The Flash Review: Finish Line (Season 3 Episode 23)

The Flash Season 3 Episode 23, “Finish Line,” picks up directly from the previous episode, “Infantino Street” with Team Flash reeling from the long-prophesied murder of Iris West (Candice Patton).

It is quickly revealed, however, that HR (Tom Cavanagh) had cloaked himself to look like Iris and traded places with her –meaning that HR was the one killed, not Iris. Plot twist; cue the dramatic music!

This plot machination works far better than it has any right to, given the wide fan prediction beforehand and the flashback maneuvering it took for this to even make sense. It helps that we have spent much of the season going back and forth on how likable HR is versus how profoundly useless he is as a member of Team Flash.

Adding to the emotional heft of the scene is the knowledge that this is a death that will fully matter. While it seemed deeply unlikely (for its own sake) that The Flash would permanently kill off the love interest/only african-american female lead, switching her out for HR, means that this is a death of consequence and worthy of caring.

What makes no sense, however, is Savitar’s greater plan, specifically the way in which he goes about trying to bring it to fruition.

It’s revealed that Savitar needed Tracy Brand (Anne Dudek) to build the Speed Force Cannon before he kills Iris so that he can use it to spread inject himself into every moment that ever was and thus keep himself from being erased from the timeline. That doesn’t lineup with previous episodes where Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) would try to kill Tracy before she can build the Cannon.

This can be waved away as a simple plot hole or as an indication that the writers didn’t actually know what direction they wanted to go in after the supposed death of Iris.

On the subject of plot holes, it’s not terribly clear how this timeline turns out differently than the timeline from The Flash Season 3 Episode 19, “The Once and Future Flash” Iris died in that timeline just like she was supposed to do in this one, except HR intervened. The question being: why didn’t HR do the same thing in the previous ones?

It’s reasonable to assume that everything — minus Tracy Brand — happened the same way here as it had in the future timeline, even HR letting slip where Iris was?

Short of successfully using the Speed Force Cannon, this was always going to be the flaw in saving Iris. As Daniel Faraday from Lost would say: “What happened, happened” and doing anything other than that is inherently messy, because time loops will never, ever make complete sense.

Once Savitar is defeated, The Flash reverts to what is perhaps its greatest weakness at the moment: it refuses to let its characters be happy for longer than a moment. Because Team Flash went and messed with the Speed Force yet again, it is essentially very peeved and wreaking havoc across Central City.

The reason for this being the Speed Force needs an occupant and since Savitar and Jay Garrick aren’t inside it any longer, it requires Barry to join it, presumably forever.

That alone makes sense because there has to be this final consequence for Barry creating Flashpoint. It’s actually appropriate considering everything that Barry has done this past season.

This goes farther than that, however. It speaks to how much the show needs its characters to wallow in despair. It’s a trend that The Flash desperately needs to buck going forward, especially if it has any interest in returning to the quality of the first season.

Some Stray Thoughts:

• Why would Savitar trust Cisco to fix the Speed Force Cannon right?
• RIP HR
• Do we have to find a new Harrison Wells now?
• So relieved that “Run faster, Barry” was not a plot point.

What did you think of this episode of The Flash? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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