The Flash TV Series

[Hama]

I HATE CLIFFHANGERS

[Tinkergoth]

Oh man...

Spoiler:

That scene with Barry going back, and realising that he can't save his mother, but he can at least tell her that he turns out okay, and that he loves her. Emotional sucker punch, right in the feels. I'm tearing up just thinking about it.

That said... CLIFFHANGER! *Shakes fist at sky*

[Hama]

Tinkergoth wrote:

Oh man...

** spoiler omitted **

That said... CLIFFHANGER! *Shakes fist at sky*

The entire episode was really full of feels. It was really good. The pacing of those scenes was awesomely done. Acting was top notch as well.

I love this show.

[Aberzombie]

That's why I like Joe and Henry scenes so much. An older character, played by a wonderful actor can bring some real depth and feeling to a scene.

[Kalshane]

I enjoyed that a lot, though we have some paradoxes to sort out next season like

Spoiler:

If Eobard never existed, then how did STAR Labs get built early and Barry become The Flash ahead of schedule? And how did he go back to kill Barry's mom in the first place?

Also, with Eobard reverting to his original face before dissolving, I'm assuming this means the real Wells is alive again. Which makes me happy. Though I don't know if he'll be as interesting without the whole dual identity/purpose thing.

[Spiral_Ninja]

Kalshane wrote:

I enjoyed that a lot, though we have some paradoxes to sort out next season like

** spoiler omitted **

Paradox options:

I'm hoping/betting someone

options:

(Barry, Jay!!!, Rip (in defense of the timeline), Hawkgirl???)pulls Eddie out of the singularity.

As for Thawn:

Spoiler:

He's on the revolving revival program. He'll be back.

As for Wells:

Spoiler:

One option; Thawne offers to return his wife if he builds the accelerator early...maybe claiming that creating the Flash and sending him back in time is the only way to save her?

Of course if

Spoiler:

Eobard never existed, then Wells and wife were never IN that accident...

Aaaaaaggggghhhhh! Why isn't it Fall already?

[Damon Griffin]

Observations:

* Not a look I would have expected for Killer Frost.

* Not sure what Thawne's reaction to Garrick's helmet was supposed to signify.

* Thawne's speech to Cisco: "I did it out of love" (for Cisco, implied) was not a remotely plausible lie, and thus felt like bad writing.

* Stein's speech to Eddie: "You're the only one here who has a choice" was patently ridiculous. Sure, Eddie had a unique advantage over Eobard, but the whole point of the episode was that they all had choices, most notably Barry.

* Somehow the episode felt about 15 minutes short. When they went to credits my wife and I both went "Wait, that's it?!?"

Spoiler:

It looked as if Eddie's body got sucked up into the vortex surrounding the black hole/wormhole. Does that create a loophole for Eobard's continued existence? The body gets pulled to some near-future period where medical science is able to replace his heart and bring him back to life? Why wouldn't he just kill himself again? Amnesiac after being brought back?

[Matthew Koelbl]

Damon Griffin wrote:

Stein's speech to Eddie: "You're the only one here who has a choice" was patently ridiculous. Sure, Eddie had a unique advantage over Eobard, but the whole point of the episode was that they all had choices, most notably Barry.

I read it as, "Thawne masterminded all of this, specifically manipulating the Flash, and choosing intelligent capable scientsists (Cisco, Caitlyn, Ronnie) whom he could control. But you weren't part of his plans."

Basically, Eddie ended up a part of all of this by chance - it isn't that he is the only one with choice in the matter, but the only one whom Thawne never counted on being part of it. Hence, he's the wild card.

[Arnwyn]

I... didn't like it that much.

First, the cliffhanger. Cliffhangers suck. If it ended one episode before, it would have been far superior.

And, the entire episode's storyline didn't make sense.

Spoiler:

All the reasons not to go back in time:
- Mess with the timeline, changing who knows what
- ...including possibly yourself (no Flash?)
- Your dad (with a fantastic - and correct - feels speech) thinks it's a terrible idea
- The villain thinks it's a good idea
- You could die
- And... AND... you could open a black hole (which you did)

And reasons for:
- Save your mom... which you STILL didn't do after all those shenanigans.

Sooo.... all you did was open a black hole. Woo!

What the hell was the point? WTF? The whole thing was so full of dumb it hurt. You could have kept Reverse in the tank o' villainy, continued on with your lives, yay. The whole idea was just put in to try to create drama, and give a vehicle for the cliffhanger.

(I'm not going to go into the whole running "Mach 2" (??) to collide with a particle to create a stable time wormhole, because that ship sailed a while ago. "Speed Force", I guess (note: I'm not a comic fan).)

The fight near the end in the accelerator was cool, though. And it felt "super-hero-y / comic-book-y", so I really appreciated that. And hey - helmet! Awesome visions! That stuff was really great.

(Oh, and fantastic observations, Damon Griffin.)

[Hama]

Barry got closure.

[Arnwyn]

Hama wrote:

Barry got closure.

I admit that was a great scene, but I'm not sure if personal closure is worth a black hole.

But that's just me.

I'd probably need more closure after causing that event, too.

And what might that closure cause? A supernova? ;)

[Caineach]

my god I hated the science. Run at a hydrogen particle... Seriously... SO MUCH DUMB

[Krensky]

Then mayhaps you should avoid comic book adaptations... Science is not their strong suit.

[Troodos]

My main fear is that with Eddie's death Bart will never be born

[Spiral_Ninja]

I just had a thought about one of the visions:

Spoiler:

the one with Barry in handcuffs. What if he's being charged with Eddie's 'murder'. After all, he shot himself in the chest. If his body is found, and the cops reference his and Barry's feud over Iris, it's a potential option.

[Hama]

Bart?

[Arnwyn]

Krensky wrote:

Then mayhaps you should avoid comic book adaptations... Science is not their strong suit.

Some are materially/noticeably worse than others.

[Robert Little]

Hama wrote:

Bart?

Bart Allen is a distant (30th Century) descendant of both the Allen and Thawne bloodlines (because of Barry's time travel, he's only a grandchild of Barry, but there are more generations on his Thawne side). At some point he gets brought to the present as a young boy and is mostly known as Impulse, a sidekick of Wally West and ward of Max Mercury.

[Robert Little]

Spiral_Ninja wrote:

I just had a thought about one of the visions:

** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:

In the comics, there is a Trial of the Flash storyline that they may be hinting at. The blurb for the collected story is:

Following the murder of The Flash’s wife, Iris, by his greatest foe, The Reverse-Flash, the two costumed characters are locked in a round-the-world race and battle – one that ended in the death of the evildoer. This is only the beginning of a startling chain of events for The Fastest Man Alive, as he is arrested on a charge of murder. A police scientist himself in his civilian identity of Barry Allen, The Flash begins to build his defense. But when his famous Rogues Gallery of villains decides to get revenge for the death of one of their own, The Flash must battle their patsy: The massively powerful villain called Big Sir. And that’s all before the trial even begins . . .

It wouldn't surprise me if they are planning on modifying and adapting this arc and that shot was just a hint of it.

[Krensky]

Arnwyn wrote:

Krensky wrote:

Then mayhaps you should avoid comic book adaptations... Science is not their strong suit.

Some are materially/noticeably worse than others.

No, they're pretty much all the sane level.

[JoelF847]

In addition to the various time travel paradoxes and what they could lead to, there's been confirmation that season 2 will have alternate universes, so characters could come from alternate timelines that are different (or even alive again) without directly changing Barry's past.

[Aberzombie]

Kalshane wrote:

I enjoyed that a lot, though we have some paradoxes to sort out next season like

** spoiler omitted **

GAAH!! I hadn't even thought about that!!! SOOO much head hurting!

Spoiler:

Taking your points into consideration, bringing back Eddie (and thereby Eobard), or otherwise convincing a once-again-among-the-living Harrison Wells to build the PA early, is the only way to prevent reality from collapsing in on itself or otherwise changing to suit what has now happened.

That's why I go back to my point from last night and say either Eddie's body is now in the future and someone is going to bring him back to life, or reality will shift itself and Eobard will be descended from some other member of the Thawne family.

OR, and this I was thinking of earlier - What if a new Zoom appears? Maybe they'll bring in Hunter Zolomon? That would make some sense, since they are starting to mess more with time travel and his powers were time based.

[Caineach]

I'm guessing they will explain the paradox away with Legends of Tomorrow when they bring in another time traveler.

[phantom1592]

One thing to remember that is constantly forgotten, both in regards to this show AND the comics...

Barry going back in time is NOT changing the timestream. He is not going back and messing with things for his own personal amusement...

He is FIXING the timestream.

Barry's mother was not MEANT to die. She did NOT die in the original timeline (in either universe) Barry grew up with both parents and still became the flash, and Eobard became the reverse flash... and everything happened how it was supposed to happen.

Then Zoom went back and killed Barry's mom... just to be a jerk. Having the hero go back and STOP him from changing the past is a legitimate Hero thing to do.

YES... it would change everything they know... but THEY are the alternate timeline here. Changing things to where they are 'meant to be' isn't all bad. We know the universe survives till at least 2040 or whatever and there is still a Flash saving the city.

[Cthulhudrew]

If you assume that there is one timeline, and that is where everything that has and will happen takes place, then "fixing" it is a heroic thing to do (although it raises the question of how it can be broken in the first place if there was only ever one "correct" timeline).

However- and this is something that I felt the finale addressed in one of the better ways I've seen done- there are still lives and histories that have been created, regardless of whether they were "meant to" or not, and is changing those- altering them, erasing them- the right thing to do, even if they weren't supposed to exist in the first place? Does restoring the prior status quo balance out eliminating all those new futures?

That's a much harder notion to wrestle with, much less answer definitively.

I was surprised at the way Barry dealt with it last night for that very reason, that oftentimes with stories like these (particularly on family friendly network tv) they take the easy route and don't showcase all sides of the dilemma. So it was a pleasant surprise to see it dealt with this way.

Are there still questions raised by all of the timey-wimeyness? Will they ever be fully addressed? Yes, and maybe. Either way, it was still pretty entertaining.

(Incidentally- and this is something that this show didn't address either- I've rarely found any story that takes a broader view of time travel shenanigans; one that deals with the fact that dealing with/correcting time travel in the present-day of the story's protagonists often has longer reaching consequences for the futures from which the time traveler(s) came, and all the lives that may be destroyed/altered as a result. Eobard's "you're all dead to me" attitude often seems to be the inadvertent attitude of the heroes of the present who don't realize that they're eliminating potentially millions of lives just because "they don't exist to us yet."

Time travel. Don't do it.)

[sunbeam]

Cthulhudrew wrote:

(Incidentally- and this is something that this show didn't address either- I've rarely found any story that takes a broader view of time travel shenanigans; one that deals with the fact that dealing with/correcting time travel in the present-day of the story's protagonists often has longer reaching consequences for the futures from which the time traveler(s) came, and all the lives that may be destroyed/altered as a result. Eobard's "you're all dead to me" attitude often seems to be the inadvertent attitude of the heroes of the present who don't realize that they're eliminating potentially millions of lives just because "they don't exist to us yet."

Time travel. Don't do it.)

I guess you could counter argue that your new timeline has plenty of people who are better off, and individuals that were born in the new one, as opposed to their parents never meeting and whatnot in the original.

Basically no matter what evil you do, you do good as well.

Of course a tv show isn't going to really touch the ramifications of time travel, and god are they myriad.

[Sharoth]

You know, I do not have time for all of this.

[sunbeam]

Cthulhudrew, I guess it is pointless, but I wanted to add something.

Barry made the decision not to save his mom, preserving his own timeline (which logically should already be screwed up because Thawne never existed, so who did kill Barry's mom?).

But there was the "original" timeline where Barry's mom wasn't killed and he became the Flash in 2020 or whatever.

Now if I were from the original timeline, might I not have a vested interest in making sure the timeline where my children were born or whatever came to be?

It's not just them, it's an infinite number of people.

And while it goes beyond the scope of anything discussed so far, what about planets beyond earth? I'm not sure it counts if nothing on earth ever influenced an event on those planets, but the wicket gets sticky in a hurry.

I guess there may be two schools of time travel. One where you just don't do it, and another where you do whatever you want at any time.

Don't think too much about it, but bear in mind you will probably get unexpected bad to go along with whatever good you got from your intervention.

Not thinking and television go together like ham and eggs, so I guess that is the best way to handle it.

[LazarX]

Ramarren wrote:

This seems more likely to me. Otherwise why taunt him with his lack of fame and loss of Iris?

Thawne/Wells has a lot of character defects, but petty spitefulness doesn't really seem to be among them.

Think again:

Spoiler:

After Thawne realises he's lost his way home. "After I kill you, I'm going to kill everyone in here, and then kill your father and everyone else in your family." Yeah he's got that too.

[JoelF847]

Caineach wrote:

I'm guessing they will explain the paradox away with Legends of Tomorrow when they bring in another time traveler.

Considering that Legends of Tomorrow won't be airing until mid-season (January or later), I hope we don't have to wait for then until they explain the paradox. Seems like something they need to address in the season premiere or at least the first few episodes of the Flash in the fall.

[Cthulhudrew]

sunbeam wrote:

Cthulhudrew, I guess it is pointless, but I wanted to add something.

I wouldn't say it's pointless, just that I think there are interesting philosophical and moral questions to be asked on both (all) ends of the spectrum. Whether it is right or wrong, I don't think there are any easy answers.

Ultimately, I think the only real "wrong" that can be affixed is to the initial time meddler, the "patient zero" as it were, that threw a monkeywrench into the operation for whatever reason, and the consequences that range far and beyond whatever it was they set out to do in the first place.

I appreciate your sharing your thoughts; it is definitely an interesting exercise in hypotheticals, and to me- at least- this finale offered a slightly more complex take on it than many examples in the genre do.

(The 12 Monkeys tv adaptation is another one that I think has done a really good job of showcasing time travel; I recommend it if anyone hasn't seen it yet.)

Also, back to some of the specific issues brought up by this episode:

Spoiler:

Does anyone recall what it was specifically that Eobard said about Eddie a few episodes back. I seem to recall him saying something to the effect that all the other Thawnes had extensive histories, but that Eddie's past was lost to history. Eobard took that to mean he just didn't make any meaningful contributions whatsoever that historians would note, but what if- instead- the reason he seemed to disappear from the history books was that he was literally removed from history- perhaps sent into the far distant future by the Singularity he gets sucked into? If he survives there, then he could still somehow be Eobard's ancestor- although it wouldn't explain why Eobard disappeared.

[Damon Griffin]

sunbeam wrote:

I guess there may be two schools of time travel. One where you just don't do it, and another where you do whatever you want at any time.

Not thinking and television go together like ham and eggs, so I guess that is the best way to handle it.

A TV show (or movie, or book) with time travel as a central and recurring theme has a certain responsibility to make sure it remains internally consistent. It can use any ridiculous premise it wants, so long as it doesn't then violate the rules of that premise.

I'd like to think the CW's showrunners and writers are doing that, but I don't see a lot of evidence of it. I have my doubts that there's any way to explain everything we know about so far. How many timelines/branches are we even dealing with so far?

Timeline 1 - In the original timeline, Nora Allen lives, Henry Allen doesn't go to jail and Barry is raised by them, though somehow he still ends up becoming a forensic scientist working for CCPD. The particle accelerator is actually built by Harrison Wells and goes online in 2019. It explodes immediately, Barry becomes The Flash. He likely faces a different set of metahumans in the original timeline, because those we know won't have been in the same places they'd have been in five years earlier; Barry on the other hand spends a lot of time in his police lab. Five years into his superhero career, Flash disappears in The Crisis. Eobard Thawne is born in 2150, and later gains speed powers through as yet undisclosed means. He either travels to the past, or The Flash travels to the future, or both; somehow he encounters Barry multiple times and at some point feels Barry has "taken everything away" from him. His ultimate revenge plot is to travel back to 1999 and kill Barry as a child. If successful this would create...

Timeline 2 - Thawne arrives in 1999 intent upon killing Barry; there was no timeline where he succeeded because The Flash wasn't erased from existence, so this planned timeline is aborted in favor of...

Timeline 3 - We join Timeline 3 already in progress as Future Flash #2 (more on that name later) arrives to intercept Thawne and save his young self. We don't yet know how old Barry was when he made this trip or how he made it. He fights with Thawne, gets his younger self out of danger and...then it's not clear what happens to him. Perhaps he had a fixed amount of time he could be in the past, and time ran out. In this timeline he doesn't have any other [red] Flash to interact with. In any case, as soon as Thawne is foiled, he kills Nora in a fit of rage, runs out of the Allen house and finds he's run out of juice. He can't get back home without making certain changes to history, so he locates Harrison Wells, kills him and his wife and takes over Well's identity, thereby spawning...

Timeline 4 - This is the timeline we were in when the show started. Nora dead, Henry in jail, Barry raised by Joe West. "Wells" builds the particle accelerator and brings it online in 2014 rather than 2019. The explosion affects the set of metahumans we're familiar with, rather than those who were affected in the original timeline. Along the way Barry and company discover that an adult Barry Allen was present in 1999, and assume it's Flash-2014 but as will later become apparent, it's Future Flash #2 instead. Stuff happens over the course of the season. Eventually Cisco discovers that Wells is Thawne and is killed around the time Mardon unleashes a tsunami on Central City and Barry runs one day back in time, creating...

Timeline 5 - With only one day overlap, it's not as dramatic a shift as the other branches have created, but the TV viewer never sees any more of where Timeline 4 would have gone from that day forward. There's no tsunami this time, and Cisco lives but Barry learns some things he wouldn't otherwise have known and Cisco retains subconscious memories of Timeline 4. Acting on this knowledge they learn about "Wells" more quickly than they might otherwise have, gain bits of knowledge about the (really, "a") future and force a confrontation. Thawne convinces Barry to take a chance on traveling to the past to try and save his mother. Barry runs around inside the particle accelerator, taps into the Speed Force at the snail's pace of Mach 2, and arrives in 1999 as Future Flash #1, branching to...

Timeline 6 - Flash-2015 is Future Flash #1 because his departure point from his own "present" is earlier than that of Future Flash #2. He is silently cautioned by Future Flash #2 not to interfere with what Future Flash #2 does. The scenario between young Barry, Nora, Henry, Reverse Flash and ure Flash #2 plays out just as it did in Timeline 3 except for Future Flash #2 waving off Future Flash #1. Then Barry says his goodbyes and returns to 2015 to stop Thawne from returning to the 23rd Century. There is no [known] timeline where Thawne does return to his own time from this point, but it's likely he would have managed it somewhere doen the line in Timeline 6 if Eddie had not sacrificed himself to create...

Timeline 7 - This is where the whole mess threatens to collapse. We need a comic book pseudoscientific explanation for how time alteration works for this show, to explain how, if Eobard Thawne is never born, any of the timelines from 2 forward ever occurred. Remember that Timeline 1 still includes Barry becoming The Flash and disappearing in The Crisis. The existence of Barry-as-Flash plus some set of Star Labs-created metahumans is covered. The real Harrison Wells can do in Timeline 1 much of what Thawne-as-Wells did starting in Timeline 3. But if Eobard Thawne were truly removed from existence, as his pixelization suggested, that [b[should[/b] have generated...

Timeline 8 - which would be largely indistinguishable from the early part of Timeline 1. It would differ in that Barry would never encounter Eobard Thawne as Reverse Flash, even post-2015.

In both Timelines 1 and 8, sometime after 2015 Barry becomes head of the CCPD Forensics Unit, builds the Gideon AI and becomes a founding member of the Justice League.

Additions/corrections?

[Ambrosia Slaad]

I really hope that helmet's appearance means that character and some of his friends will be helping Barry close the paradox singularity.

Also, possible spoilers for season 2.

[phantom1592]

LazarX wrote:

Ramarren wrote:

This seems more likely to me. Otherwise why taunt him with his lack of fame and loss of Iris?

Thawne/Wells has a lot of character defects, but petty spitefulness doesn't really seem to be among them.

Think again:

** spoiler omitted **

I think the petty taunting was extremely intentional. My theory is that Eddie was a part of Eobard's family line... but Iris 100% was NOT.

He's screwed up a lot things by starting the accelerater early, but he wanted to make sure that HE survived. Hence when it started to look like West-Allen wasn't going to happen and Eddie was getting a little TOO serious... he interrupted the proposal and showed him 'evidence' that it was DOOMED TO FAIL... thus scuttling his romantic notions and putting him back on track with 'how it should be'...

[Lemmy]

Ignoring the non-sensical science and time paradox (because really, they reached the point where it's so ridiculous it's not even worth bothering)... This was a great episode, with very emotional scenes and great acting...

I think everyone in this thread saw the episode already, but...

Just in case:

Why did they have to allow Thawne to go back to the future, anyway? What was stopping them from saying "Well, now that you taught us how to do it, we don't need your help anymore, so we'll just let you rot in a cell forever and ever...".

Also, I really loved seeing Jay Garrick's helmet and Thawne being apparently so scared by it that he wasn't willing to stay another second in the present time. I don't think it makes much sense (What, did JG decide to throw his helmet at a nearby wormhole or something?)... But it was still awesome!

And instead of dying, why the hell didn't Eddie simply have a vasectomy or, if he was feeling dramatic, shoot his own testicles?

As usual, the series has great character intereaction and development, and really stupid or nonsensical character decisions... So we take the bad with the good... Well, at least it didn't have any painfully frustrating action scenes this time.

[Rynjin]

Krensky wrote:

Arnwyn wrote:

Krensky wrote:

Then mayhaps you should avoid comic book adaptations... Science is not their strong suit.

Some are materially/noticeably worse than others.

No, they're pretty much all the sane level.

No, the Flash science has always been hilariously bad. Right from the word go ("Well I'm just smoking my pipe right next to a rack of chemicals in my lab...OH NO! Lightning has struck the shelf and now I have SUPERPOWERS!").

So it didn't bother me any here.

No, the bit that got me was Caitlyn not knowing what a singularity is.

Caitlyn: "What's a singularity?"

[Spiral_Ninja]

Time paradoxes...it could be worse: "You look like my father"

There IS this

[Spiral_Ninja]

In relation to Damon Griffin's listing of timelines, I found these items:

Hypertime

and

Linear men

[Reckless]

Spoiler:

Sisko was present, and thanks to his new super-power is to make it so paradoxes don't matter if he's present when they happen.

Fudge the viewers, we don't need no stinkin logic!

[Reckless]

That last post never hsappened. Nothing tseehereeeeeeeee

/me is sucked into a world-ending black hole.

[LazarX]

Damon Griffin wrote:

Thawne convinces Barry to take a chance on traveling to the past to try and save his mother. Barry runs around inside the particle accelerator, taps into the Speed Force at the snail's pace of Mach 2,

A human body running at the speed of light in a tunnel that's not a vacuum would produce some rather explosive effects. As in city busting explosion effects.

[Kthulhu]

How naive is Team Flash?

They should have filled Thawne's cell with cyanide right after Barry successfully traveled back in time.

[Krensky]

Rynjin wrote:

Krensky wrote:

Arnwyn wrote:

Krensky wrote:

Then mayhaps you should avoid comic book adaptations... Science is not their strong suit.

Some are materially/noticeably worse than others.

No, they're pretty much all the sane level.

No, the Flash science has always been hilariously bad. Right from the word go ("Well I'm just smoking my pipe right next to a rack of chemicals in my lab...OH NO! Lightning has struck the shelf and now I have SUPERPOWERS!").

So it didn't bother me any here.

No, the bit that got me was Caitlyn not knowing what a singularity is.

Caitlyn: "What's a singularity?"

I feel as though you are ... Unfamiliar with the medium... EVERYTHING gives you superpowers.

Cosmic rays, gamma rays, drugs, weird crystals, different drugs, radioactive waste, shrapnel in your chest, being an alien, knowing an alien, scientific accidents, watching tv, encountering an alien, a wizard, a weird helmet, some chick lying on her back in a lake, good nu5rition and clean living, the devil, god, being a god, encountering a god, being descended from a god, being bitten by a spider, being bitten by a mongoose, knowing someone bitten by a spider, eating weird plants, still more and different drugs, random mutations, drugs that cause random mutations, reading stuff you shouldn't, having parents who do drugs...

Everything gives you super powers, no matter how stupid or contrary to reality or common sense.

[Rynjin]

Krensky wrote:

Rynjin wrote:

Krensky wrote:

Arnwyn wrote:

Krensky wrote:

Then mayhaps you should avoid comic book adaptations... Science is not their strong suit.

Some are materially/noticeably worse than others.

No, they're pretty much all the sane level.

No, the Flash science has always been hilariously bad. Right from the word go ("Well I'm just smoking my pipe right next to a rack of chemicals in my lab...OH NO! Lightning has struck the shelf and now I have SUPERPOWERS!").

So it didn't bother me any here.

No, the bit that got me was Caitlyn not knowing what a singularity is.

Caitlyn: "What's a singularity?"

I feel as though you are ... Unfamiliar with the medium... EVERYTHING gives you superpowers.

Cosmic rays, gamma rays, drugs, weird crystals, different drugs, radioactive waste, shrapnel in your chest, being an alien, knowing an alien, scientific accidents, watching tv, encountering an alien, a wizard, a weird helmet, some chick lying on her back in a lake, good nu5rition and clean living, the devil, god, being a god, encountering a god, being descended from a god, being bitten by a spider, being bitten by a mongoose, knowing someone bitten by a spider, eating weird plants, still more and different drugs, random mutations, drugs that cause random mutations, reading stuff you shouldn't, having parents who do drugs...

Everything gives you super powers, no matter how stupid or contrary to reality or common sense.

I never said otherwise.

But it's so bad it's silly science.

Which is the topic.

[RainyDayNinja]

Lemmy wrote:

Spoiler:

And instead of dying, why the hell didn't Eddie simply have a vasectomy or, if he was feeling dramatic, shoot his own testicles?

I thought the same thing. But Eddie was really never that bright. Of course, if he did that, the next scene would have played out different...

Spoiler:

*The team goes outside, and watches the black hole sucking the tops off of skyscrapers*
Eddie: [Rolling on the ground, clutching himself in pain] "F@&!, there's going to be a line at the hospital, isn't there?"

[Mark Hoover]

I know Flash is DC but Stan Lee was once quoted years ago in an interview about the Hulk "I know nothing of science." Nuff said.

[Set]

Rynjin wrote:

No, the bit that got me was Caitlyn not knowing what a singularity is.

Caitlyn: "What's a singularity?"

Yeah, that bugged me, too. If somebody needed to hold the 'please explain to the normal person / non-science geek in the room the plot' ball, couldn't it have been someone who legitimately wouldn't have known, like Eddie, Iris or Joe?

Instead, Caitlin, one of the smartest people in the city, goes all Professional Physicist Barbie. "Gosh, math is hard! Someone with testicles needs to explain this to me, 'cause I'm just a girl!"

[Kalshane]

Yeah, Caitlin being the one to ask that made me shake my head as well.

As for Eddie, up until

Spoiler:

Eobard was actively trying to kill Barry and saying he was going to kill everyone else afterward he was still in "screw the future, I'm not going to worry about any of that" mode. Him shooting himself was a moment of desperation to save the day because everything had hit the fan.

As for letting Eobard go, there didn't seem to be reason for it, other than for the sake of keeping their word, which is an important thing to a lot of people (particularly in superhero stories).

[Lemmy]

Well... At least she has the excuse that aingularities aren't her field.of work (she is a doctor/biologist, right?). It could have been worse... Remember in Amazing Spider-Man 2 (ugh) when super-science-genius Peter Parker has to look up how batteries work on Youtube? ><'

[Arnwyn]

Lemmy wrote:

Remember in Amazing Spider-Man 2 (ugh) when super-science-genius Peter Parker has to look up how batteries work on Youtube? ><'

No... because I have avoided that movie like the plague (the first Amazing SM was terrible). I see that my avoidance was wise.