Flash 1.23

Fast Enough

Barry has a decision to make. Does he go back in time and save his mother or accept the fact that she is dead and move on? After asking several people what they think he should do he ultimately decides to go back and save her. In order to do so he has to travel faster than he ever has before. Dr. Wells/Thawne helps him to do this by giving him the know how. In return he is going to let Wells/Thawne, the man who killed his mother, leave. That made no sense at all to me. I might have been able to accept it if Barry had said no to helping Wells/Thawne but then he escaped.

Eddie is still bummed over what Wells/Thawne todl him but he gets over feeling sorry for himself after he has a chat with Dr. Stein. He goes back to Iris and apologizes for acting stupid. She accepts and they are an item once again. This happens after Barry has a chat with Iris about the headline that shows her last name changed to West-Allen.

After much pondering, which for the most part felt like a waste of time, Barry agrees to give it a try. He runs super-fast around the particle accelerator. He collides with a molecule that Caitlin inserts into the accelerator. That was part of the plan. He starts to see scenes from the past and jumps into the one where his mother is about to die. He gets there in time to prevent her death but then freezes up and doesn't step in to save her. Instead he waits until the Flash and Reverse Flash are gone. Just before his mother dies he goes to her and reveals who he is and reassures her.

I gotta be honest, there were a lot of moments in this episode that left me scratching my head. This was definitely one of them. I can understand why he froze up and did nothing. What I can't fathom is why Thawne/Wells would give him the knowledge to go back and save his mother. If he saves her wouldn't that have had an impact on Thawne/Wells as well? It made no sense to me for these two men to help one another. They both have reasons for wanting to kill the other.

While Barry is in the past, Thawne/Wells is set free and gets into the time sphere that Cisco and Ronnie built for him. Why are they helping this murderer? This makes no sense! A helmet comes flying out of the time stream which looks just like the one worn by Jay Garrick, the Flash of Earth-2. Thawne/Wells is about to leave when Flash comes leaping out of the time stream and breaks the time sphere. Reverse Flash gets angry and the two start fighting.

It looks like Reverse Flash is going to win when Eddie shows up and shoots himself in the chest. It occurred to me that something like this might happen but I thought that if it did it wouldn't be that blatant. Instead I thought it would be Eddie throwing himself in harm's way to save the Flash and getting killed in the process. When Eddie dies Wells/Thawne, his descendant, vanishes.

That's when the singularity (aka black hole) reappears. It first appeared when Barry collided with the particle thus opening the wormhole which allowed him to travel back in time. It looks like the singularity is going to consume Central City and possibly the Earth. Flash takes off to try and do something to stop it. That's when the episode and the season end.

I'm not a big fan of that sort of cliffhanger. It gives the audience little to nothing about what happens next. I know that these episodes first aired about three years ago and that I could easily look up what happens next or watch the first episode of the next season. I will get around to that eventually but not now and probably not for a few months.

This is episode 1.23 or 123. The first meeting of Barry Allen and Jay Garrick was in Flash 123. As mentioned above, a helmet that looks just like the one Jay Garrick wears shows up in this episode but Jay Garrick does not.

In this episode Barry has just 1 minutes and 53 seconds (1:53) to go back in time and save his mother. I looked up Flash 153 and found that it was an issue that the Reverse Flash (aka Eobard Thawne) appeared in. It was his third appearance overall. He had previously appeared in 139 and 147. I have not read these issues but I listened to the three episodes of Tom vs. the Flash in which he covered those issues; links below. The only significance I can find to issue 153 is that it is the issue in which the real name of the Reverse-Flash, aka Professor Zoom, is finally revealed to be Eobard Thawne.

Flash 139: Menace of the Reverse-Flash!
Flash 147: Our Enemy, The Flash!
Flash 153: The Mightiest Punch!

On the whole this was a decent episode. It wasn't my favorite. There were a few too many unanswered questions and too much confused reasoning. I didn't even get into Cisco's conversation with Wells/Thawne or Caitlin and Ronnie's marriage (Dr. Stein is a rabbi?) which introduced things that I don't want to consider or contemplate at this point. Honestly I think it might have been better if this was the first episode of the 2nd season or the next episode was the last one of this season.