In ‘The Flash’ recap, Savitar returns to haunt Barry before unleashing his ultimate plan to escape the Speed Force….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
‘The Flash’ has consistently been great but the latest episode titled ‘The Wrath of Savitar’ was by far the best of the season and perhaps one of the top hours the show has ever produced.
It’s been a tumultuous season for Barry and Team Flash as they try to change the future to prevent Iris West from dying at the hands of Savitar — the God of Speed — while also preparing for his inevitable return.
While Barry has been consumed with changing the future to stop Iris from being killed, he failed to address the even bigger problem which was Savitar making his return to their timeline after he threw the Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force, thus vanquishing him to the prison where he’s been trapped for many, many years.
If Barry truly stopped Savitar’s conduit from existing on Earth, how is it that he returns?
Well Savitar’s plan was executed with maniacal genius in the latest episode not to mention the heartbreaking reality of Barry’s long line of poor choices possibly costing him the woman he loves. All told, this was a tremendous episode of ‘The Flash’.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of ‘The Flash’ titled ‘The Wrath of Savitar’…
Visions of the Future
In what becomes a very bleak episode in the end, ‘The Flash’ starts off with a celebration as Barry and Iris share the big news with everybody that they are engaged to be married. Everybody is happy for the young couple but Joe is still a little taken back because Barry didn’t even bother asking for his permission as a tradition before proposing marriage. Barry plays it off that it was a spur of the moment decision and he knew Joe would give his blessing, but as we find out later there was much more to this proposal than what we first suspected.
The meeting is broken up by a four-alarm fire across town, which puts Barry and Wally into action to save the day.
On the way to vanquish the fire, Wally is confronted by Savitar, who savagely beats him up and tosses him around like a rag doll but when Barry runs back to help, he doesn’t see anything but a “Fight Club” like throw down with only one person visible to him.
After Savitar disappears again, Wally finally comes clean to Barry and the rest of the team of the visions he’s been experiencing for the past week. This news enrages Barry, who believes any information about Savitar’s return could be invaluable to saving Iris’ life and he decides to exile Wally from the group so long as these visions are happening.
The way Barry sees it, Savitar could be seeing them through Wally’s eyes or some other type of sorcery so until they figure this out, he can’t trust Kid Flash to have a role in the team.
With Savitar now haunting Wally, Barry decides the only way to get answers is to go directly to the source. That means hooking Julian up to the machine that will allow him to serve as the voice of Savitar when they connect to him through whatever prison he’s currently trapped. Julian has no desire to become Savitar’s puppet again but for the good of the team he agrees to allow it to happen.
Once Julian makes the connection, Savitar comes through loud and clear with several threats as well as a few new revelations.
Savitar taunts the group with several more vague bits of information including that his thirst for revenge is fueled by Team Flash taking everything from him and in his mind it’s Barry who is the big bad. More importantly, Savitar also says that Barry will meet him soon and he’ll be present when he transforms into the creature he is today, meaning this ‘God of Speed’ is still just a man before he becomes a monster.
Savitar also tells Barry that ultimately only one of them can survive and now it’s time for him to suffer. Finally, Savitar says that his freedom is closer than ever before and he only needs one more piece of the puzzle to break loose of his shackles.
At that point, Barry’s heard enough and decides he’s going to get answers another way so Cisco helps him track down one of Savitar’s acolytes, who is currently worshiping a statue he’s built to the God of Speed. When Barry arrives to confront him, he finds the box where the Philosopher’s Stone once sat, which leads him to believe that somehow the object has been freed from the Speed Force, which is allowing Savitar to crossover again.
The Awful Truth
Wally feels more alone now than ever before and all he wants to do is help to save his sister’s life. Barry convinced him that he had to be the fastest man alive to stop Savitar from killing her but now he’s been cut out of the circle after seeing visions of the creature responsible for Iris’ death.
With his options limited, Wally asks Cisco to vibe him into the future so he can see what Savitar does to Iris while hopefully seeing if he can find any clues during that sequence of events. Cisco tries to warn him of the trauma that he will endure seeing his sister murdered, but Wally believes this is the only way he can help.
When they vibe back to the moment where Iris is killed, Wally watches in horror as Savitar plunges his dagger through her heart and Barry is powerless to stop him. Wally races over to her side as Barry cradles Iris in his arms but that’s when he notices something that sends him into a blind rage.
Wally returns from the vibe experience and confronts Barry with the awful truth.
In his visit to the future, Wally noticed that Iris wasn’t wearing an engagement ring on her finger, which means Barry didn’t propose to her out of love — he did it in an attempt to alter fate and hopefully keep her alive. Iris is devastated and while she understand that Barry had the best of intentions, he still took something so precious and managed to ruin it by lying to her.
Later, Iris confronts Barry about his real intentions and how she’s now torn on their future together. Iris wants to be Barry’s wife because they are in love with each other and want to spend their lives together. She doesn’t want to just be something that Barry is obsessed to protect and obligated to save for the rest of eternity. It feels more and more like there’s a split coming between Barry and Iris.
Meanwhile back at STAR Labs, Caitlin has been keeping a secret of her own.
Before Barry threw the Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force, she broke off a piece and has been keeping it for herself. The hope was that somehow they could figure a way to use the stone to take away her powers as Killer Frost.
As much as it hurts to find out that Caitlin lied and possibly allowed Savitar a conduit back to this plane of existence, it might also be a way to stop him. Savitar needs the entire Philosopher’s Stone to make his return and now they have a piece that will be able to stop him.
A Fate Worse Than Death
As much as Julian despises allowing his body to serve as Savitar’s voice, he allows the team to hook him up to the machine one more time in hopes of tracking down the location where Barry trapped him in the future. The brief confrontation yields positive results except for one problem — the tracking location says that Savitar is in Central City — as in all of it.
It’s a mystery the team can’t quite solve.
Back at the West house, Wally is tortured by his inability to save Iris while still seeing visions of Savitar. While Jessie tries to comfort him, Wally suddenly sees a vision of his dead mother that taunts him before she transforms into Savitar. The altercation leads Wally to decide that it’s time to stop Savitar from escaping and he’s going to finish the job once and for all.
Barry and the team figure out that he must plan on throwing the remaining portion of the Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force. Unfortunately, Barry has also figured out through his conversation with Iris about ‘eternity’ that he must have trapped Savitar in a place where he could never escape no matter the time or space — that means he’s been locked inside the Speed Force this entire time.
Throwing the Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force was exactly what Savitar wanted and now he’s forced Wally into stealing the last remaining piece while convincing him that’s the only way to trap him there forever. In reality, Savitar needs that last piece to finally break free of Barry’s eternal prison.
Barry and the team soon discover that the Philosopher’s Stone is missing and a moment later they find that Wally has been racing around town in an effort to work up enough speed to open a conduit into the Speed Force.
The visions of Savitar continue taunting him until Wally finally opens a breech and tosses the stone inside just before Barry can arrive to stop him. As soon as the stone goes into the Speed Force, Wally is pulled towards the breech like a tractor beam and a moment later his costume is ripped apart and he’s absorbed into the portal. A second later, Savitar comes crawling out.
The God of Speed has been freed.
Savitar then tells Barry the entirety of his evil plan this entire season. Barry creating Flashpoint gave Savitar the opening he needed to give Wally his powers and then played on his vanity to get faster and stronger — fast enough that he could eventually replace him inside the Speed Force where he’s been trapped for eternity. Once Savitar saw the opening to retrieve the remainder of the Philosopher’s Stone along with Wally’s own hubris to save Iris himself, he was able to trap him in the Speed Force while freeing himself simultaneously.
Barry is enraged, especially after Savitar taunts him yet again about someone else he couldn’t save.
The two speedsters engage in a battle and for the first time, Barry seems to be getting the upper hand. He tries desperately to rip Savitar’s mask off of him so he can discover his true identity but to no avail. Instead, Savitar turns the tables and stabs Barry with one of the implements on his costume. Barry is able to vibrate through the metal and break off part of Savitar’s arm, which forces him to run away.
Back at STAR Labs, the team removes the giant piece of metal from Barry’s shoulder. With Iris standing over him, Barry looks down and sees that she’s no longer wearing his engagement ring. As a tear rolls down his cheek, Barry realizes that in his desperation to save Iris he may have managed to lose the woman he loves and now he’s also lost Wally to the Speed Force while Savitar has been freed.
Joe implores Barry to find a way to get Wally back and as he lays on the bed recovering from his wounds, he begins to realize that his own fear led to everything that’s happened. The fear of losing Iris forced Barry into making some disastrous decisions and he’s still no closer to stopping Savitar from killing her in the end.
And finally it appears that part of Savitar’s prophecy has been fulfilled — or at least that’s the way it seems.
One shall betray them — Caitlin with the Philosopher’s Stone or is it someone else?
One shall suffer a fate worse than death — is that Wally being thrown into eternal damnation in the Speed Force?
One shall fall — and Iris is still marked for death.
‘The Flash’ returns next Tuesday night at 8pm ET on the CW.
