Barry Allen, the man under the mask in “The Flash” has recently been going through some difficult times. The character finds himself facing an enemy that proves to be more of a challenge than he originally expected, and the battle between them has reached a deeply personal level. However, the main problem for the superhero is that he lacks the abilities necessary to properly take on his foe – so a recent episode had him doing some rather surprising things in order to get the upper hand
The character realized that he needs to improve his main ability even more – but reaching higher speeds is obviously no light task considering his already advanced state, so he was shown spending a lot of time brainstorming ideas. He’s mostly aiming to resolve the problem through a scientific approach right now, but at the same time he’s apparently slightly troubled by the recent revelations about Zoom.
In the end, The Flash decides that the only one who can help him is the one person with greater abilities than him – Eobard Thawne. Of course, the idea of reaching out to a villain for help didn’t exactly strike the people around Barry as a bright one, but the desperate situation that the character is currently in apparently calls for desperate measures too.
The way Barry went about his plan raised some questions for viewers of the show too – he was shown putting his past self to sleep in order to get him out of the way so he could complete his objective uninterrupted. Will this have any implications on the plot in the future?
This actually started an interesting conversation among some fans, as it was implied that current events in the show might be influenced by future versions of Barry himself. With that in mind, viewers are now much more alert for details in the show that could hint to outside influence, and we’ve seen some interesting discussions on that topic lately.
It was definitely a clever move by the writers, and hopefully they won’t stop here. The show has a lot more potential to utilize themes like time travel more efficiently, so the writers should consider their options and figure out a way to implement this even more. Of course, there is probably a reasonable limit to how often this should occur, as we can also see it becoming a worn-out and clichéd element relatively fast.
As for Barry, he managed to convince Thawne to help him in the end, while at the same time Cisco and Caitlin were attacked by the wraith. That scene showed them getting closer to Hartley and actually starting to trust them once he used his special abilities to help them out in their defense. It’s not clear if this relationship is going to get stronger in the future or if this is just a temporary development, but fans should definitely keep an eye out for some closer moments between the three of them.
The writers also handled the end of the conversation between Barry and Thawne in a peculiar way, as Barry was unable to get the information that he needed in time due to the risk of having his entire timeline wiped out. His past self interrupted the whole ordeal too, making things particularly complicated, but Barry managed to deal with the situation in an efficient manner and got the information that he needed out of Thawne.