In The Flash recap for the season 2 finale, Barry races Zoom to find out who is the fastest man alive and the man in the iron mask is revealed…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
The season two finale of The Flash promised to invoke a lot of tears and more than a few heartbreaking moments and the show actually ended up over delivering with a phenomenal final episode that wrapped up several stories while leaving us all on the edge of our seats with an incredible cliffhanger.
At the end of last week’s episode, Zoom’s obsession to prove Barry really was only one bad day away from becoming him, he ended up killing Henry Allen in front of his son just like Hunter Zolomon experienced when he was a kid back on Earth-2.
The trauma of that event was supposed to unlock the darkness inside Barry, but really Zoom had a much more nefarious plan concocted and killing Henry Allen was actually a catalyst to force his son into the race of his life.
A race no one imagined he could win.
With that said, let’s recap The Flash season 2 finale titled “The Race of His Life”
Almost Ready
In the immediate aftermath of the death of his father, Barry goes after Zoom and for once it looks like he’s catching up with him except for one problem — it appears Zoom has mastered the art of time traveling and during his run, he’s able to create a time remnant that follows him as he looks to beat Barry with his speed.
When Barry finally catches up, he unleashes a beat down on Zoom but just when it looks like he’s about to kill his arch nemesis, the second Zoom shows up and does the work for him. Zoom kills his own time remnant and then tells Barry that he’s almost ready for what comes next.
At Henry’s funeral, Barry can’t even muster the words to send his father off and he’s still struggling with loss of another parent. Iris attempts to console him, but all the joy and levity that Barry found after coming face-to-face with the Speed Force a few weeks back has been drained and he’s left feeling nothing but misery.
Just then, Zoom makes his presence felt at the wake for Barry’s father and he says he’s given him enough time to grieve because now they need to move onto their final confrontation.
Zoom wants to race Barry to find out who really is the fastest man alive — if Barry goes through with it, he has a chance to win and take out the villain from Earth-2. There’s also another option — if Barry refuses to race, Zoom will continue to target the people closest to him until everyone he loves is dead and buried right next to his father.
It’s Not Your Fight
An enraged Barry is ready to risk everything to face Zoom in the ultimate race, but his friends and family are convinced that he’s not ready. Actually, everybody is quite positive that if Barry races Zoom right now he will lose.
To make matters worse, Wells and the rest of the team discover Zoom’s true motive by making Barry race him. He’s stolen a modified weapon from Mercury Labs that can be powered up by the electricity produced from speedsters like Barry and Zoom. With enough energy and modifications, the weapon could be used to destroy the entire multi-verse.
That image describes perfectly the visions that Cisco has been having for the past few days where he sees Earth-2 getting ripped apart from the inside out. Zoom told Caitlin that he already conquered worlds — now he’s out to destroy them and this is exactly what he was talking about.
With so much on the line and Barry at an emotionally charged state where he’s so focused on vengeance instead of defeating Zoom, Joe and the others are forced to move against him. They end up tranquilizing Barry and locking him in a cell to keep him from racing Zoom and powering up the weapon.
The team decides they will face Zoom once and for all and everybody agrees that no matter what happens, this saga ends tonight.
So they concoct a plan that involves Caitlin luring Zoom into a trap where she will feign as if she’s coming back to him and while he’s distracted, Joe and Harry will strike him with tranquilizers and send him back through the portal to Earth-2 where he will be locked once and for all.
But seeing as many good plans tend to fail, it all works to perfection until Joe’s tranquilizer gun jams and he’s forced to grab the darts and personally stab Zoom with them to knock him unconscious. Joe gets the job done as Cisco opens the portal but there’s one big problem — on his way through, Zoom grabs Joe and they are both transported to the other world.
This was a risk that the team took at the very beginning of this plan and as much as it pains them, Harry, Cisco, Caitlin and even Iris agree that this is how it will end. Joe will stay locked on Earth-2 with Zoom while they dismantle the weapon that could destroy the world.
What they don’t count on, however, is Wally finding out that everybody has given up on his father so he personally frees Barry from his cell after being welcomed onto the team after learning his step brother’s secret. Wally isn’t ready to give up on Joe because he never agreed to this plan in the first place. Barry is clearly furious but he knows now that he has to stay focused or Joe will never come home again.
So with Cisco’s help, Barry “vibes” into Earth-2 and accepts Zoom’s challenge.
They will race one last time — if Barry wins, Zoom releases Joe unharmed and their rivalry ends. If Zoom wins, he gains the power he needs to charge the weapon that will destroy the multi-verse and leave only one world left standing — our Earth.
The Race
Before Zoom travels back to Earth-1 with Joe, he tells his prisoner about the Man in the Iron Mask. It seems this was another speedster, who he kidnapped from Earth-3 in an attempt to steal his powers after the Velocity-9 he used to super charge himself ended up setting off a chain reaction in his own body that would eventually kill him. Unfortunately, Zoom couldn’t steal his powers so he just kept him in a cell as a prisoner.
As far as his identity, Zoom reveals that the man behind the mask is none other than Jay Garrick — the real Jay Garrick from Earth-3. Zoom stole his identity and created his own hero on Earth-2 so he could play both savior and villain at the same time.
Following that revelation, Zoom travels back to Earth-1 with Joe in tow so he can finally race Barry around the weapon. Zoom tells Barry it will take them about 500 revolutions to charge the weapon so he has that long to catch him or the multi-verse will be destroyed.
Once the race starts, Barry struggles to catch up to Zoom and the weapon starts to charge but in the middle of their battle, a funny thing happens — Barry creates his own time remnant just like Zoom did at the beginning of the episode!
Barry’s time remnant ends up saving Joe and reversing the polarity on the weapon, which stops the explosion from happening and destroying the multi-verse. Barry finally fights Zoom after he realizes that his weapon has been stopped and the two of them engage in a speed-filled battle of the ages.
Barry gains the upper hand and it looks like he’s about to kill Zoom when he decides to let someone else do the work for him. The time reapers, who followed Barry to Earth-2 several episodes back — the creatures who work to stop speedsters from changing the space-time continuum — have come for the real person responsible for upsetting the balance in the universe. They snatch Zoom up and suck the life right back out of him before carrying him away to the netherworld.
Barry has won, Zoom is defeated and the day is saved.
Flashpoint
Back at the lab, Cisco and Harry work to remove the mask on the real Jay Garrick and when they reveal his true identity, Barry is beyond stunned.
Jay Garrick is actually Henry Allen’s doppleganger from Earth-3.
Remember, Henry told Barry that his mother’s maiden name was Garrick and in that world, he not only kept that moniker but he ended up becoming the Flash of that Earth. Barry struggles to look at him without seeing his father, but obviously none of this is Jay’s fault.
In the end, Jay decides that he needs to rejoin his world on Earth-3 so he gets a new Flash outfit — complete with the hat that Hunter made that never actually belonged to him previously — and with Harry’s help he’ll get back home again. You see, Harry is also leaving to return home to Earth-2 with his daughter Jesse after she insists that Earth-2 is where she needs to be, especially now that it’s safe.
Harry agrees and says his goodbyes to everybody at the lab before Jay runs all three of them back through the breach created by Cisco so they can return to Earth-2 and stay there once and for all.
Finally back at the house, Barry is still downtrodden after everything that’s happened. Iris attempts to reach out to him, but Barry can’t even face her right now after having his heart hollowed out of his chest with the death of his father. Barry says he needs to go away to find himself so he can eventually return to her and everybody else as a whole man again.
Before he leaves, Iris says that no matter where he goes and no matter how long he’s gone, when he comes back, she’ll be there waiting for him. The two of them exchange a long awaited kiss before professing their love for one another and then Barry races off into the night.
A moment later, Barry has crossed into the time stream once again and he’s back 15 years ago on the night that his mother was murdered. Instead of standing down, Barry jumps into the fray and actually stops Thawne from killing his mother. Barry tells his mother that she’s safe and will be all right and he even spots his time remnant from the last time he jumped through the continuum as he watches himself disappear.
Barry has now changed the moment that would eventually lead him to become The Flash. This mirrors a similar comic book storyline written by Geoff Johns called “Flashpoint” where Barry saves his mother but the consequences are beyond disastrous. When The Flash season 3 returns this fall, a whole new world will greet Barry Allen.
But who will be there waiting for him?
The Flash returns on CW this fall on Tuesday night’s at 8pm.
