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Loved It? Hated It? What did you think of "Flash Back?"

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  • #16
    The time travel is to fragile to play it off how they did. I don't see how traveling back and seeing how every one acted would not have affected the timeline more then it did.

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    • #17
      I didn't mind this ep., despite its filler elements, and it was good to see evil Wells again. It was good to see Barry being a good friend with Iris, though this is tempered by my impression of Barry in S1 as being not that cool around Eddie/Iris -- especially when he still appeared back then to be sniffing around Iris long after she was in a relationship with Eddie. (I chalk that up to shipping side-effects in the show.) In this sense, he managed to look now like a better friend in S2.

      In a general sense, the ep was ok. Barry may have been motivated by his need to boost his speed to battle Zoom, but we also know the episode's "motivation" was also to explain how Barry ended up in National City.

      The Flash should be the one series in the DCTV universe where the consequences of messing with the timeline should be felt. There is a price, and that cost must be seen -- at least for me as a viewer. At least Barry is aware that there is a danger to it -- but he doesn't always act like it's a bigger issue than it really is.

      Having the idea of a 'time wraith' was, I'm assuming, their way of dumbing it down for the non-time-travel literate in the audience to show that: yes, bad things can happen when you choose to time-jump. But since the team managed to defeat the time wraith anyway, it does show that they sort of got away with timeline meddling (again!) with little present-day consequences. Barry has time-jumped and either by accident or intentionally altered events in those timelines, on more than one occasion, so the temporal payback on everyone should already be building.

      (But this is more big-picture thematic stuff that the series needs to be on top of. There should be more consequences, and significant ones going forward.)

      I think they know this stuff has to be done -- having the wraith at least acknowledges they're aware that temporal payback is an issue -- but the execution isn't always there.

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      • #18
        In thinking about the above comments and time travel, I'm curious. How do you think altering the timeline would manifest itself? It seems that most people expect the "Butterfly Effect" but isn't that stretching it a little bit?

        Let's look at it. How many people did Barry interact with? Thawne/Wells, Cisco, Caitlyn, Joe, Eddie, Younger self...I might be missing somebody but that was the extent from my memory. And with most of that he was just his regular self (albeit moody and distant). So what could he have changed?

        The most notable would have been Thawne/Wells. There was the most exposition there. But without Thawne knowing the actual future of his 15 year machniations, the line Barry fed him in the time vault could hold. What could Thawne really do to affect the outcome of season one. What would Barry's knowledge really gain him? Barry told him that he won. In his arrogance, I can see him accepting that and continuing with his plan. Remember he was smarter than any of the others on the team so.

        -Caitlyn was uneffected generally.
        --Cisco was told that Rathaway knew of Ronnie, which was going to happen anyway so perhaps this is what led Hartley to change in the future.
        ---Joe was told nothing of the future, neither was Eddie.
        ----There was no interaction with Iris.

        Apart from the Wraith (that no one had concrete knowledge of), time was not changed that much. No one was saved that should have died, and no one was killed that should have lived.

        Barry didn't go back to change the past to affect the future (a la saving his mother) but rather came back to gain knowledge. If you went back in time and read a book, then went back, there'd be no "time payback" because you really didn't do anything. In my view, it was the same for Barry.

        Hypothetically, there's a time traveler somewhere in the world right now. Is that affecting me? Highly doubtful.

        That being said, I liked the episode. It didn't move the story along that much but it was fun.

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        • #19
          Just on this particular episode, I am glad the time wraith was at the very least an acknowledgement within the series that Barry's more and more frequent time jumping should and even does have consequences. I feel these consequences should be more frequent, the more times Barry does time-jump (by accident or intentionally).

          Barry himself is aware of the risks, but not as worried about the blowback as perhaps he should be. And Cisco practically freaked out in the Arrow/Flash/LoT crossover eps when time-jumping Barry tried to tell him things from the everyone dies/Vandal Savage-total-victory timeline that people in the new timeline didn't know. So at the very least, Team Flash to varying degrees are aware it might become a problem for them. What they're actually planning to do about countering this risk is another question, one that they all need to answer at some point. For the moment, it looks like they are willing to take these risks without truly weighing what it might do space-time wise.

          I don't think every single timeline tweak or alteration is going to have a profound impact on what will happen in future. Some changes will matter little, if at all, in the big picture sense. What I do want to see on The Flash is that some of those alterations will have a lasting impact that can't so easily be re-done or reversed.

          It would actually be ironic if the most profound example of this -- Barry helping new timeline Team Arrow in the LoT crossovers to get a re-do in fighting Vandal Savage (the largest scale timeline reboot to date in this DCTV IMO), in order to reset the everyone dies(!)/Savage wins timeline that he had just escaped from -- was on Arrow, which for the longest time wanted to be more realistic and have nothing to do with superpowers, magic, etc. I actually expect and want there to be temporal blowback for Barry's actions from the crossovers. Everyone died in the original timeline, Barry helped to change this outcome in another timeline. Everyone got a second chance, in a sense betting against the cards the fates had dealt them. I'm fully expecting some form of blowback either in Flash or on Arrow.

          I'm not expecting every little timeline change to have a huge impact on all their futures -- and every change won't necessarily have an impact -- but I am expecting that some of those changes should have a lasting/permanent impact on different aspects of their futures. There should be consequences -- and more, considering the increased frequency Barry had jumped into different timelines. I see it as each change potentially causing an imbalance and it's more like the space-time continuum (or the fates/the gods, etc.) clinically exacting a price for each timeline alteration, so that the balance is restored.

          Barry can't be timeline jumping, injecting unknown or even forbidden knowledge/truths into the different Earths at will -- with little-to-no impact on future events. I'd find this to be unrealistic, if this were the case.

          I'm reasonably confident that it isn't the case on The Flash, but I'd still want to see more re: consequences. On Flash most of all, these consequences should be real and lasting.

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          • #20
            Originally posted by costas22
            JDBentz, you might have better luck with Berlanti. Kreisberg has left twitter for the time being.

            For the record, I agree with you. This episode *loosely* set up the crossover. Barry has the formula to create a tachyonic device, he tries it out and he ends up on Supergirl's Earth. I wasn't expecting anything more specific given that the crossover was a last minute decision.
            Except it WASN'T a last-minute decision; they made the decision to do it over Christmas.

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            • #21
              I thought it was a cool episode. but well Heartly be in more episodes..

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              • #22
                Originally posted by DigificWriter
                Except it WASN'T a last-minute decision; they made the decision to do it over Christmas.
                They were thinking about it for a while, but they couldn't make a decision until Supergirl got a full season. The crossover was announced in early February, which is probably when the final decision was made. At that point, I suspect the script for Flash Back had already been written.

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                • #23
                  Greg's comments about when they planned the crossover:
                  GREG BERLANTI: We always wanted to do it. From the day we cast Melissa [Benoist], the notion of her in scenes with Grant [Gustin], or someday maybe, in the best of all worlds, with Stephen [Amell], as well, it’s exciting to think of them on screen together. And there’s a similar tonality to the shows. But, a few things had to go right. We were introducing this notion of Earth-2 and the multi-verse on The Flash, and that had to work. We’ve always said, very openly, that The Flash and Arrow exist in a universe where there’s no Superman, or you would have heard about him. They would have had at least one conversation about him, and certainly Supergirl, as well. That was one thing.

                  And then, there was the notion that it’s two separate networks, so it’s more challenging, in that way, because it’s not so convenient. It’s two separate cities that they shoot in. We wanted [Supergirl] to work and stand on its own on CBS, and have its own audience. We thought we might wait until the second season, but after Christmas, we came back and were planning out the final third of the year and we thought we could do it. It felt like the right time for him to enter her world and help her out. So, it all came together. We went to all of the powers that be and said, “I know we indicated that maybe we’d wait a little longer, but we’d really like to do this now,” and everybody was very enthusiastic.

                  One of the things that really kept the flame and the torch for it alive was that a lot of journalists and the fans online wanted it. There was consistent enthusiasm, throughout the year, for the idea. Once everybody had a sense of how the shows worked independently and how they could possibly come together, that’s how it all happened. And then, there was the logistics of having to navigate Grant coming down, not just once but twice, right when he was in the heat of the season [in Vancouver]. Then, there was the construct of the episode itself.

                  You hope that you’re going to get more people watching these episodes, or that people will revisit the show. There’s so much for people to watch these days, so if you get a chance to have people tune back in who may have lost touch in the New Year or have been busy, you want to put your best foot forward. You also want to honor everybody’s time and commitment, and we were excited to do that. Grant and Melissa, and everybody in the whole cast, really delivered. It felt like Grant had been on the show before, when he showed up.

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                  • #24
                    Like I said, after Christmas, they "thought they could do it". Doesn't mean they figured out all the details at that point. Berlanti's comments indicate that it clearly took them a while to do so. And by the sounds of things, the construct of the episode and how it would tie to the Flash was the last detail they hashed out.

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                    • #25
                      I liked it overall but I really did expect there to be more of an impact on the timeline. Perhaps there will be more ramifications. Although maybe they are of the opinion that time has a way of correcting itself. Who knows. I was hoping for a more explicit reference to the Supergirl crossover, like Barry actually trying the tachyon device at the end. Maybe they will throw in a reference at the start of the next episode?

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                      • #26
                        I was thinking at the end Iris was going to think she was dating Barry from the timeline changes. That would be been awkward!

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