I wasn’t a huge fan of this episode overall. We did have the “Oh Shit” confrontational moment of Iris telling Barry she knows he is the Flash, and she’s kind of generally a bitch about it, even though everyone clearly states that they were trying to protect her. She could at least be a little bit grateful that people care about her! Ugh. We’ve known that there would be a Grodd episode for quite some time now, having caught glimpses and hints about Grodd in earlier episodes and promos.

So the particle accelerator turned Grodd into a meta-animal and Wells unleashed Grodd, who is frighteningly strong and can use psychic abilities, on the city. Grodd kidnaps Joe and fights with the Flash, and in the end gets hit by a train. I’M NOT INTERESTED IN THIS CRAP, GET TO THE POINT WITH THE REVERSE FLASH PLOT KTHANXBAI.

Barry. Barry Barry Barry. Such a sweet, naiive, loving guy. He thinks the best of everyone. Unfortunately that is, and probably always will be one of his great downfalls.

In this episode, the crew (crew? Scooby gang? Star Labs Employees and Friends???) make the astonishing discovery that while they’ve been searching the whole city for Wells, he’s actually been under their noses this whole time. They also find that his wheelchair has a power source contained in it, helping Wells charge his powers the whole time. Did we seriously not think to ask about the wheelchair before? I hate it when I make oversights like this. The…team….(team works right?) then realizes that if Not!Wells is able to get the accelerator going again, all the baddies in their makeshift jail might end up breaking out.

With this in mind, someone decides it’s a good idea to relocate the captured baddies to Lian Yu, because NONE of the Arrow baddies have EVER broken out of Lian Yu…right? (Ha. No, sadly. But no one did their research I guess.) Anywhoo, someone (who makes all these bad decisions? I forget) also decides it’s a good idea to ask none other than Captain Cold, The Flash’s nemesis, for help with this matter.

Captain Cold agrees to help for a pretty hefty price, and then…surprise! He goes back on his word and lets all the prisoners escape. Wow that was a dumb idea. I love Barry but man get it together!

Oh yeah, and the group finds and frees Eddie, who dumps Iris because Eobard told him that she marries Barry in the future. Whatever, I don’t care about Iris anymore.

The episode ends with a crazy showdown between Wells, The Flash, Arrow, and Ronnie. Wells puts up a good fight, but in the end Oliver subdues him with a nanite injection that disables his super-speed abilities and he is chucked into a holding cell at STAR Labs.

This episode was better than the Grodd one, but it was just kind of silly! Could anyone be dumb enough to trust Captain Cold? I guess I don’t need to ask that question.

OKAY GUYS this is what we’ve all been waiting for. We have a pretty good idea of what to expect going into this episode, I think, if you’ve been tuning in all season. Obviously something is going to happen between the Reverse Flash and the Flash, hopefully an epic showdown or something.

Basically, here’s how it all goes down: Wells (Eobard) tells Barry about the future. How he’s basically out to get Barry because they’re enemies, how he tries to kill Barry but winds up killing his mother instead. And that all he really wants is to go back to his own time.

Wells dangles a tempting offer in front of Barry’s nose: now that the particle accelerator is basically good to go, they could create a wormhole that can not only send Wells back to his own time, but also would allow Barry to go back to the time of his mother’s death. Just think: Barry could have a whole different future! What would life be like with his mom alive and dad out of prison to raise him?

So here I want to sidebar really quick (really quick, promise!) and talk about the principle behind this idea. I was a philosophy minor in college, and as a part of my studies in metaphysics as well as historical philosophy, I spent a not-so-inconsequential amount of time studying determinism and free will.

Most of us are familiar with the concept of free will- the idea that we are free to choose and do any action that we’d like. The idea that I can choose whether to have pancakes or eggs for breakfast– similar to the idea that Barry can choose whether to save his mother or not is a good representation of free will. Determinism, by contrast, is the idea that all events are pre-determined and we have no actual control over them. I appear to be choosing pancakes or eggs, but I was destined to choose eggs all along, for instance, would be an example of determinism. There are varying degrees of determinism: soft determinism is an interesting one, for example, which is the idea that we can only affect things that are within our control and not external factors. I can choose my pancakes or eggs, but I’ll still get in a car accident when leaving the restaurant regardless of my choice.

I bring up these theories because while Wells’ offer seems tempting, the argument that Barry would lead a happier life and be better off because of this is logically flawed and does not follow. We don’t know what kind of person Barry would be if he was raised by his parents. Maybe his parents are horrible people and he grows up a snotty brat instead. Maybe his mother was destined to die at this point in time anyway.  My point is: I don’t think Barry should take the bait and I think he should be happy with what he does have: Joe, Iris (grr), friends like Caitlin and Cisco, and the ability to save lives.

But Barry is tempted by the offer to put things right in his past, and decides to accept Wells’ bargain. I was disappointed here, although I guess putting myself in his shoes I don’t know if I could be so rational with analyzing the decision and I might make an emotional and bad call if I was in that situation.

Barry is slingshotted (spellcheck says it’s not a word but I say it is) back in time and has two minutes to change things before he has to go back due to the wibbly wobblieness of time. He arrives at the scene of the crime, sees the red and yellow flashes, sees his mother fall to the floor…but his future self stops him, and motions for him to stay away. What? Yeah. So that happened. Barry instead waits until the coast is clear, and stops to talk to his mother on her deathbed and let her know that he is safe. I’m less disappointed here. I think this is going okay. Nothing in time SHOULD be disrupted, I suppose. And it’s very sweet that his mother could go peacefully and probably makes Barry feel a little bit better about everything.

Barry travels back and Wells is preparing to take off….but Barry gives him a fat punch in the face, charged with super-speed! He destroys Wells’ fancy new time machine, but this backfires and it looks like all is lost when Wells has the upper hand.

Then Eddie, a man who has newly discovered his free will (or so it would appear), shoots himself, completely disrupting this timeline and as a direct future relative of Eobard, snuffing him out of existence. Wow. I can’t say I saw that coming at all. How on earth is this going to change things and what will happen now?

There was something about a black hole that Barry was going into in an effort to stop it, but my dog started jumping in my lap with a bunch of squeaky toys so I turned away for a moment and that was the end of the episode. What? Wait, what did I miss? I hit rewind and…no, I didn’t really miss anything, that was pretty much the end of the episode. Seems like an awfully anticlimatic, kind of BS way to end what was otherwise a pretty darn awesome finale to this show. Like literally, ANYTHING could happen next.

I forgot to mention, there’s a bit of an allusion to Cisco’s identity as the hero Vibe (we talked about this a few weeks back, I think.) Wells mentions to Cisco that his ability to retain memories from alternate timelines is a powerful gift (or curse, I guess, depending on how you look at it.) Wonder if he’s going to be a dream team member in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

So that’s all for season one. All in all, I have to say it was a pretty good season, and it was MUCH MUCH MUCH better than Arrow. Definitely enjoyed watching this show, wish there was a little less of the filler-y villain of the week and more intense stuff with serious baddies like Captain Cold and Eobard Thawne, but I can’t complain too much really. Overall, the finale was pretty good, I would give it maybe 7/10 just due to the crappy cliffhanger. I still liked it a lot.