Barry Allen and crew are still dealing with the remnants of Flashpoint inâ€Borrowing Problems from the Future,†but it appears that they will trek down similar paths as they had in the past. Flashpoint has always been a bit of a strange event, especially since it has been pretty inconsistent across the various episodes since the actual event.
This episode follows the typical Flash archetype in which Barry’s feelings of having to keep a secret set off the event plan for the team. Barry’s been having nightmares about seeing Savitar kill Iris and feels that it is best to go at it alone, even though that never works. It’s really one of my main gripes that continues to arise with this show; it doesn’t seem like these characters are learning from past mistakes. Luckily the writers decided to resolve this issue quickly, within the episode, which now allows future episodes to further the untangling of the future.
The Flash crew’s plan, partially instigated by HR, was to carefully alter various events in the present to change the future just enough to spare Savitar killing Iris. The plan definitely seems a bit haphazard because it will certainly have unintended consequences as it always does. It will be interesting to see how changing the current events impacts the future, and what form of unintended consequences will bubble to the surface.
The entire dynamic for the upcoming episodes is a bit strange since he is essentially doing exactly what he did to save his mother, just in reverse. Instead of the past, he went to the future, and while he isn’t actually changing that exact moment, he is easily altering the moments leading up to it.
The first moment in which Barry tackles, or has Wally tackle, is that of our villain-of-the-week, The Plunderer. AS his name suggest he is a lowly criminal with some seriously advanced tech, of which isn’t really expanded upon in the episode. The villain is 100 percent just a means to further the plot, which is kind of a shame since we haven’t really had a villain not named Savitar or Alchemy in quite some time. As mentioned, Barry has Wally apprehend The Plunderer since when Cisco vibed Barry into the future, he saw that The Flash was the one who apprehended him.
The meddling in the future will surely cause the consequences similar to what changes the past does. With a team so dead set on not altering the past, they seem adamant to rewrite the future as they see fit. It’s also a bit strange that these alterations to the timeline have little detriment to events in the other DC CW universe shows. The two other plotlines were given few scenes, but still provided some nice movement for their respective plots.
Julian has been warming up to the STAR Labs crew, but he still hasn’t been able to really become a part of the team, until now that is. Strangely enough, Caitlin Snow is the one who brings him onboard. Julian teamed up with Cisco to create a necklace that is charged by the sun so that she doesn’t have to charge her bracelets, as she had to do hilariously early on in the episode. Bringing Julian into the fold should add a nice dynamic to STAR Labs, even though I am not sold on him not having an ongoing nefarious scheme.
The final potline of mention is that of HR Wells and his continued work on the STAR Labs museum. It’s not so much an important set of scenes, as it is just an enjoyable few segments where the STAR Labs crew starts to blend together. When no one shows up for his grand opening, the crew helps him fix the tech in the museum and sell tickets to a local school. Again, nothing monumental but I love seeing HR become more and more a part of STAR Labs.
