The Flash season 2 finale, “The Race of His Life,” featured the final showdown between Barry and Zoom as well as set up season 3.
Flashpoint, here we come. The final moments of the Flash season 2 finale saw Barry travel back in time to the night of his mother’s murder and this time save her from the Reverse Flash. Barry watched the version of him that traveled back in time in the season 1 finale fade away and then comforted his tearful mother, who believed she was going to die only moments before.
Barry saving his mother’s life is the impetus for the world falling apart in the Flashpoint storyline in the comics. Many fans thought the season 1 finale would go in a Flashpoint direction, but saving it for season 3 was definitely a clever move. I wasn’t sure how they were going to follow up having such a strong villain as Hunter Zolomon this season, but Flashpoint makes perfect sense.
It’s going to be fascinating to see how this not only affects The Flash but the other shows in the Arrow-verse, since they all take place on Earth-1.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before all of this, Barry must grieve for his father, who was killed in the previous episode. At the funeral, Barry swears to get revenge against Zolomon and his friends are worried about him. Eventually, Zolomon shows himself and demands Barry race him — he wants definitive proof that he is the fastest man alive.
This would have been weak motivation for such a strong force as Zolomon, but it turns out the race is a means to an end; Zolomon needs to siphon off the energy he and Barry create while running to power a giant device that will destroy all other worlds in the multiverse. Wibbly wobbly sciencey wiencey.
While Barry is ready to run, the rest of Team Flash thinks he’s too angry to effectively take Zoom on. They tranquilize him and lock him in the pipeline to keep him from going through with the race (which I thought was significantly wiser than them collectively giving him permission to change history in the season 1 finale), but this backfires when the rest of the team’s attempt to take Zoom down leads to Zoom pulling Joe back to Earth-2. (His quip about Barry having ample fathers to kill made me laugh, I can’t help it.)
Wally, upon discovering that the team isn’t planning to rescue Joe because Joe made them promise not to reopen a breach for any reason, is furious. He frees Barry from his cell, and Barry convinces the rest of the team to help him. He’s going to face Zoom whether they support him or not, so they might as well support him. And they do.
Once the race is set up, Zolomon arrives with Joe in tow. He declares the rules are that he wins if they power up the multiverse destroying device and Barry wins if he stops Zolomon before the device powers up. The two get to running and Barry remains a bit slower than Zoom, but suddenly a second Flash appears — Barry borrowed Zolomon’s trick of creating a time remnant and enlisting his help.
The time remnant saves Joe and sacrifices himself to stop the multiverse destroying device while the other Barry fights Zoom. This is a brilliant move, since it’s yet another parallel between the two men — enlisting the help of a time remnant who ends up dead — yet also a polar opposite, as Zolomon enlists his to help him torment people and subjugate worlds while Barry’s remnant sacrifices himself to save his loved ones. Zoom killed both of his while Barry’s died protecting others.
Barry doesn’t end up needing to kill Zolomon because Time Wraiths appear to do the deed. Barry reveals his plan hinged on the Time Wraiths being angrier at Zolomon than him for creating time remnants. And he was right. It’s a pretty horrific death, even for someone as awful as Zolomon. All the praise to Teddy Sears for playing “Jay Garrick” and Hunter Zolomon this year.
Speaking of Jay Garrick, Zolomon reveals that the man in the iron mask is the real Jay Garrick. I may have done a bit of a dance in my chair since that was my assumption. And after Zolomon’s defeat, the team rescues the man and removes the mask — revealing Henry Allen’s Earth-3 doppelganger. Remember when Henry said Garrick was his mother’s maiden name? Yeah, that wasn’t a throwaway line. (Though did anyone think it was?)
Barry has a temporary breakdown, seeing his late father’s doppelganger, but eventually Jay is given his suit back and he adopts Hunter’s helmet since the helmet, Harry says, was a symbol of hope on Earth-2. We get an awesome reveal of the true Jay Garrick before he takes Harry and Jesse back to Earth-2. Greg Berlanti teased that the show wouldn’t make the real Jay Garrick a villain, and they were right.
This is a particularly exciting reveal with the Legends of Tomorrow finale introducing the Justice Society of America, as Jay Garrick was one of the founding members of the JSA in the comics. This would be an intriguing tie between those two shows.
And before Barry travels back in time, Iris suggests they give a relationship a try but Barry turns he down since he’s too broken from everything that’s happened. He needs time before he can be good for her. She promises to wait for him, and the two share a kiss. This ship is going to be a slow burn, in case anyone needed further confirmation of that.