Last night brought fans of The Flash the moment they’d been waiting an entire season to see: The unmasking of Savitar. And despite cast and crew saying we’d all be surprised when the big reveal came, it turned out that Barry Allen, pretty much everybody’s prime suspect, had been underneath that armor the entire time.
Well, it wasn’t exactly the Barry Allen that we know and love, but rather, a version of him from the future that has snapped for some reason. In the closing minutes of “I Know Who You Are,” the Scarlet Speedster finally put two and two together, recalling choice statements made by the self-proclaimed God of Speed, such as those having to do with saying he created himself. Another doozy was what many probably interpreted as “I’m the future, Flash,” when he was, in fact, saying, “I’m the Future Flash.” Obviously, the producers were taking some inspiration from the Future Flash storyline that took place in the comics a few years back.
Still, we wonder why any version of Barry would go on such a rampage and kill Iris West. According to executive producer Andrew Kreisberg, answers are on the way:
“You get that in the next episode, and the mystery is ongoing, but obviously Savitar is a version of Barry Allen, a heavily scarred version.”
But unlike the Reverse-Flash or Zoom, both of whom Barry failed to understand the motivations of, it looks like Savitar will come to be more transparent to him, as Kreisberg added:
“In an upcoming episode, when Barry is talking about Savitar, he says that so many of these bad guys that we’ve fought, I didn’t understand why they were doing what they were doing. They just seemed to be filled with so much hate and anger and did terrible things, I would look at them and be like, ‘Why are you doing this?’ But when Barry looks at Savitar, he sees it and he kind of understands it.”
The Flash airs on Tuesday nights on The CW.