Last week on The Flash, fans were hit with a truly shocking resurrection when Eobard Thawne/Reverse Flash (Tom Cavanagh) was brought back to life when he literally burst through another version of himself — the heroic Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher). Of course, that resurrection came at the cost of Iris West-Allen’s (Candice Patton) life so heading into this week’s Season 8 finale, there was no way to guess who would survive the showdown between Team Flash and the Negative Forces. Indeed, there was a casualty in the fight for, well, everything — and they are really and truly dead.
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Warning: spoilers for the Season 8 finale of The Flash, “Negative, Part Two”, beyond this point.
The episode picked up right where last week left off. Iris had just died and disappeared into energy that prompted the resurrection of Thawne — which also prompted the death of Eobard in the process. After some taunting by Thawne, who himself then disappeared, Barry was prepared to settle the score once and for all and everything in the episode led to a major showdown between the two enemies. But, in the end, even with a superpowered Thawne having the upper hand, it’s The Flash who won the day.
Iris, it turns out, wasn’t dead but was in the Time Stone, and it was her return that factored in tipping the scales for Barry. Barry and Thawne’s fight was triggering the Armageddon that was teased all the way back at the beginning of the season and Iris made Barry realize that he couldn’t beat Thawne by fighting with might. Instead, Barry recognized his limits and sat down, going to the meditative place he did in “Into The Still Force”. In the end, it was the power of knowing his limits that saw The Flash win, with Reverse Flash erased, killed by his own actions — and all the damage from their fight undone. Later, there’s no trace of Thawne anywhere in the timeline. Reverse Flash is dead and gone, once and for all.
But while we’ve seen Thawne die countless times over the years, series showrunner Eric Wallace told ComicBook.com that this death is the real deal and while Cavanagh may appear on The Flash again, it won’t be like this.
“We had to go, ‘Oh, oops, oh. Hey, he’s super dead. How do we come back from this?’” I have no idea, to be honest with you. I’m not going to worry about it, it made for a good ending,” Wallace said. “We’re going to take a break. We will have some new villains next year. The question is, will Tom ever be the Reverse Flash on our show again? I don’t know, man, because just like Frost, the Reverse Flash of a negative Reverse Flash that he became, they are truly dead. But having said that, I can’t imagine a season of The Flash without just a little bit of the awesomeness that Tom Cavanagh brings, in some capacity.”
The Flash will return for Season 9 in 2023.
What do you think? Were you surprised by the death of Reverse Flash? Do you think he’s gone for good? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
