Cate Cameron/The CWWarning: major spoilers below! Do not continue reading until you have watched The Flash season finale, "Fast Enough." All others, proceed!
The biggest hero on the epic and heartbreaking season finale of The Flash wasn't the Flash himself. It was none other than regular human detective Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett).
After realizing the whole reason that Eobard Thawne (Tom Cavanagh/Matt Letscher) even existed to cause trouble for Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) as well as the rest of Team Flash and Central City was simply because Eddie existed as his ancestor. And so, soon after he got back together with Iris (Candice Patton), he turned his own gun on himself and shot himself in the heart, effectively killing himself...and erasing Eobard from time.
Sob! Eddie killed himself to save the world! It doesn't get any more gut wrenching than that, does it? It was certainly a heroic way to go, but that didn't stop all the tears from flowing like waterfalls down our cheeks! We may not have been the biggest Eddie fans at the start of the season (we are proud, card-carrying members of the WestAllen fan club over here) but he slowly and surely grew on us until we were rooting for him to find his own happy ending. Shooting himself in the chest was not a part of that plan!
But why did Eddie resort to such drastic measures when Team Flash already had Eobard trapped in their pipeline prison?
At the start of the action-packed hour, Barry pays Eobard a visit in his cell to find out exactly why he killed his mother all those years ago. That's when Eobard starts dropping truth bombs like there's no tomorrow: he reveals he's from 136 years from now, and he simply hates Barry...but he won't get into specifics as to why. All he says is that they're enemies, which...duh. But he offers Barry a deal: if Barry takes him back to his home time in the future, then he'll help Barry access the speed force to go back to the past and save his mother.
The logistics of it all were more than a little confusing, and there was a lot of science-y talk thrown around...mostly by Dr. Stein (Victor Garber). Basically, Barry needs to run at mach 2 inside the particle accelerator pipeline and collide with a hydrogen particle, opening up a stable wormhole. Once he's inside, he focuses on the moment he wants to go to, and using the speed force, he'll appear there. Once he saves his mother, he'll come back, and Eobard will get to go to his own time in the future, but Ronnie (Robbie Amell) needs to build a "time machine" for him to sit inside when he does since his powers are so unstable. Phew. Got that? Good, because here's where it gets really confusing.
If Barry does go back in time and save his mother, he might change literally everything he knows about his life today, creating an alternate timeline where no one remembers the life they all lead now. He'll lose Joe (Jesse L. Martin) as a father since his own dad will never go to prison for his mother's murder. That means he'll never live with Iris, losing his close friendship with her. He might never meet the S.T.A.R. Labs team.
And here's where it gets really tricky: if he doesn't run fast enough to collide with the hydrogen particle in the accelerator, he'll die. Or the explosion from colliding with the particle could create a singularity—aka a black hole, swallowing up Central City and possibly the whole world. Barry will only have 1:52 in the past before that happens. So many things could go wrong!
Barry ends up deciding to do it despite all the factors that could go wrong, and he successfully goes back to that fateful night in the past. He waits until the Barry from the far future saves his younger self and father from the Reverse Flash, but before he can run into the room and save his mother from Eobard's knife, the future Barry comes back and motions for him to stop, essentially telling him to let his mother die! What?!
We don't know why future Barry stops him, but Barry knows to trust his future self—so he cries while listening to Eobard stab his mother in the heart. This scene broke us into a million pieces. Barry stays with his mom in her final moments, telling her who he is and letting her know that he and his dad are okay in the future without her, and she dies in his arms. He failed in the one thing he's been trying to accomplish his entire life. So. Many. Tears.
Barry, incredibly upset, comes back through the wormhole and smashes Eobard's time machine, trapping him in the present since Barry didn't get his end of the bargain. Pissed off that his way home was once again destroyed, Eobard attacks Barry and threatens to kill him and everyone he loves...and that's when Eddie makes his move.
Eddie successfully stops Eobard and erases him from time (dying in the process), but something goes wrong with the wormhole and it opens again...and it starts to swallow up Central City. The episode ends with Barry running up a side of a tall building, trying to run fast enough in the other direction to stop it. Talk about a cliffhanger! And those special effects? So. Freaking. Epic.
But that's not all that happened during the insanely crazy finale. Here's all the other moments from "Fast Enough" that had us totally geeking out:
- The Vibe is born! When Eobard was still trapped in his cell, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) confronted him about how he knows that in an alternate timeline, "Wells" kills him. That's when Wells realizes something he suspected for a long time: the reason Cisco can remember the alternate timeline is because he was affected by the particle accelerator that night and is a metahuman himself! "A great and honorable future" awaits Cisco now according to Eobard, and he wants his former protege to remember who gave him that, and that it "was given out of love." Cisco is not happy to hear that.
- With so much heartbreak and death in the episode, we can't forget the one moment of pure joy: a wedding! That's right, somehow The Flash managed to squeeze in some nuptials during all the chaos. Ronnie and Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) decide to finally get married, and since Dr. Stein is a rabbi, he marries them right outside S.T.A.R. Labs. It's short, it's sweet, and we're going to be replaying this scene on a loop all summer long.
- Right before Eobard tried to get back to his own time, a certain helmet came flying out of the wormhole. Did you catch that, DC Comics fans?! All that plus a Rip Hunter name drop? Our geek hearts are literally bursting at the seams.
- In the speed force, we also got glimpses of the Legends of Tomorrow (!) and Killer Frost (!!), and on the streets of Central City we see Hawkgirl (Ciara Renée)!!! Ah! This is just an embarrassment of riches.
Is it fall yet?!