The Flash S02E20 Review: Death of the Flash

The Flash, Season 2, Episode 20: Rupture

Well they're just intent on jamming up the season's last leg with filler episodes, aren't they? Kudos to the writing team for finally getting Zoom to actually do something instead of looming around being a menacing threat. Zoom finally starts off his invasion of Earth-1 by showing up in the police station and going all 'boo!' before... spending almost the entire episode doing nothing, happy to let his flunky footsoldier Rupture handle all the terrorizing instead of, y'know, taking care of everything himself. I mean, it's not like he's got any bigger plans to do. Also, for all of Wells' talk about Zoom controlling an army of metahumans, we only ever see one or two out in action at a time. I mean, an army of faceless metahumans shooting generic fireballs or whatever would've been cool -- they did it over in Supergirl -- but, nah, have a dude with a generic energy scythe weapon.

Also, why not train Vibe to actually fight? Having the Earth-2 version of his brother show up and then having Cisco play the absolute minimum role in defeating him just seems like a wasted opportunity. We get some token reconciliation between Dante and Cisco which I honestly don't really even care about! Dante could've disappeared from the episode after Cisco meeting him in the bar and the episode wouldn't be any worse for it. Rupture has a pretty decent-looking costume and an awesome name (and apparently a faithful adaptation of a New 52 Vibe villain), I admit, but he's a lousy-ass villain who really failed to pose a threat even with the Flash depowered. And any real impact from the Ramon brothers was kinda... well, not there at all.

Nope, not Star-Lord.

Barry also adamantly refuses to try and at least regain his speed, which is just utterly dumb. I mean, it's one thing when they're just facing low-level villains like the Mist or the Geomancer, but this is a Zoom-led invasion, someone they cannot defeat even with a powered-up Barry. I keep agreeing with Wells that they need to stand and fight, but for some inexplicable reason Barry just pussies out and spends his time not trying to find a way to take down Zoom, but go around and getting all three of his father-figures into an argument on whether to endanger Barry's life. At the cost of the lives of like two dozen policemen, thank you very much. Yeah, there is some degree of moping and self-pity allowed for superheroes, but this is just kinda blah, especially since we already spent last episode with just exactly that. 

And then they do the experiment anyway and Barry gets eaten by the speed force, so oops! Thankfully Wally West and Jesse Wells get caught in the speed-giving wave, so the real Flash and Jesse Quick can perhaps show Zoom a one-two next episode. Screw Barry, he's an idiot. Go cool your head off in the speed force.

Also in addition to all that, we get a bunch of bad plotlines being pulled out again for the sake of having groan-worthy side-plots. Henry Allen gives a not-so-subtle hint that, hey, his mother was 'Garrick' too, so maybe the real Jay Garrick is actually Earth-2 Henry Allen! Man in the mask and all that! Yeah, no one saw that coming [/sarcasm]. Also the Barry-Iris shipping finally slaps us in the face, though at least they've devoted some screentime to this creepy borderline-incest shipping unlike Caitlin-Jay which was and still is dumb. 

Also, 'Barry is dead' is kind of a eye-rolling cliffhanger especially since we know Barry Allen will show up alive and well with super-speed to attend that funeral in Arrow, if the idea of killing off the main character isn't already eye-rolling in itself.

They really could've gone in a lot of better ways in incorporating Barry's struggles on choosing to brave the dangers of recreating his origin story, in exploring the ethics and conflict of recreating the particle explosion, in incorporating Rupture and Cisco, in building up Zoom as an actual threat... we could've had a half-decent story. Alas, this is just really badly written and inconsistently paced. Hey, do better in the finale, okay?