Flash: Mic Drop

I

Can't

Even

But I'm gonna try.

As I was watching this episode, I had in my mind that I would title this one Flash: Picking Up Speed.  Because the truth is I actually think this show is getting better.  It started off happy and funny, and while it has by and large remained sunnier than--say--Arrow, it hasn't been afraid to dabble in the dark side.  Sure, it's done some mind numbingly awful things (I'm looking at you, writers of Caitlin's plot arc) but if you can get past the pseudo science and the blatant disregard for rippling cause and effect when working in time--if you can just look at the character development--the show's turning out to be damn good.  The relationships move you.  You laugh, you cry, you feel for these people.  It's why this season has been so effective, as we watched them struggle with a seemingly unbeatable foe.

It's why the deaths have mattered.  Even if we weren't losing a character we loved, we've cared about the impact on those that were left behind.

Which is why this episode has just ripped my heart out and stomped it on the floor.

It's why I can't even.

Barry just altered everything.  EVERYTHING.  Think about it.  Barry just killed Thawne.  That means that the real Harrison Wells and his wife will never be in a car accident.  Eobard Thawne created the dark matter explosion on purpose to give Barry his powers years before he was supposed to get them in the original time line.  Has the explosion even happened now?  Is that Barry, the one we see in the final moments of the episode, nothing more than a time remnant?  Is he going to fade away? 

Good news, Wells.  You're gonna live.  

Everyone else is toast, though.

Save the scientist, doom the world, I guess.

God, I just realized Cisco and Hardass made that joke... Well played writers.  Nice foreshadowing.

But extrapolate out.  Barry just destroyed his relationship with Joe.  Now he will never be Joe's adopted son.  He obliterated his whole history with Iris.  Gone.  His mother and father are probably alive, yes, that's true, but has he just wiped away Cisco and Caitlin's friendship?  Will the real Wells still hire them both?  Or has he destroyed his entire community?  And what about Zoom?  Barry was the only one who could defeat Zoom, and now that he's not there...  Is Zoom never going to find Earth One?  Will he just terrorize and rule Earth Two?  Have Hardass and Jessie Quick been doomed to a life of fear in their universe?

 These people will no longer be these people.

Barry has wiped away the lives of everyone he loves.  The sheer enormity of what he has done is mind boggling.

And if the show was just using this a reboot--if this was the TV version of the new 52--I could maybe take it in stride.  Then, at least, we would be starting over fresh.  We'd get to see Barry get his powers all over again, and make his friends anew, and fall in love.  It might be nice.  But I doubt that's how they're gonna play it.  I think our Barry--the Barry we know, with all his scars and memories intact--is going to come back to a world that he no longer fits in.  Joe will not know him as a son.  Iris will be living with Eddie.   And Cisco and Caitlin might not even know him.

 He could be coming back to anything.

I am not sure I can take watching that.

Damnit, Flash.  Why'd you have to drop the mic?