5 Thoughts About Flash: "Infantino Street"

The day has finally come.  Does Iris West survive?


1.)  The sudden appearance of Captain Cold for an episode feels random, but it does go a long way towards tying all the various shows together to feel like a cohesive universe. Early in the season, this year's CW-crossover saw the heroes from four series work together to battle an alien invasion, which by itself had no purpose besides a ratings boost and looking awesome to us fans.  But then as it turns out, when Team Flash needs a massive power source for their Speed Force cannon to trap Savitar, the only thing on Earth that comes close is some leftover tech from the battle against those very same invaders?   That's a good way of retrofitting the crossover into Flash and helping it serve a greater purpose.

Having said that, watching Captain Cold basically be a do-gooder in disguise is off-putting.  I can't think of any comic versioon that would ever encourage Flash to do the right thing instead of being a murderer.  But then again, once you start killing people it's pretty hard to find your way back, and it'd be much easier to deal with a nice Barry Allen than a speedster who's willing to kill fighting the bad guys.

2.) Still, the whole thing with ARGUS not trusting Barry enough to help him fight Savitar felt a bit unnecessary.  Again, having a super-speedster around that's given to murder is probably not a thing you want, and it'd have been easier to help Barry deal with the problem than just stand in his way while offering no suggestions.  Also, I find it super convenient that ARGUS has a power dampener.  I'm guessing it can't be made portable, or the government would get pretty pushy with their "superheroes".

I guess it's also worth asking why didn't they place Iris in ARGUS if they have a power dampener, but that's an easy answer: if you cut the power to ARGUS then suddenly there IS no dampener, and Savitar could just murder everyone in the building to grab our girl.   Why involve so many lives that have nothing to do with the problem?

3.) Even if its completely stupid how Savitar comes to be, this show has done a fairly decent job with everyone coming to terms with Iris dying from an emotional perspective. If I had one objection, it'd be that I wish Iris had an episode to herself to deal with it--knowing you're going to die is one thing, but knowing you'll be murdered?   She's clearly made peace with it, but the show has certainly glossed over exactly how, even while going over how Barry feels about it from multiple angles.

4.) I would love to know how this whole time travel thing works in the Flash's universe.  It made sense at some point during season one, but now they just seem like they're making up things as they go along instead of actually putting some thought into it.   This version of Savitar is from the future, but he also gets visions of his creator trying to stop him?    Then how does he ever get trapped in the first place?   I am so confused. 

5.) The going fan theory is that Savitar actually failed to kill Iris, but has instead killed HR who's been utilizing the image inducer from his Earth.  The problem with that is HR is the one who told him where to find Iris, so when would he have had time to get to that Earth, change over to Iris and get kidnapped, and more importantly why would he sacrifice himself like that, because it'd baiscally mean he told Savitar where Iris was on purpose?

And more importantly, even if that is true, how does that stop Savitar from killing Iris later anyway? Does he just cease to be because that decision doesn't push Barry over the edge right then?  If time is that rigid, why is it able to withstand so many paradoxes in the first place?

Ugh, this episode has left me with way more questions than concrete "thoughts", but here we are.  I really want to like this season of Flash because a lot of it is better than what we had last year, but its still just troublesome, particularly as a sci-fi geek.