Major spoilers for anyone who hasn’t watched The Flash’s Season 1 finale.
Somebody get Cisco to hurry up and develop a bugle that is self-programmed to play “Taps,” because tonight certainly didn’t hold back on teasing death and then eventually delivering it in a most unexpected fashion. For fans didn’t just say goodbye to one character in “Fast Enough,” but two. Well, three, if we’re counting Barry’s mom Nora, who gets to die yet again after Barry denies her survival. But let’s just focus on the two main ones.
R.I.P. Eddie Thawne
If we’re being honest, Eddie has been kind of a wet rag in Season 1, serving as a fine cop and partner to Joe, but a total pole through the spokes of the inevitable romance between Barry and Iris. (And because honesty is key, that’s a romance that I really didn’t mind seeing delayed as long as possible.) Eddie’s trajectory from boyfriend to insider to jilted ex-would-be-fiancé to re-boyfriend wasn’t always the most engaging, at least until Hannibal “Everyman” Bates came into it. Still, I never exactly wanted the guy to bite the bullet, and totally didn’t expect him to, given his legacy involving a lineage that led to Eobard “Reverse-Flash” Thawne.
Plus, the episode led viewers to believe that Eddie was on the path to enlightenment, as he came to accept that his descendant’s knowledge of the future didn’t have to exist, since coincidences aren’t inherently explainable by science. He ended up getting back together with Iris because of it, probably because Iris figured Barry was going to be out of her life forever thanks to the time travel element. But when Barry came back and all the problematic shit hit the fan with Reverse-Flash, Eddie became a hero…nay, a martyr…by shooting himself in the chest and stopping that branch of the Thawne family tree to continue. We assume he wouldn’t have had any kids with Iris, but there was apparently someone out there ready to carry on his gene pool. Which brings us to…
R.I.P. Eobard Thawne???
Once Eddie shot himself in the chest and began dying, Thawne-as-Wells began to go through changes, eventually turning back into Eobard Thawne proper, showing his real face to Barry and the S.T.A.R. Labs crew for the first time. It was a subdued moment, but an important one nonetheless, as Barry finally got to see the real identity of the man who killed his mother. (The mother he’d only minutes previously watched die in front of his eyes.) Then, as Eddie died, Thawne disappeared completed into a bright light of pixels, seemingly getting wiped out of existence. But that couldn’t possibly make sense, since Thawne was the reason why Barry came to be The Flash in the first place, right?
And that’s why there are question marks in the subheader above, especially knowing that Tom Cavanagh will be back for Season 2. Thanks to star Grant Gustin, we know that Season 2 will play around with alternate timelines, which could easily lead to Thawne still existing somewhere in the dense fabric of reality. Now what that has to do with that massive singularity that Barry is trying to close as the end of the episode, or if it involves a different strand of the Thawne family line, we just don't know. And that, no matter what dimension you're in, sucks.
For more on the rest of the episode, head here. Otherwise, join me in twiddling thumbs in the fastest way imaginable as we wait for Season 2 of The Flash to hit The CW this fall. I’m already getting thumb blisters.
