The Flash, Season 2, Episode 17: Flash Back
Hey, let's get an episode of Flash in! Despite catching up with Flash the first compared to the rest of the other superhero shows, I haven't really... reviewed it. Putting off talking about this episode is probably one of the main reasons why. It's a pretty good and solid episode, showing some absolutely awesome performances from Eobard Thawne in particular. That's from a stand-alone purpose, though, because on the other hand the fact that they so flagrantly fucked with the timeline despite the whole premise of how time travel was portrayed in both Flash and Legends of Tomorrow is kinda thrown out of the window. It kinda gave me a bit of a headache, so it means that despite nothing really visibly changing in the present-day segments of Flash and Arrow, every single thing that the Legends team are doing -- blowing up the gulag, giving Savage knowledge of Firestorm, having a winged human fight in the Pentagon or whatever... all probably fucked up the timeline somewhat fierce... when previously it's implied that time will always force things to fix themselves in one way or another, which was why the Legends team was fighting against destiny itself, or how Flash really cannot choose to save his mother.
Hell, the ending of this episode basically kinda means every event that took place in-between the Pied Piper episode and this one has kinda been retconned to be kinda retconned to have probably taken place in a different (but probably similar) manner, since Hartley Rathaway is now one of their allies, or at the very least a guest star. It does raise a fuckton of questions about time travel, and just what else has changed, and how this correlates to Zoom, but eh, that's a question for another article.
Right now let's just talk about this episode, because despite Barry's relative stupidity, it's a very entertaining episode nonetheless.
"Flash Back" is a unique episode and is definitely the most ambitious in trying to use time travel as a storytelling mechanic. While Barry Allen has experienced events of his life in the past before, such as when he came back to witness his mother's death and eventually chose not to alter that particular fate, this was one where he goes back to the past to interact with Eobard Thawne (a.k.a. the fake Harrison Wells) and obtain some knowledge on how to get faster, since superspeed steroids just got thrown out of the window last episode.
Of course, despite everyone going all "Barry, don't change the past", the first thing Barry does after getting to the past and picking a fight with his past-self counterpart (which in itself is a really cool fight) and knocking him out, he kinda almost immediately fucks things up by, y'know, changing the past and telling everyone about the bomb in Pied Piper's earpiece. He also portrays his past self very unconvincingly. It's kind of part of Barry's charm, of course, but sometimes you just gotta roll your eyes at this kind of stupidity.
Eobard Thawne is not stupid, however, and one of the reasons why Eobard is such a compelling and threatening villain in the way that Zoom isn't in this show for me is that, well Eobard-Wells is a very, very smart and classy villain. Sure, Zoom is a big threat physically, and he's scary as all hell, but Eobard just catching onto Barry's plan, figuring everything out in record time and just gauging whether his theory about this Barry being from the future by showing him the future room and simply standing up... before delivering some really horrifying threats, going straight for the vibrating arm kill.
The episode's villain is a Time Wraith, which apparently is a ghostly monstrous thing that chases down time travelers to fuck them up. It seemed to be kinda somewhat based on Black Flash from the comics (and the 'hunting down speedsters to claim their lives' thing is definitely based on Black Flash), but it's definitely a disposable villain... that raises a whole bunch of questions It's just this menace that neither Barry nor Eobard can handle, and the key to defeating the Time Wraith is somehow, um, Pied Piper being able to figure out the frequency of this eldritch being that lives outside of time. Um yeah okay. It's a threat, I guess, and it gets taken out pretty quickly by Present!Hartley who murders the thing when Barry returns to the now-altered present-day. It's just, well... it just doesn't feel that scary, I guess? Especially with Cisco lampshading that it looks like a Dementor, and not a particularly good one at that. But more importantly, why hasn't Eobard Thawne been hunted down by a Time Wraith for the period that he's been active in season one? Why hasn't the Legends of Tomorrow team encountered one? What's the point of the Time Masters if these time-travelling Dementors are like time's little antibodies?
Also with the fact that they really could've used the Time Masters or Chronos as Barry's antagonists felt like a big missed opportunity to tie in between Legends and Flash. In a far more sensible way.
Really the main appeal and bulk of the episode lies in just how awesome Eobard Thawne is as a villain, and how the show is a lot worse now that he's kinda gone other than these kinds of guest stars. He's just so much better than Zoom! There is a great distinction between the more experienced Season 2 Barry and the greenhorn from season one, and it is exemplified really well. The scene where Eobard interrogates Barry and forces him to ad lib half-truths and excuses to get Eobard to help him give the speed formula is one of the greatest in this season, and in retrospect I really should've realized that the speed formula is where they were going with the big chalkboards filled with equations. For non comic-book readers, the comic version of Jesse Quick activated her speed by reciting a formula, which is, well, the one that Eobard teaches Barry in this episode.
We also get a particularly sweet moment with Eddie that was a subplot throughout this episode. Barry meeting Eddie in the past and recording a video of him talking about what Iris meant to him, and then showing that video to the present-day Iris is a nice, really sweet moment. I mean, Iris hasn't mourned Eddie for a while now, but it's nice to see this past relationship be explored unlike the Ronnie/Caitlin where Ronnie's death seemed to really be swept under the rug in favour of the new handsome male supporting character.
We get some great moments between Past!Barry and Present!Barry as well, though who knows just how Eobard-Wells explained everything that happened to Past!Barry, and how this meeting with his future/present self would affect the events that transpired between the Pied Piper episode and this one. Unless that's supposed to be a plot point and next episode we'll discover the ramifications of fucking around with the timeline, and he's going to discover that, oh, Linda Park has became this universe's version of Power Girl thanks to him mucking around with the timeline or something.
It's definitely a great standalone episode, and easily one of the stronger episodes of season two, stupid-ass Time Wraiths aside.
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