
It was a powerful scene. Future Barry telling him to stay put, and him closing the door as he is listening to his mother getting murdered. It was a heartwrenching moment. I'm pretty content that it didn't end in some Flashpoint scenario, with him successfully saving his mother.
As brief as it was, this gave me goosebumps. The same way Interstellar gave me some during some realizations. Dying to know the mystery as to why Future Barry told him to stay put.
 
Has it been discussed as of yet if one of the reasons why the Black Hole reopened again was because of Eddie causing a paradox by having killed himself?
 
That's possible. Or they just simply wanted a cool cliffhanger.
 
Don't care if he had the support of his family. Once the sentence, "It'll create a black hole" occurs....really? He's going to risk destroying the solar system to save his mom?

I never understood this idea of fans expecting heroes in superhero shows to be perfect and make sound decisions at all times. Where exactly is the conflict when characters do the right thing at all times?

You know what happens when you get that? One boring *** show that no one would watch.

Barry is young and inexperienced and is still early on in his career as Flash that it is inevitable he will make mistakes. It's seeing the progression and growth of the character as the seasons go by that makes it worth watching.

And frankly, let's say he went with the logical approach and didn't do it...what next? We get a one hour finale of them going to the beach? BBQ?

It's TV. Relax.
 
I never understood this idea of fans expecting heroes in superhero shows to be perfect and make sound decisions at all times. Where exactly is the conflict when characters do the right thing at all times?

You know what happens when you get that? One boring *** show that no one would watch.

Barry is young and inexperienced and is still early on in his career as Flash that it is inevitable he will make mistakes. It's seeing the progression and growth of the character as the seasons go by that makes it worth watching.

And frankly, let's say he went with the logical approach and didn't do it...what next? We get a one hour finale of them going to the beach? BBQ?

It's TV. Relax.
:up:

And no, not the beach or BBQ. We'd get the extended wedding scene featuring the songs, "Don't Dream It's Over" along with other Smallville tunes. :yay:
 
wait if
Eddie killed himself and Eobard is now dead cause of it. he never went back in time to kill Barry's mom and now Barry will not be flash for what 10 more years?
*confused*.
 
wait if
Eddie killed himself and Eobard is now dead cause of it. he never went back in time to kill Barry's mom and now Barry will not be flash for what 10 more years?
*confused*.

Where is Barry at the moment? He is in the singularity. Where he comes out we don't know. He is not effected but everything else might be. We have to watch and find out.
 
Basically when you encounter your future self and it tells you not to do something, you don't ****ing do it. That's time travel 101.

It's not his future self though. It's his alternate self (that also happens to be from the future). Who knows his alternate self might have some serious mother issues and planned for her to die all along? I doubt it as well.

But how would future/alternate Barry know that saving his mother would be the wrong move? Was his world really that bad he would let his mother die for it? Has he seen all of the options and come to the conclusion that letting her die is the best option? Looks like we'll have to wait and see.
 
Very emotional episode, my eyes got teary, the family stuff always gets me when the acting and the writing are great, bravo to the actors and everyone involved for getting it done. The episode wasn't perfect of course, those 1:52 were very, very long, the CGI model of the Flash looked too obvious and fake, killing Eobard was kind of unnecessary, it would've been better to have him go back to his time. It depends on who is going to be the next Reverse Flash, if they go with Matt Letscher, I don't think he's going to be as good Tom Cavanagh. Most fans would rather see Tom playing the RF, but it could be kind of complicated to explain why the next RF is going to look like Wells, unless what happened in this Earth also occurred in another Earth, but with some changes to make it a little more different.



- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

Ronnie will be back:

Robbie Amell: I can tell you that I will be in Season Two of "The Flash."

http://www.comicbookresources.com/a...y-matter-manipulation-in-flashs-season-finale

We still don't know why he's not in the spinoff, maybe a temporary problem with the Firestorm matrix or something. :shrug:

Iris not having romantic feelings for Barry is not really the case, she kissed him in the other timeline... anyway, it was just part of the love triangle crap, thank goodness it's over, at least for now, maybe she'll have a new boyfriend in the future because this is the freaking CW. This show would be so much better on cable, but I digress.

It would make sense for future Barry to know not to alter the timeline to avoid any potential disruption, maybe he had an experience with it or learned it from Jay Garrick... so many interesting possibilities. :woot:
 
The only real loss (it seemed to me at least) was not getting raised by Joe.Which admittedly would be a tough thing to give up,but in the grand scheme of things I'm sure they'd continue to be good friends/neighbors/work partners/potential in-laws in the future.

I'm assuming that one of the other major reasons for why Barry ultimately chose not to save his mom was because it could potentially alter his fate as the Flash, thus a lot of people dying as a result.

It's implied that in the original timeline, Barry didn't become the Flash until a much later time period (2020), due to it having taken that long for the real Wells to create the particle accelerator.

If that's really the case, then all of the lives that he had saved during the course of 2014 would be undone essentially.

Heck, for all that our Barry knew, he probably thought that there was a chance that he would never become the flash if he changed the timeline.
 
I dont understand how Eddie killing himself erases Eobard. After all, Eobard Thawne isn't even from this timeline. He was born in the future, a world in which the real Harrison Wells lived to build a particle accelerator, a world in which Barrys mom never died. And even though Eobard changed time when he killed Barrys mother and the real Harrison wells, he still has knowledge of how the old timeline went (so the changes in the timeline did not affect him).

So Eobard is not from our Eddies future. If the Eddie from the original timeline was killed, then it would make sense for Eobard to be erased.
 
Good finale.
Poor Eddy, I hope he will be back.
Funny how my least favorite main character, Cisco, grown on me, he went from "he is annoying" at the beginning of the show to "he is cool" at the end.
 
I dont understand how Eddie killing himself erases Eobard. After all, Eobard Thawne isn't even from this timeline. He was born in the future, a world in which the real Harrison Wells lived to build a particle accelerator, a world in which Barrys mom never died. And even though Eobard changed time when he killed Barrys mother and the real Harrison wells, he still has knowledge of how the old timeline went (so the changes in the timeline did not affect him).

So Eobard is not from our Eddies future. If the Eddie from the original timeline was killed, then it would make sense for Eobard to be erased.

Good point. It might have to do where the flash went back a day and replaced the other barry (they were running alongside each other) this eobard has replaced the one in this timeline (even though he hasn't been born). The reason he lost his speed force? Does beg the question why there were three barry's at his mums house though.
 
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Good episode. It was sad to see Eddie go, but it was a valiant sacrifice that saw him as a hero.

I was expecting the cliffhanger to be Barry ending up in a different time line with things around him altered, and realising the extent of what he had done.

Basically when you encounter your future self and it tells you not to do something, you don't ****ing do it. That's time travel 101.

I wonder if Future Barry has already experienced an alternate timeline in which things are different, which is why he was warning Season 1 Barry away. He didn't seem surprised to see him at all but almost as if he was expected. Maybe he knew that a past Barry would try to save his mother?

But what if the Future Barry who saves young Barry isn't the actual Future Barry we've been seeing all season, but now a later version of Season 1 Barry who has indeed experienced an alternate timeline and has gone back in time to take the place of Future Barry, save his young self, warn his Season 1 self away and restore the timeline to what it has been following?

Would season 1 Barry saving his mother change the timeline to yet a different one instead of restoring the original timeline where he became the Flash later on? But if it did restore the original timeline and that was one where his life was better and he still became the Flash and did a lot of good, then wouldn't it be better to bring about that restoration?

Even though Eddie has died, that doesn't seem to have undone the events of the past where Eobard killed Barry's mother and Henry Allen ended up in jail. He still seems to be there when the black hole is occurring.
 
As brief as it was, this gave me goosebumps. The same way Interstellar gave me some during some realizations. Dying to know the mystery as to why Future Barry told him to stay put.
Nice to see you here Nicko. :up:
And agreed to the bold, minus dying.
 

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