On Season 3 Episode 15 of The Flash, titled The Wrath of Savitar, Wally is haunted by Savitar, and Barry and Iris announce their engagement! Check out Josh’s full recap, along with our thoughts on the episode!
- His thoughts on The Wrath of Savitar, Episode 315 of The Flash
- Her thoughts on The Flash, Season 3 Episode 15: The Wrath of Savitar
On the latest episode of The Flash Barry is continuing to train Wally on getting faster, now setting up a course mimicking the situation of Iris’s death. Wally seems to be able to make the speed now, getting to Iris just quick enough to stop Savitar. Things are looking good for the team until Wally sees him — Savitar. Savitar appears to Wally, but to everyone else, he appears to be invisible.
Another secret that comes out this week is Barry’s marriage proposal to Iris. Team Flash is happy for the two, but Joe has a bit of hesitation. He congratulates them, but then pulls Barry aside for a talk. Joe asks Barry why he didn’t ask for his permission to marry his daughter, and Barry played it off as a spur of the moment thing. Joe clearly is upset about this.
But it’s time for the heroes to be heroes again, as Barry and Wally are told there is a fire that needs to be stopped. Apparently Jesse can’t be bothered with it though, as she is busy being enamored with Iris’s engagement ring. (Really, they had to write that into the story? No time for heroics when you have jewelry to examine!)
On the way to the fire, invisible Savitar hits Wally again. Barry doesn’t understand what is going on until Wally explains that he is seeing Savitar. Back at STAR Labs, the team wants to know how long Wally has been having these visions, and it turns out he has had them for a week. Barry is not happy about hearing this and “benches” Wally, worried that Savitar could be spying on the team. Wally then gets fired up himself. Team Flash is not doing so hot right now.
Barry decides they need to figure out what Savitar’s plan is. Despite Julian’s protests, Julian eventually gives in to allowing Savitar to speak through him again. Savitar spouts a lot of stuff about how he is making his return soon, as he is trapped in the future, and that Barry won’t be able to stop it.
Elsewhere at STAR Labs, Wally is worried he won’t be able to save Iris, so he asks Cisco to vibe him in to the fateful scene. Cisco refuses at first, telling him its not a good idea, but Wally insists. He sees Iris’s death, which certainly hurts, but he also notices something else—that Iris doesn’t have an engagement ring. Wally then puts some pieces together and confronts Barry.
Yelling at Barry, he accuses him of only asking Iris to marry him as a means to change the future. Barry tries to downplay it at first, but eventually admits it was a known by-product of his asking her.
Another team member is hiding something too—a portion of the Philosopher’s Stone. Caitlin tells Julian, who gets pretty mad about it. She reveals she only did it to try to cure her own powers. But she is worried she will be the one to betray the team, as Savitar has said would happen.
Meanwhile, Iris and Barry talk about their situation, and Iris says she doesn’t want to be the damsel in distress to Barry and wants to be his wife.
Barry then heads to STAR Labs, realizing that his future self must have trapped Savitar in the Speed Force, which means that the Philosopher’s Stone is with him — which is bad. The good news is that Caitlin kept a portion of it, right? Well turns out Wally decided to take it…and toss it into the Speed Force, thinking it would stop Savitar from returning. Wally is egged on by visions of his mother and Savitar, forcing him to this situation, so he does the deed—tossing the piece in. Savitar is released, and worse, Wally is sucked into the Speed Force, taking Savitar’s place. Barry, meanwhile, shows up just in time to see Wally’s being sucked into the Speed Force.
Barry then confronts Savitar, and while Barry lands some good blows, Savitar stabs Barry with one of his arm-blades. It breaks off, and Barry is hurt pretty badly. Barry gets back to STAR Labs, and the team works to help him, yanking out the metal shard. The team is pretty solemn, and Cisco decides it is best to see if he can figure out how to use Savitar’s blade to stop Savitar. The rest of the team slowly walks away, leaving Barry alone.
His Thoughts on The Flash, Season 3 Episode 15: The Wrath of Savitar
I have been pretty “meh” about The Flash lately. I feel like the team members, especially Barry, are making some really terrible mistakes that really seems like it is coming from lack of creativity when writing the stories. I am sure it is very difficult to come up with so many episodes of a season, and come up with flawless episodes every time, but I just really can’t get into the episodes lately. This episode does a little bit better job with this though, with at least plausible reasons as to the mistakes the team is making (with the exception of Barry’s proposal to Iris — really Barry? You thought that would change the future enough to save Iris?)
Caitlin’s theft of the Philosopher’s Stone kind of makes sense to me—her Killer Frost alter ego has seemingly permeated through to Caitlin’s personality. I mean, if I have to accept that Killer Frost’s powers come with a side of bad-attitude Caitlin, then I have to accept that Caitlin is going to turn a little bad when it comes to trying to figure out how to keep Frost at bay. It kind of makes sense I guess.
I also accept Wally’s tossing of the Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force. He is being mentally tormented not only by Savitar, with images of his mother, but by his own team. Barry is pressuring him to get faster to save Iris, so Wally does what he thinks is the best option to save the world. It is a bit annoying that he doesn’t run it by the team first, but I can see his motives.
I really felt for Joe and Wally when Wally was sucked into the Speed Force. That looked really tough, and for Joe, his scene where he is asking Barry to save Wally was heart breaking. I also thought Barry’s visceral fight with Savitar was pretty good as well, for TV standards. I really felt for Barry in this moment, wanting to take down Savitar, but being unable to.
I am wondering what the lasting effects on Wally will be once he is saved from he Speed Force. Savitar said he was drive into the brink of insanity, so I am wondering if this is going to happen to Wally as well. Barry has been to the Speed Force, and he seemed to be fine there, but he wasn’t there long, and perhaps Wally won’t get the same warm greeting that Barry did. We will have to see next episode, as it looks like Barry might be heading into the Speed Force.
Her Thoughts on The Flash, Season 3 Episode 15: The Wrath of Savitar
I knew there was something wrong with Barry’s proposal. (I mean, other than the fact that he is essentially proposing to his sister, but I won’t go into that yet again, since I’ve already beaten that dead horse.) It was odd that the last episode ended with him proposing, but before we got to see her answer. This suggested that the answer might actually be something other than “yes.” At that point, I speculated that maybe her answer would not be the obvious “yes” that we might have thought it would be, and would rather be a “no” because she thought he was only proposing because of her impending death by Savitar’s hands. So, when this episode skipped ahead to Barry and Iris announcing their engagement to the STAR Labs team, for Barry/Iris shippers, I thought it was kind of a disappointment that they didn’t get to see the full scene of Iris accepting Barry’s proposal and the subsequent celebration and such. I suppose this was sign #2 that something was off.
Although it turned out that I wasn’t exactly right, I was on the right track. Barry’s motive for proposing was essentially to change the future, in hopes of preventing Iris’s death. How ironic that by doing so, upon Iris finding out, he only solidified Iris not wearing the ring, and therefore matching the scene in the flash forward. This seems to be employing the other time travel theory, that you can’t change things, and that by trying to change things, you only make things end up as they were destined to. The show needs to make up its mind which theory it wants to use – can you change things or can’t you? And we’ve already seen things change. This could just be a coincidence though.
But anyway, let’s talk about Wally. I feel so bad for him. He thought he was doing the right thing, and from all the facts that we knew up until this episode, his actions would have been the smart thing to do, and would have saved everyone. But then we randomly got some new information, that Wally happened to not be privy to, and everything was ruined and Savitar was able to escape. Hopefully we’ll be able to get Wally back before the big showdown with Savitar, so that he can save Iris.
Scenes from The Flash, Season 3 Episode 16: Into the Speed Force
Preview of Season 3 Episode 16 of The Flash
