Spoiler warning for anyone who still hasn't watched The Flash.
While The Flash has gone to some strange places in Season 3, thanks to an abundance of Barry's bafflingly bad decisions, the superhero drama has kept audiences hooked in much the same way that it did through its first two years: with its big bad. In this case, that villain is the speed god Savitar, and tonight's speedy cold open featured Barry standing before the suited nemesis while speaking the name of the episode, "I know who you are." And by the end of the fairly calm installment, so did we all: it's Future Barry Allen, albeit one with some scarred-up skin.
Not that the episode let viewers in on the much-theorized secret immediately. After all, we had to first meet The Flash's newest brainiac, physicist Tracy Brand, as played by House vet Anne Dudek. Both H.R. and Killer Frost took a shine to Tracy, though for completely different reasons. Tracy's theories about the Speed Force are pretty legit, and Team Flash's foreknowledge made them desperate for her assistance. Meanwhile, Killer Frost was fully into making Tracy an ex-physicist/ex-human, and Cisco was having major issues doing anything Vibe-ish to take her down (though he came through in the end during their big "battle"). This is when Killer Frost played a verbal version of The Mirror Game with Barry, teasing how extremely knowledgable Savitar is about details of the present. But how could he know such things, right?
It took until the episode's last scene to actually deliver the goods, in a stand-down between Barry and Savitar, with the Scarlet Speedster giving the opposite of a Bond villain speech, laying out all the obvious reasons why Savitar would actually be Future Barry. If nothing else, it added logic to Killer Frost being commanded not to take Flash down. Sadly, it wasn't our best guess, which we still stand behind, and it was a guess that many people had almost immediately, but it was still a shocking moment nonetheless. And it raised a bunch of questions beyond just the identity ones.
Now that the speed god cat has been let out of the bag, what in the Earth-1 does this mean for Present Barry and the rest of Team Flash? Tracy seems to have figured out how to keep Savitar down, thanks to her theories about the strange metal that makes up his suit. She says he's so fast, the suit is needed to neutralize the energy he creates in his travels, and so it'll be the key in sending the villain back into the Speed Force. Will it play out the way everyone wants it to? Not if Barry is running the show and he is, from BOTH sides. I do hope we get to hear how he got those scars, though, in Grant Gustin's best Joker impression.
Also, how will it affect the characters that we met during Barry's recent trip to the future? Tonight's episode may have showed us who Savitar is under the mask, but it didn't tell us how he ended up getting stuck in the Speed Force during his pre-Savitar days, nor several other time travel-related details about Savitar's origin story, as it were. What moment was he reliving in the Speed Force that was so bad he'd go back and kill Iris? And while I could come up with more, my final query: why would Caitlin-as-Killer-Frost automatically bow down to Future Barry so quickly like that in last week's episode?
The Flash airs Tuesday nights on The CW at 8:00 p.m. ET, and there isn't much time left until the big season finale. Wondering what to do once it's over with? Head to our summer TV schedule to see all the best (and worst) shows that are hitting primetime in the coming months.
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