I don't know about anyone else, but I find it exhausting that the characters on The Flash have to constantly learn the same ruddy lessons every half season. Like not even every season... every few episodes it seems we have someone keeping secrets so monumental that it ends up hurting everyone.
The other thing I find exhausting about this show is that in every season, at least once (and most of the time, it's more often than that), everyone has to get to Maximum Butthurt mode. That is, everyone has to end up pissed off (usually at Barry) and overly dramatic about something.
Well we get the double-feature of both secret-keeping and contrived melodrama in "The Wrath of Savitar."
(Spoilers beyond the fold)
Wally is finally clocking fast enough to save Iris when Savitar murders her, but he is plagued by visions of Savitar, who keeps appearing only to him. Of course, Wally fails to tell anyone about this in the first of the idiotic secret-keeping of this episode. Team Flash only discovers Savitar has been plaguing him when Wally and Barry are running off to save people from a building burning, which apparently never happens, because Wally kind of gets beat up by his vision of Savitar.
Barry is so pissed that he tells Wally he's off the team, because how can they know that Wally isn't spying, even accidentally, for Savitar?
See ya, Wallace!
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| Mine! You can't have her unless you ask permission! |
Wait huh?
What in the ever-loving hell? It's 2017 not 1817! Since when do Millenials ask permission from a father to marry a woman? Can she not make that determination for herself? Later on, even Iris dings Barry for not asking for Joe's permission. Iris uses this to bludgeon Barry over the head as proof that he asked her to marry him out of fear for her life (more on that later).
WHAT THE HELL?
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| Why did I join this dysfunctional team again? Death Eaters were more cohesive, FFS. |
This forces Caitlin to reveal that she's also been keeping secrets of late: she apparently chipped off a piece of the Philosopher's Stone before Barry tossed it into the speed force, and has kept that chip secretly all this time. She kept it in the hopes of being able to use it to figure out how to undo her metahuman status, but hasn't yet figured out how.
Julian gets mad because he thinks the reason Caitlin has been keeping him around is solely as her metahuman expert in order to try to "fix" herself. This after he popped a shy and sweet kiss on her lips earlier in the episode.
Desperate to figure out exactly how he's supposed to save his sister's life, Wally convinces Cisco to vibe him into the future so he can see the murder happen. During that vibe, Wally realizes that Iris isn't wearing her engagement ring, so when he gets back to reality land, he announces to the team that Barry hasn't told them the truth about the engagement. Barry admits that part of his motivation in asking Iris to marry him was indeed because she appeared to not be engaged in the future.
So Iris is now pissed at Barry, and she takes off the ring (which incidentally, to me doesn't prove that she wasn't engaged in the future... she could have just not been wearing the ring).
Meanwhile, Savitar is still screwing with Wally's mind. He appears as Wally's mother, and although Wally eventually sees through it, Savitar's taunting forces him to take action. Idiotically, Wally grabs Caitlin's piece of the stone and decides it needs to be chucked into the speed force so that Savitar can't get to it.
Except of course this is precisely what Savitar wants, because as Barry belatedly figures out, Savitar is, in fact, trapped in the speed force. Savitar has 90% of the Philosopher's Stone already, so he needs Wally to chuck the last piece in. As soon as that happens, Savitar is released, but apparently someone needs to take his place, because now we're into Greek myth territory. Wally is sucked into the speed force, and Savitar is now free in Central City.
Good game, everyone! Savitar played you all like fiddles. Much like another Greek myth, the harder you attempt to run from your fate, the more you just run straight into it. HR kind of warned Barry about this, but no one listens to HR, because he's HR.
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| "You guys are dumb." -Savitar, probably |
But Team Flash has been written into the ground. They are idiots. They continue keeping secrets from each other even though every goddamn season they have to relearn this lesson at least twice. And they are constantly getting pissed off at each other over stupid crap. These people never learn, and after three seasons of the same writing shenanigans used to create tension between the good guys, it is getting beyond old. At this point, it's just lazy writing.
Team Flash, you guys can do better at writing this stuff. I know you can.
On the bright side, Entertainment Weekly has released photos of the upcoming Supergirl/Flash crossover episode, "Duet."
Bask in the joyous glory that is Grant Gustin in a tux and Melissa Benoit in a bombshell of a golden dress:
I need this much joy and happiness in my life right now.
The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on the CW.
Ivonne Martin is a writer, gamer, and avid consumer of all things geek—and is probably entirely too verbose for her own good.
