Director: David McWhirter
Writer: Thomas Pound
Well, I wasn’t sure it was going to happen — I was actively hoping it wouldn’t happen — but it did. Jordan Fisher has returned as Impulse to the CW’s Flash. Will this one-off episode be an improvement over that disastrous two-parter that closed out Season Seven? Let’s find out.
Our story picks right up where we left off with Bart and his sister, Nora, attending their parents’ vow renewal ceremony. After Barry’s time-bending kiss and all the guests go home, Bart and Nora have one final quiet moment with their parents. Bart says even though he heard about this vow renewal a million times from Barry and Iris in the future, he still got a little weepy to see it in person. Iris warmly reflects on the future that’s ahead of them, but Bart admits he’s worried they’ve now changed the future. Barry claims to have already checked that, via his futuristic computer, Gideon, and he says there are no changes to the timeline. So the kids give their parents one last hug and race off for Central City in the year 2049.
Bart and Nora quickly zoom around their house, satisfied that everything seems to be just as they left it. Bart reflects on a bust of Jay Garrick’s helmet, saying that seeing Jay alive in the past makes him miss his mentor even more now. Suddenly a blast of green energy sweeps over our heroes and Jay’s bust disappears. Before Bart and Nora can figure out what happened, Jay himself walks through the front door, carrying several bags of Big Belly burgers. Bart immediately breaks down in tears and gives a perplexed Jay a massive hug. Nora makes it a group hug, telling Jay they’ve missed him so much.
As Jay sets up the food on the table, Bart and Nora have a quick aside. Bart thinks it’s “crash” that Jay is now alive, but Nora insists this is the opposite of crash. She now realizes that green energy was a temporal wave, meaning their trip back in time did, in fact, change the future. Nora does agree that it seems like they’ve changed the future for the better, but she wants to figure out why this happened.
Bart and Nora join Jay at the table, casually asking where their parents are. Jay reminds them that Barry and Iris are in Milan, celebrating the anniversary of their wedding vow renewal. Jay can tell Bart and Nora are acting odd, but Nora assures him they’re perfectly fine. Jay then randomly chooses to thank Bart once again for saving his life from Godspeed several months ago, adding that he knows Bart will make a great Flash one day. Jay then receives a message from his wife, Rose, saying she won’t be able to join them for dinner. Bart and Nora are unable to fully conceal their confusion/panic to learn that Jay isn’t married to Joan.
After dinner, the siblings visit the Flash Museum, and Nora begins to realize that the cosmic treadmill wasn’t built to handle the power of three speedsters at once. Which means that when they chased after Godspeed, their tachyon energies must have caused massive temporal fissures. Nora bemoans breaking their dad’s time travel rules as she searches through a database to discover that not only did Jay never marry Joan, but Joan doesn’t even exist in this reality. She then keeps her brother from panicking too much as she dives deeper into the archives to find the first change to the timeline. Nora skips past references to a corrupt mayor and the Trickster invading Tibet, but she’s confused by a reference to Booster Gold. Instead of looking further into it, though, they keep going, reading about Zoom attacking the Central City Police Department, which references Joe West being the chief of police.
Bart realizes that their grandpa was never chief of police, so they start looking for the moment he was promoted. Nora finds a story about Joe being shot while stopping a jewelry heist in 2013. And she somehow confirms there were no time fissures before this point. So they decide that if they go back to this point in time and prevent Joe from being shot, then all the changes to the timeline will be undone.
So our heroes travel to Central City on December 31, 2013, which technically was before this show even began. Barry Allen was still in a coma after being stuck by lightning and Iris West was thinking about dating her dad’s partner, Eddie Thawne. Bart throws on an outfit (as seen above) that Iris believes belongs in 1913, not 2013, but Bart claims its sexy and incognito. For some reason, Bart and Nora went straight into the police department, where they surreptitiously watch their grandfather try and fail to ask Cecile out on a date. While they’re busy arguing about staying out of sight during this time-travel mission, they’re approached by Detective Thawne, who demands to know who they are.
Luckily, Nora came prepared, handing Eddie ID cards for intern CSIs Nora Moy (named after XS co-creator Jeffrey Moy) and Bart Waid (named after Mark Waid, co-creator of Impulse and XS). Bart tries to lighten the mood by calling themselves crime fighters — with science — and Eddie seems to appreciate this, noting how tense the department has been since the S.T.A.R. Labs explosion (which gave Barry his powers and created a bunch of meta-humans in the area). Eddie even admits that his new partner, Joe, barely speaks to him. So Bart suggests they try bonding over a cup of coffee. Eddie likes this idea so much, he gives Bart his credit card and tells him to pick up coffee for the entire bullpen. Bart hesitates, but Nora accepts the assignment to maintain appearances.
As soon as Eddie walks away, Bart realizes they were just talking to their mom’s former fiancé and the man who sacrificed himself to stop Eobard Thawne. But Nora says that doesn’t matter right now, and she leads him to a small coffee stand on the street, which seems like a terrible place to go for a large order like theirs. There’s a long line at the stand, and Bart begs to use his super speed to grab the coffee, but Nora forbids it, fearing it could change the timeline more. Nora explains that her computer gauntlet will let her know when the jewel robbery will happen and until then, they just need to lie low. Bart’s not convinced though, worrying that every second they spend waiting in line is a second where their grandpa could be getting shot.
Bart becomes so agitated, he knocks into a pretty girl waiting in line behind him. Bart is instantly smitten by this girl named Avery, who just happens to be holding lots of papers on quantum mechanics. He asks how she knows so much about this advanced science and she jokes that it’s because she’s from the future. Not realizing she’s joking, Bart admits he’s from the future and strikes up a conversation about time travel. Avery is an intern at Fast Track Labs, conveniently studying the precise kind of paradox that Bart and Nora are dealing with. Bart calls her the Elon Musk of her generation (which I’m sure he meant as a compliment, even though Musk is not a genius at all), and further confuses the girl by saying it was crash to meet her. Luckily, Nora’s gauntlet interrupts this awkwardness, and she rushes Bart off to go save Grandpa Joe.
Turns out the jewel robber is quite a nervous idiot and his gun accidentally discharged when he dropped it. Bart and Nora arrive at the scene as soon as the bullet leaves the barrel, and Nora initially holds Bart back. At super speed, she explains that if their grandpa was never supposed to be responding to this robbery, then the gun was never supposed to fire at all. And now she’s worried about interfering, as it might cause another temporal flux. Nora claims she tried to tell this to Bart earlier, but he was too busy flirting with Avery. When Bart asks what they should do instead, Nora begins stammering, so he decides to save the day himself. Bart oddly chooses to move Joe instead of moving the bullet, and even takes time to give his grandpa a kiss on the cheek.
Joe easily arrests the crook and Eddie marvels that he must have a guardian angel. Nora tells Bart he made the wrong move, as her gauntlet somehow shows that more temporal particles are in flux. Bart then randomly says that he’s surprised the gunman wasn’t a meta-human, to which Nora bizarrely states that the recent S.T.A.R. Labs explosion created more meta-humans. Of course, the only reason they stated these unrelated facts is so that they could be overheard by a mysterious woman with telepathy, who now realizes she’s not alone.
Returning the conversation to the actual mission, Bart suggests they go back in time and move the bullet instead of Joe to see if that fixes the temporal fluxes. But Nora doesn’t like the idea of using more time travel to fix their time travel problems. Instead, she suggests they review the security footage of the shooting to see what went wrong. They see Eddie has the flash drive and offer to take it back to headquarters for him, but he tells them to go on their coffee run, which they aborted.
So they do go on the coffee run, which gives them enough time to prepare a fake flash drive. And luckily, Eddie helps them out even more by distracting Joe with talk about his former partner dying, Barry being in a coma, and Joe’s failed attempt to woo Cecile. Nora can’t help but tell Joe what Cecile’s favorite flowers are, as she delivers his coffee and swaps out the flash drive. Nora and Bart retreat to an empty room in the building, which just happens to be the still-damaged room where Barry was struck by lightning. Bart takes a moment to relish this history, while Nora fires up a computer.
Once they review the video, Bart instantly recognizes the mysterious woman who was eavesdropping on them. She’s Mona Taylor, aka the Queen of the Royal Flush Gang. Nora uses her gauntlet to pull up tomorrow’s newspaper, which says the Royal Flush Gang killed 30 people in a casino on New Year’s Eve. Bart remembers that in their original timeline the Royal Flush Gang didn’t form until long after Barry became the Flash. Nora quickly realizes that their random conversation about meta-humans gave Mona the idea of a gang several years early, and now 30 people are going to die.
Bart says they need to stop that casino disaster, and Nora agrees, but also worries about causing more problems to the timeline. Bart laments that their dad would have gotten it right on the first try, and he suddenly breaks down in tears, wailing that everything he’s done today has only made everything worse. With an insane amount of tears pouring down his cheeks, Bart says he’ll never be good enough to be the Flash and runs away.
Nora finds Bart visiting their unconscious father. Bart’s been telling his dad that he’s going to have a complete failure for a son. Nora tells him that nobody’s perfect and she quotes Barry: “No matter how fast you run, life is about the journey.” She assures Bart they’ll fix everything, but just need to take some time to think things through. This calms Bart down and he realizes he’s made a new friend who’s conveniently an expert in time travel and might be able to help them.
Bart and Nora luckily find Avery all alone at Fast Track Labs — even though it’s New Year’s Eve. Avery is naturally concerned with how these two bypassed the lab’s security and armed guards, and she even believes that their meeting at the coffee stand was no accident, since Bart and Nora must have been tracking her to steal her company’s secrets. Bart confesses they actually are from the future, and Nora decides to prove it by pulling up a factoid about Avery’s future on her gauntlet. Bart points out that Avery would have to wait to see if that future came true, thus making that a stupid plan. Luckily, Avery is intrigued enough by the gauntlet itself and, upon a quick inspection, decides the device is futuristic and Bart and Nora are telling the truth.
Nora pulls up the next day’s newspaper to show Avery the casino bombing they’re worried about. But to their surprise, the death toll begins to fluctuate, jumping up to 42 and falling back down to 36. Avery hypothesizes that this means the casino heist has become a fixed point in time, but the deaths are not. Which, theoretically, means that Bart and Nora can still fix the timeline and save the people, just as long as they allow the heist to happen. Avery then asks to go with the heroes to help save the day, but Bart refuses to put her in danger. He does, however, promise to come back to her.
Impulse and XS then put on their superhero outfits for the first time this episode and sneak into the casino after the Royal Flush Gang has already begun their heist. The gang oddly only has four members — in addition to the telepath (Queen), there’s a strong man (King), a guy with laser eyes (Jack) and a girl that can … do backflips? Anyway, XS goes to look for the bomb, leaving Impulse to rescue the civilians, while allowing the heist to still happen.
King and Queen are keeping an eye on all the people in the lobby, while the other two collect the loot. Impulse starts to sneak a few people away two at a time, but it doesn’t take long before King and Queen notice their hostages disappearing. Queen can sense the presence of a mysterious savior, so she picks a random woman and announces that King will smash her head in unless the hero reveals themself. Nora calls Bart up over their comm-link thing and says she can’t find the bomb. Bart tells her to keep looking, while he’s going to enact Plan B to prevent Queen from killing anyone. Only problem is there isn’t a Plan B.
What Bart comes up with, though, is actually pretty smart. He steals a casino manager’s uniform and presents himself as the one who was helping people escape. He tries to make a deal with Queen, saying he’ll let the gang take all the money they want, as long as they don’t kill anyone — since dead people aren’t great for business. Queen, however, is suspicious, saying a casino manager wouldn’t risk his neck on minimum wage. I don’t know why she thinks a casino manager would only earn minimum wage, but that’s not the point. The point is, she believes Bart to be an undercover cop and begins to probe his mind.
Queen quickly picks up on Bart’s concerns about saving the future, but Bart recovers nicely by thinking about Avery being his future. The other two gang members return with big bags full of cash, proudly telling their Queen they’ve collected $10 million. The Royal Flush Gang begins to leave, but for some reason, Bart protests this, earning him a nasty punch from King. Queen tells the hostages to enjoy all the fireworks as she leads her goons out the door.
Bart tells Nora the gang is gone, just as she finally finds the bomb, but immediately realizes it’s too small to level the building like the newspaper article said. Nora begins to panic, as the bombs are set to blow in 30 seconds. Bart says that King broke his arm and he needs at least three minutes to speed-heal it. But he does offer Nora some kind words of encouragement, ending with the cheesy line “get excessive!” Nora instantly finds five bombs in total and runs them to the top of a nearby building, hurtling them into the air just as the New Year’s fireworks go off.
For absolutely no reason at all, Bart and Nora return to the police department in their intern disguises. Bart doublechecks that they’ve fixed all the problems they caused, then he recklessly drags Nora into a group photograph with the rest of the CCPD. Bart then visits Avery, who is still, astonishingly, at her lab. She tells Bart that he hasn’t just changed her research, but he’s also changed her life. Bart thanks her for helping save the day, then begins to awkwardly stammer until Avery pulls him in for a kiss. Nora eventually interrupts the ridiculously long kiss by walking in the room with her eyes covered. So Bart finally leaves, promising Avery he’ll see her again.
Back in 2049, Bart and Nora take Jay to the Flash Museum to finally come clean on everything and explain the whole story, including how he originally was killed by Godspeed. Bart apologizes for changing the timeline, saying he understands if this means he can never be the Flash. Jay laughs at this, saying that not only has Barry screwed up the timeline, but he himself once journeyed back to World War II and fought Nazis. He thanks Bart for saving his and Joan’s life, then says that sometimes they’ll make mistakes that can’t be undone, but they can always try to make things better. Jay then leaves, joking that he has a meeting with President Luthor.
Well, I will say that this episode was better than the last time we saw Bart on The Flash. But it’s still pretty lame. And that’s a shame because this episode did actually have great potential. Focusing on Bart and Nora’s journey home is a good idea. Giving them a mission to fix the timeline is also good. But we need a strong hook. Finding out that Jay is married to Rose instead of Joan is not it. Yeah, it’s sad that Joan was erased from history, but do we really care about her? I mean, she didn’t even show up in this episode, which is odd, considering how she was ostensibly the main reason for this entire adventure. So why did Bart and Nora risk the entire space-time continuum just for her? I mean, maybe this Rose lady is perfectly lovely and deserves to be Jay’s wife.
But seriously, imagine how much more impactful it would have been had Bart and Nora been on a mission to save their dad. They ask Jay if their parents are dropping by and his face falls. “What are you talking about?” he asks. “Barry’s dead.” THAT would have given this show the emotional drama it craves so badly, and often forces in unnatural, unearned ways — like this episode demonstrated so painfully.
This story also failed to be a captivating time-travel story. Avery called Bart “McFly,” referencing one of the greatest time-travel stories of all time, Back to the Future. That movie was built around an effective cause-and-effect conflict. Marty inadvertently prevented his parents from falling in love, thus jeopardizing his own existence. But in this episode, all the events were completely random and unassociated. Racing Godspeed back in time somehow caused Joe to suffer a non-fatal gunshot in the past, which somehow erased Joan from existence? What? Oh, and then we’re going to hastily add on a poor excuse for a Royal Flush Gang because we needed some sense of action at the end. No sense of drama, tension or emotional connection. Wouldn’t it have been cool if Bart and Nora had to make sure Barry got hit by the lightning bolt? And — to borrow an idea from the comics — maybe one or both of them would have to (temporarily) sacrifice themselves to become that fateful bolt of lightning?
But such ideas were too big for this episode. Director David McWhirter clearly had a minuscule budget for this one — there were hardly any special effects. Heck, we were even limited to about 90 seconds of screen time for the Impulse suit! However, that was actually a good thing, since that suit still looks horrendous. It’s such a shame that this show has become so amateurish. And having an episode remind us of Season One — when it was not amateurish — only emphasizes the show’s decline.
I also feel like Jordan Fisher is being underutilized here. He’s a singer and a dancer. Make that part of Bart’s character. Yeah, he sang that cheesy ballad at his parents’ vow renewal, but I’d like to see him constantly singing, dancing, rapping, scatting, humming, drumming — you know, acting like someone full of unlimited energy and enthusiasm. Instead, this script gave us an Impulse that I think can best be described as bipolar. Fisher does not do a good job of randomly bursting into uncontrollable tears over the slightest difficulties, but I don’t think anyone else could do a better job with these awful scripts.
And what was up with Avery? She added absolutely nothing to this plot. Yes, I know Avery Ho was the Flash from China in the comics, but this episode didn’t confirm that’s who this Avery is. Theoretically, she was supposed to be a time-travel expert to help solve Bart and Nora’s dilemma, but she really didn’t tell them anything they couldn’t have figured out on their own. And if this episode really needed an expert, then why didn’t they use Booster Gold? They made a big point of showing his picture early on, only to never mention him again.
The cynic in me says that Avery was only brought in to show conclusively that Bart is straight. His silver fingernails and earrings might have led some people to think otherwise, so this episode quickly and aggressively asserted Bart’s heterosexuality with the first pretty face he saw. Pretty lame if you ask me. Granted, it might be mildly interesting if this show does reunite them somehow. Maybe Avery figures out time travel and comes to the future, or Bart returns to the past one day. There’s potential there … but I don’t have any confidence in this show anymore. I kind of think someone needs to put it out of its misery.
Next time, we’ll return to the animated universe with an episode of Young Justice: Phantoms!
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