The Flash – The Race of His Life

• Title: The Flash – The Race of His Life
• wiki: link

Well, that was anticlimactic. Ending the show’s Second Season on one of the weakest episodes of the series, “The Race of His Life” concludes the season-long arc of Barry‘s (Grant Gustin) battle with Zoom (Teddy Sears) with… a race? Opening with the funeral of Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp), Barry’s friends and family decide to prevent Barry from taking revenge by imprisoning the Flash in the pipeline while they try to stop Zoom on their won. As you might expect, something goes wrong.

Eventually the Flash squares off with Zoom with the fate of the entire Multiverse at stake. Although the show pulls back on Barry actually killing the villain, the ending it offers concerning the super-villain’s gruesome end is darker than it needed to be for a show that seems determined to turn Barry Allen into a constantly-tortured soul whether or not that’s good for either the character or the show.

Season Two ends with a couple of reveals. The first offers the identity behind the man in the mask (which I had correctly guessed a few weeks back). In the show’s First Season The Flash teased us with him altering the past by saving his mother (Michelle Harrison). Choosing to revisit those events now, the show ends with Barry making a controversial choice which may or may not lead to Flaspoint-style changes for next season. A hero driven by hope and a desire to do good doesn’t need any more baggage in his past so the return of Barry’s mother might be a good thing, at least in the short term. As for Henry, the show’s writers give themselves an out to return Shipp to the series (and perhaps Legends of Tomorrow as well) whenever they need, regardless of Barry’s time alternations.