CONSEQUENCES

Early in the season, we praised The Flash for doing a better job than the comics did of giving Barry a sense of responsibility for the events of "Flashpoint," and leaving him (and the universe of the show) with meaningful consequences of those actions.

As the season stretched on, that has remained true -- but with time travel, Caitlin taking on a separate personality, and a death last episode that almost nobody expects to remain in place, the one thing we'd like to see in the episode -- and the fallout to Savitar in general -- is a sense of real, meaningful consequences for the characters.

There's a popular fan theory that H.R. will have somehow found a way to replace Iris with himself, sacrificing himself to save her -- and if so, as much as we love having Tom Cavanagh around, our inclination is that maybe he shouldn't just be immediately replaced with another Harrison Wells from another universe again.

And far be it from us to ask The Flash to continue wallowing in darkness -- if anything, we'd like to see it brighten up after the bleak second half of the season -- but if Iris really is dead, we need serious fallout and even if she isn't, we need to address the fact that everyone who love her still saw that happen and if someone sacrificed themselves for her, Iris is not the kind of person who would have wanted that, or who would let it go lightly. Her farewell video to Barry was a sign of strength and maturity, and helped show what a hero Iris can be in her own right; to have that moment "taken away" is something that will require at least some acknowedgment.

...And yeah, Barry. He's Savitar (ish). That will need to be addressed, because at the end of the day it raises some serious questions about whether he is capable of handling the kind of power he possesses -- questions that The Dominators, the Legends, and others have been asking for a while now.

JUSTICE FOR SAVITAR

Hot take: Savitar isn't such a bad guy.

...No, I mean, he's obviously the series' villain, but while usually after 22 episodes of TV you feel like the villain probably deserves to die, this time around he's just kind of...pathetic.

His whole motivation is that he feels discarded, abandoned, and alone. Killing him would only feed into that, and given his incredibly powerful and time-traveling nature would potentially bring him back at a later time.

What does Savitar deserve? It's difficult to say, but the ideal way to handle him would seem to be for Barry to take control of his own future and destiny, creating a world where Savitar never exists to begin with.

There's something tragic and understandable about Savitar -- almost like Malcolm Thawne, Cobalt Blue, who was Barry's evil twin in the comics and who really only resented Barry because it was essentially the luck of the draw that divided the two and yet Barry's life was amazing and Thawne's was a nightmare.

KILLER FROST

It sounds like the Killer Frost story is going to be the one that hangs over until next season, but we're hoping that at some point we start to see at least movement on it.

Last week we got the idea that Caitlin was finally starting to peek through the Killer Frost personality a little bit, but it wasn't enough to stop her from literally standing firm while one of Caitlin's best friends was murdered.

That's got to have some fallout going forward, and assuming we ever get the real Caitlin back, it's going to be a situation where she has to reckon with what happened when she lost herself in Killer Frost.

ADDRESS THE TIMEY-WIMEY ISSUES

This season was all about time travel and its consequences, and no matter what happens, over the course of the season they will have seemingly done quite a bit of damage to the timestream.

Not, like Legends of Tomorrow levels of damage, but still.

Anyway, we're hoping that along the way we get some kind of explanation for how it's all been taken care of, and why we aren't just waiting on the other shoe to drop and carry on these problems in the fall.

Having a villain who is a time remnant whose very existence relies on Barry to do things he hasn't done yet, opens up a lot of opportunities for bringing the season to an unexpected close, but many of those possibilties are going to require some explanation so as not to induce time-travel headaches in the audience. Even things that have already happened are going to need some work!

SET UP NEXT SEASON

We've heard there will be a cliffhanger at the end of the season, so our dearest hope is that the episode manages not just to keep the suspense alive for whatever it's carrying over from this season but that it sets up the next adventure, as well.

There's been a lot of life pumped into the Savitar and Killer Frost storylines in the last few episodes of this season after a series of big revelations, but both of those threads has been going on a long time, and we hope that at least one of them get a permanent resolution on Tuesday.

(It seems likely Savitar will, since producers have said that next year the show won't rely on another speedster as its big bad.)

With nothing much to go on but that cryptic commitment -- "no speedsters" -- we're eager to find out what that means, and who other than a speedster could present a long-term threat to somebody with powers on Barry's level.

MORE THE FLASH

Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) lived a normal life as a perpetually tardy C.S.I. in the Central City Police Department. Barry's life changed forever when the S.T.A.R. Labs Particle Accelerator exploded, creating a dark-matter lightning storm that struck Barry, bestowing him with super-speed and making him the fastest man alive — The Flash. But when Barry used his extraordinary abilities to travel back in time and save his mother's life, he inadvertently created an alternate timeline known as Flashpoint; a phenomenon that gave birth to the villainous speed god known as Savitar, and changed the lives of Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) and Wally West (Keiyan Lonsdale) forever.

With the help of his adoptive father, Joe West (Jesse L. Martin), his lifelong best friend and love interest Iris West (Candice Patton), and his friends at S.T.A.R. Labs — Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes), C.S.I Julian Albert (Tom Felton), and an Earth-19 novelist named H.R. Wells (Tom Cavanaugh) — Barry continues to protect the people of Central City from the meta-humans that threaten it.

Based on the characters from DC, THE FLASH is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti ("Arrow," "Supergirl"), Andrew Kreisberg ("Arrow," "The Flash"), Sarah Schechter ("Arrow," "DC's Legends of Tomorrow") and Todd Helbing ("Black Sails").

More The Flash news:

• EP Teases Unexpected Flash, Savitar Showdown In Season Finale
• The CW Releases New Season Descriptions For Each DC TV Series
• The Flash: How The Series Can Move Forward From Here
• What Was The Song in The Flash: Infantino Street?

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