A couple of episodes ago, in "The Runaway Dinosaur," I marveled at the fact that Grant Gustin could nail the emotional scenes with his Speed Force-represented mother Nora. It worked then because the whole combination of story, music, and both actors drawing from a well-spring of emotion made it possible for viewers to at least feel something. But this season finale proved that Gustin can't seem to nail down the rage issues that Barry has in the wake of Zoom/Hunter Zolomon murdering his father in front of him. Barry's rage and anger and thirst for vengeance fueled at least half of the finale, and seemed to drag down the episode as long as he's mired in that spiral.

As I wrote in the review for "Invincible," the initial shock of Henry Allen's death registers as it should when the finale opens, and Barry's emotional storm carries everything through to the title card. Then, somehow, it all starts collapsing. As Team Flash has been doing all season long, the focus turns towards once again defeating Zoom. This time, the effort should render him ineffective permanently. Only, Zoom gave Barry the oddest possible way to settle things between them: A race between the two of them in order to determine who is the fastest man alive. If Barry wins, Zoom stops attacking Earth-1. If Zoom wins, well, that means the end of the world.

I haven't read many of the Flash comics, but apparently, this was often times how conflicts between the Flash and any number of his enemies was settled. In regards to how this fits with a modern television show, it feels very anti-climactic, and the finale tries to oversell it by laying out the stakes so specifically. There's a lot of hand-holding of the viewing audience in this finale, dumbed down by multiple characters either over-explaining things (I'm still unclear after this episode as to the mechanics of how the time remnants work), or narrating the action as it's happening. Once again, the old adage of "show, don't tell" applies. The bigger context for the race is revealed to surround something called a "Magnetar" that Zoom (or perhaps Black Siren) stole from Mercury Labs, presumably before it was destroyed in "Invincible." The Magnetar basically functions as a big electromagnetic pulse for the multi-verse, as Zoom oddly aims to destroy every one of the Earths in the multi-verse but Earth-1. So, in effect, Cisco's vision of Earth-2 crumbling doesn't matter.

It's these kinds of narrative short-cuts and eliminations that prove to be so endlessly frustrating about the finale. Everything feels telegraphed. Team Flash comes up with a needlessly complicated plan to stun and trap Zoom in Earth-2 permanently, and you just know from the get-go that it will go wrong. Especially since they made the secretly democratic decision to completely shut out Barry from the plan by knocking him out and placing him in a Pipeline cell in order to deal with his rage issues in the wake of his father's murder. The plan goes off without a hitch, the inclusion of a holographic Caitlin being one of the episode's few nice touches, and then it doesn't when Zoom takes Joe into the Earth-2 vortex with him. Team Flash is left without a solution until Wally up and decides to break Barry out of the Pipeline in order to get Joe back.

So you can predict what happens next. Zoom uses Barry's speed during the foot race to power the Magnetar and get closer to destroying the multi-verse. During the race, Barry has somehow learned how to create a time remnant of himself to allow his actual self to fight Zoom and rescue Team Flash from its current predicament. The time remnant is sacrificed in the Magnetar to ensure its destruction, thus foiling Zoom's plan. The Zoom story arc, which started out so promising then degenerating into a complete mess, is now over.

The resolution of the season lies in finally revealing who the Man in the Iron Mask is: Jay Garrick from Earth-3, who just happens to look exactly like Henry Allen on Earth-1. The reveal is the very definition of anti-climactic because so many of the show's fans have speculated on the man's identity after his first appearance that all the surprise has evaporated by now. The breadcrumbs were put out beforehand with Henry Allen's revelation that Garrick was his mother's maiden name.  And with the death of Henry Allen, the fact that Jay Garrick looks exactly like him keeps actor John Wesley Shipp on the show, only now, he's another Flash instead of Barry's father.

Barry doesn't really have any connection to this version of Jay Garrick. He's left all alone, which seems to be the impetus for his decision to go back in time to his mother's murder and changing the past by killing the Reverse-Flash. The Barry Allen who witnessed all of this from last season's finale disappears due to the change. What Barry does fundamentally changes the show, essentially eliminating all of the events of the second season, and invalidates what happened in last season's finale. Considering what a powerhouse emotional finale that was, I have a multitude of issues with what Barry decided to do here. We don't get to see what the ripple effect of this decision is on the timeline, but instead of generating some excitement over that prospect, it only raises more questions than it does answers. That seems to be a fitting cap to a second season that has been all over the map in terms of quality.