The Flash - 'Flashpoint'

It wouldn't be the Flash without a little illegal detention.

The second installment of our DC week comes from popular second son of the DCTVU, The Flash, as Barry Allen's frankly bizarre and character-reversing actions at the end of Season 2 lead us into 'Flashpoint'.

Nora Allen wasn't dead, to begin with, and with this one change in the timeline a lot of things are different. Barry and Iris were nodding acquaintances at school and Joe is just a somewhat unreliable work colleague, having become at some stage a drunk. Barry still has his speed, but there's a new Flash in town, dressed in yellow and battling a speedster called the Rival(1), and Barry is just a humble CSI trying to work up the courage to ask a girl out in the coffee shop while he keeps an evil speedster locked up in a warehouse. The fact that he ultimately speed-nicks Iris's purse to create an excuse to talk to her is only marginally less creepy than keeping Thawne in a cage.

Fortunately, Iris superspecialdestinedOTPremembers Barry and it's all going swimmingly, except that even with the help of his sister, alternate 'Kid' Flash Wally West - who got his powers from lightning and nitro in his street racing days - is getting whupped by the Rival and Joe is about to get fired for turning up to work late and hungover. Still, parents are alive and date with Iris! Oh, and Barry's memories keep flushing away down the toilet of time. To keep things on track, he tries to get the band back together for the first time, roping in Cisco Ramone, the richest man in America, and Dr Caitlin Snow, paediatric opthalmologist to help stop the rival.

Caitlin: "'Scuse me."
Wally: "Hm?"
Caitlin: "Have I been kidnapped?"
Wally: "... Unclear."(2)

"I'm the real Flash, and not just because they kind of half-arsed on your suit."

The two Flashes confront the rival, and although Wally is able to subdue the enemy speedster, Wally is killed. As a note, Flash walks away from the beaten Rival, who goes for the sucker punch and is shot by Joe, making DC two for two on sucker punch shoot downs, Lena Luthor having pulled the same save when her assassin tried to gack Alex. Realising that saving his mother was just ridiculously selfish - and thus catching up with the audience - Barry releases Thawne from his dampening cell and allows him to travel back in time to just after his capture and murder Nora Allen after all. Seriously, the space-time continuum around the Allen household must just be Swiss cheesed with speedster holes. One of that day the whole thing is just going to collapse in on itself.

So, the reset is reset and everything is back to normal except that Iris and Joe are no longer talking, the prime timeline version of the Rival is getting creepy messages about alchemy(3) scratched into his home, and maybe some other things as well; we'll have to wait and see. Lessons for the future, Barry Allen; never trust a supervillain to fix things, even one who is already dead.

It feels weird that basically this episode undid the big change of 'The Race of His Life', even if that change was frankly... insane. (Seriously; no more planning for Barry Allen. Just... run around like a good little superhero.) Okay, in fairness I suppose you could see the two episodes working together to establish the new status quo which we'll be exploring in the episodes to come, and to introduce a new evil speedster. I guess we can allow that, just as long as Arrow isn't still harping on the rival archer business.

(1) Speed Force physics 101: For every Flash there is an equal and opposite Reverse Flash.
(2) This also more than a little creepy, Barry.
(3) In fact, the message is just 'ALCHEMY'.