In the season two finale of The Flash, Barry has to race against Zoom to see who is the fastest. In addition, the man in the mask is finally revealed. Who will live and who will die in this crazy, shocking finale?
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Wally and Barry
After Zoom abducted Henry last week, Barry sped off, revealing to Wally that he's The Flash. Wally approaches Barry and thanks him for everything he's done. He has a lot of respect for Barry, which comes in handy. When Harrison and company put Barry away in their metahuman jail because he's too emotional to take on Zoom, Wally frees him because he knows Barry will do what's right. There's a great rapport building between these two characters.
The Final Battle for All the Earths
Zoom reveals to everyone that Earth-1 is an axis point to all the other Earths in the multiverse. He's created a machine that will allow him to access them all. He needs the speed of The Flash to get it running. The Flash chases Zoom down and in order to help save Joe, who is being held captive, Flash creates a time remnant in order to be at two places at once. One Flash saves Joe and the other finds a way to stop the machine from running, which means sacrificing himself.
Flash and Zoom have a fist fight, with Flash coming out on top, but Flash just can't kill Zoom. However, he doesn't have to because the Wraiths from the Speed Force come and take Zoom away.
The Man in the Iron Mask
The season-long mystery is finally revealed! On Earth-2, while talking with a captive Joe West, Zoom explains he went found a speedster on another Earth but couldn't steal his power. That metahuman was kept as a trophy: the man in the iron mask. Zoom reveals that it's Jay Garrick. After Zoom is defeated, Cisco and Harrison unmask Jay and reveal that he's actual a doppelganger of Henry Allen. Barry is shocked, but Jay doesn't realize the connection and is thankful for the STAR Labs team for helping him out.
Flash Goes Back to a Point in Time
Those familiar with DC Comics will recognize what's coming down the line as in the final moments of this episode, a grief-stricken Barry decides to run so fast he goes back in time. He travels back to the moment where his mother was killed by the Reverse Flash. Barry runs in and beats Reverse Flash down before he can murder his mom. After he does this, Flash from a year prior, who also went back in time but chose not to save his mom, sees this happening from behind a door and disappears. Flash has saved his mother but at what cost?
The season finale wraps everything up in a nice little package, all while unraveling everything for the third season. In the comics, Barry went back in time to save his mother, which created the story "Flashpoint,"which screwed everything in the DC Universe up. That's not necessarily going to happen here in the same, exact way, but seeing one of the other Flash's disappear like Marty McFly's brother in that photo does say that everything has changed. What does this mean for the next season?
The second season was a bit of a roller coaster of quality. It had an extremely strong start, suffered from tedious, redundant story telling in the middle, and ended with a small bang but gave viewers enough to latch their teeth into for another season. Twenty-three episodes were far too many for this season, considering the story the creators were telling. The main Zoom story was great but felt overshadowed far too many times by the "villain of the week" formula.
The overall episode wasn't bad. It gave viewers almost everything they wanted. It was satisfying and paced out incredibly well. There were some mildly silly moments in the episode, mainly the idea Zoom wants to race Barry to see who is the fastest. Even with the explanation why Zoom wanted that to happen, it felt a tad odd. One thing that people may miss in the upcoming season, if everything continues down the path, pre-Flash saving his mother, is the dynamic between Cisco and Wells. There was an "Odd Couple" feel to this duo, and their back-and-forth dialogues were one of the highlights of each episode.
Who knows where the third season will take us? Barry going back in time to save his mother will most likely have gigantic ramifications on the world, but will that last the entire season? The team dynamic that was built up this past season was wonderful, so here's to hoping the next season will get back to that sooner rather than later.