Of all the series in the Arrowverse, The Flash is probably the one that causes the most headaches. That’s not because it’s bad, of course. It’s just… complicated.
Along with time-travel shenanigans like in companion series Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash is the series that most concerns itself with the many-Earths concept in the shared universe. Each of these ideas on its own is enough to cause some pain. But Flash throws them all together and adds in some wacky Speedster powers for good measure. And this season’s finale, “Legacy,” was no exception.
Here are some of the moments from this episode that took us a minute to understand.
The E-wrong-gated Man
“Legacy” starts out where the last episode ended, with Ralph Dibny warning Barry not to destroy Cicada’s power-sapping dagger. And in his desperation, he decides to take one for the timeline, throwing his stretchy body into the path of the Mirror Gun projectile that will destroy the weapon.
What happens next makes no sense to anyone. And that’s not just the audience; Team Flash itself has no idea what happens to Ralph when he takes this bullet. The Mirror Gun is supposed to destroy an object at the atomic level, but Ralph’s elasticized cells just kind of lump up or turn inside out or something. He goes back to normal once he regains consciousness, but in the meantime, it’s confusing for everybody.
Getting Their Incepti-on
One of Team Flash’s many plans to stop Cicada this season involves entering the mind of comatose child Grace Gibbons to help her deal with her anger against metahumans before she wakes up and becomes a murderer. The first time they tried this, in the episode called “Memorabilia,” they needed a machine. But in “Legacy,” Nora just kinda hops into the kid’s brain.
This is because her earlier experience wandering around in Grace’s mind palace left the two with a psychic link, and that’s actually the least confusing part of this sequence. Once Nora gets in there, she has to face off with two versions of Grace’s uncle (the first Cicada) to convince the poor kid that what she needs to do is wake up and receive an injection that will take away her powers. It was a lot happening at once and even more to keep track of.
The Four-Speedster Chase
Near the end of “Legacy,” Team Flash solves their Cicada problem and finds themselves with an Eobard Thawne problem instead. The details of how that happens deserve their own entry, but one moment in the ensuing showdown broke reality. That was when Reverse Flash split himself into two different people so that he could have simultaneous chases with both Flash and XS.
In this sequence, Thawne is using one of two brain-shattering speedster powers. One involves entering the Speed Force to pull another version of himself out of a different timeline so that it could help him outrun the other speedsters. This is called a “time remnant,” and it is by far the most complicated concept in the whole series.
He probably used the more simple, but no less mind-melting ability, however: a speed mirage. What this means is that he’s moving so fast that he appears to be in two places at once. The two Thawnes we see are just one Thawne running so quickly back and forth between the two races he’s involved in that it looks like two different people.
Considering the two Reverse Flashes wiggle back into one body at the end, the speed mirage is the more likely possibility. But it’s not a good idea to think about either of them for too long.
Eobard Thawne’s Entire Plan
Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash, is an evil genius, criminal mastermind, and mad scientist. That’s a lot to fit into a yellow-and-red suit, but he manages. His mastery of the Speed Force gives him the knowledge and ability he needs to do weird stuff like summon speed mirages and time remnants.
As we learned this season, it has also made him better at manipulating timelines than anyone else in the multiverse. He proved it this year by coming up with a plan so complicated that it took decades to carry out and had backups for its backups.
The fine details are too much to go into, but Thawne orchestrated an escape from his own execution by ensuring that a different person became Cicada and that Team Flash destroyed the villain’s dagger. And to make sure he could get away, he even managed to build in a distraction by tricking the heroes into creating a future in which Nora West-Allen was never born so he could get away while they were dealing with her fading out of existence.
The fact that this plan even existed, let alone worked perfectly, is pure migraine fuel. But that’s most of the fun on The Flash.
