The flash season 2 episode 18

OK, so I wasn't the only one confused and/or annoyed by last night's ep. Holy needless convolutions, Batman

 

I hope not. Good Jay was extraordinarily boring and this cast is already super bloated. Iris and Wally already lack anything to do in any given episode; let's see them developed before any new people are added.

 

Well, he doesn't need to be an active cast member. Just to know he exists on earth 2, then close the breaches...

 

No apparently he is so evil he was pretending to be a hero, to give people hope, so he can take it away later... Also, we never see him shoot up any velocity 9, and the fights with barry are long sometimes, how come the effects never wear off? What about when Caitlin tested him early this season and said "there are no traces of the speed force in his system" So did he lose his powers and only gets them back when he shoots up?(which he never does)

After the flawless season 1, this season comes really short in so many places

 

After a long wait this was a really disappointing episode. In fact the last few episodes have been a little off the mark in some way or another.

The Supergirl Tie-in, not long after Barry gets back Wells say they have no way to get to other Earths but surely Barry now knows that running real fast can get him to another Earth. Though its not the one he's trying to get to, surely that would be the place to start. Rather than the whole eureka moment Barry has, which amounts to let's hope Cisco's powers are actually exactly the same as on the other Earth. At least there was precedent for that with Ronnie!Firestorm unlike other points in the episode.

Why does Wells just happen to have info on Hunter Zolomon in that fancy do-dad of his? It seems like a rather random thing to take on a device with presumably limited storage.

Why are the earlier Velocity drugs always named as Velocity-9 , as far as we've seen Zoom hasn't had access to any V-9 since he was Jay. He may be able to reproduce it, do we know if he's actually seen the formula. There was also no evidence of previous Velocity drugs changing the colour of lightning yet that was accepted as fact, without so much of a "maybe V-6 didn't do that".

The time mirage explanation of 'Flash' Jay was awkward. His sparing Barry after having him up against the wall was a bit awkward, was he the Jay that the Caitlyn was in the budding relationship with, I was under the impression it was the doppleganger. They could have switched back and forward at different points I suppose, seems needlessly complicated.

Zoom so casually mentions he time traveled and then immediately set a plan in motion that caused a paradox. [How is Zoom still around if his younger self was killed by him]. Of course this is assuming Zoom is telling the truth when all he's done so far is lie.

That's not mentioning the idiot ball with the Wally hand-off on both sides.

 

I couldn't be the only one expecting an homage to Superman II's crystal chamber scene, with Superman reversing the chamber to strip General Zod, et al, of their powers?

I fully anticipated Zoom to try to speed off only to discover he had no speed and Welles to knock the smug look off his face.

 

Season 2 for The Flash and the last two seasons for Arrow really shows on what happens when the producers get too ambitious with their goals.

 

Yeah, sometimes keeping it simple is the key, they should've just built up to the finale being Barry and Jay fighting Zoom, if they weren't going to be faithful to Zolomon's comic counterpart I wish they'd just made Zoom's identity something that didn't really matter, and just made him an evil power hungry speedster, rather than the mess that is them making Jay into Zoom, the second half of the episode was basically overflowing with plot holes. If the Hunter that the team has been working with was an alternate timeline version separate from Zoom himself, why would Zoom himself give two s***s about Caitlin if he wasn't the Zolomon that was working with the team? I really hope that Zoom was lying about some of those things and that the man in the iron mask will cause some of the stuff from this episode to make sense. Barry just giving up his speed like that will never make sense though, there were about a hundred ways they could've handled that better to make us actually believe that Barry didn't have much say in the matter.

 

You would think that the producers would actually want to present an scenario where we have two (or more) speedsters working alongside each other since that's something that hasn't happened on this show.

The only things that I feel Zoom has over the RF is his look and voice, but take away Tony Todd's voice and the mask and you get a lesser villain than Tom's Eobard Thawne.

I feel like Season 2 should have really shook things up and such. It wouldn't have been a bad idea to actually see Caitlin travel down the dark side a bit after Ronnie's death and they should have made Cisco's whole arc of working with CCPD into a more permanent thing.

I also feel like Patty's and Henry's exits were so sloppy and lazily written.

 

In the flashback, Hunter's mom called his dad "Jay". I think Hunter's ficticious rivalry between Zoom and Earth 2 Flash is all about Hunter getting revenge against his dad while the world watches.

 

"On my earth serial killers are an anomaly." Has an entire earth filled with nothing but thieving and murderous metas.

 

Let's look at the bright side folks, with all of the issues that this season has had, at least it's still better than having Felicity as a main character on their show.

 

I thought that dead Jay Garrick was the same as Eobard Thawne who we saw in that episode earlier this season. Eobard Thawne still existed in the timeline for whatever "reason" the writers came up with. So, even though Eddie had killed himself, which stopped the version of Eobard Thawne who was in close proximity to Eddie, for some reason, Eobard Thawne still existed.

I can't remember how they explained it in that episode, but I figured that the same principle would have to apply to Zoom killing an earlier version of himself?

 

I think we have to chalk that up to an unreliable narrator device. Jay Garrick was telling the story and we (i.e. the audience) saw that story on-screen, but Jay Garrick was lying so what we saw was false.

OR Hunter really did create "battles" between Zoom and The E2 Flash (Jay Garrick) on Earth 2 using speed mirages as part of his bizarre plot to give the people of Earth 2 "hope" (as The E2 Flash) before taking that away (as Zoom, when he publicly defeats and embarrasses The E2 Flash).

 

I think they explained Thawne survived because he was traveling through the speed force, and was basically in some sort of safety bubble, as his timeline got wiped out. So maybe this is the same principle, and Zoom plucked his past self from one of the moments he traveled through the time.

 

Personally I still think that it would have been better if they had at least made Hubter's double from another Earth as opposed to saying it was his time remnant.

Also another flaw in Barry's logic in hunting down Zoom is that everyone knows that he's going to die from his own sickness. Why not just wait for that to happen as opposed to confronting him?

Does anyone else feel like the producers should have made Zoom into Earth 2 Barry instead?

 

Since Hunter has super-speed, I guess he could have faked the results of the test without Caitlin's knowledge.

Or the version of Hunter which Caitlin tested was an earlier version of Zoom who did not have super-speed (i.e. Zoom took that version of Hunter from his own timeline before the particle accelerator exploded on Earth 2). Although, that raises all sorts of other questions, since if it was the "alternate", powerless Hunter who developed a relationship for Caitlin, then why would the current Hunter care about Caitlin?

I still think Hunter's motivations are wacky. As a human, he was a serial killer. Yet, he obtains super-powers and decides to become a "hero" to give people hope with the intention of destroying that hope by having his "hero" be publicly defeated by a more powerful villain. Why would his modus operandi change? Why didn't he just become a super-powered serial killer?

Also, the episode with Trajectory seemed to go out of its way to establish that a user of Velocity would be driven crazy / become evil. Did that also happen to Hunter once he started using Velocity? He was already a psychopath, so maybe there were no changes to his mental state? Or did he instead create a truly heroic personality (i.e. maybe the Earth 2 Flash wasn't part of Hunter's plan, but is an unwanted side effect of his use of Velocity so he's essentially doing battle with himself)?

 

I thought it was going to be Henry. It would help explain why Henry has been missing this season, despite having been released from jail - because Zoom captured him. They also could have had Zoom pretending to be Henry giving Barry bad or dangerous advice about his super heroics.

Or, as noted, if they wanted a cautionary tale about what happened to Barry, then they could have just made Zoom into Barry. A Barry who believed that his father killed his mother in front of him, a Barry who wasn't adopted by Joe, a Barry who didn't have anyone to look out for him as a child, etc.

 

Another thing I don't get is, when Zoom killing himself was all part of the plan, then why does he say earlier that's a complication?

 

Jay had started to go over to the light side, helping the good guys close the portals. Maybe that's what Zoom meant. Or the whole "I meant to do that" story could just be how Zoom rationalizes his mistakes.

 

If I recall correct Zoom pretty much flat out said that was how he did it.

 

See now that right there would have made a lot more sense and for a more compelling arc, which would have fit in with where Barry was at the start of the season after Ronnie and Eddie had died.

 

Because ... I don't know. Zoom is an egomaniac and can't admit that he didn't plan to kill the other Hunter all along? Maybe the other Hunter really was just intended to fool Team Flash, gather information, pass their no-speed tests, etc. But, Zoom isn't willing to admit any kind of mistake in front of Team Flash, so he said it was all part of his plan.

Of course, once again we have an unreliable narrator telling us about Zoom, Jay Garrick's Flash, etc. I guess they could be planning to reveal that some or all of what Zoom told Team Flash was a lie.