Director: Jeff Byrd
Writers: Jonathan Butler & Gabriel Garza
Our story begins in Central City in 2049, where Bart and Nora are happily playing some futuristic video games, when they’re interrupted by a call from their mom. Bart hastily throws on a Central City University sweater and grabs a handful of textbooks in a pathetic attempt to make it appear like he’s been studying. Naturally, this doesn’t fool Iris, who was actually calling to assign Nora another story to write. Suddenly, the video chat is ended with a burst of green light, followed shortly by an identical burst of light in the living room, which brings the Iris from the past into the future.
So the kids sit their younger mom down on the couch with a cup of tea and ask her what’s the last thing she remembers, which is just a rather vague “I got lost in the timestream.” Iris naturally wants to talk to Barry, but Bart informs her that he’s currently off world with Uncle Jay. (It sure is convenient how we always happen to miss seeing the future Barry.) Nora abruptly decides to run Iris back to 2022 by herself — without a cosmic treadmill or anything — and is shocked when she immediately is repulsed by a barrier of green light. Nora reasons that the Still Force is keeping Iris in 2049, although none of them know why. (By the way, the Still Force is the guy in the black-and-white jacket in the image above that I got from arrow.fandom.com.) Iris is suddenly overcome with a painful headache, which apparently is a side effect of her “time sickness,” a disease that Bart and Nora know nothing about.
We return to the present, where a lot of boring, confusing stuff happens. But none of it really pertains to Bart, so I’ll skip over it. Bart and Nora decide to take their mom to a doctor (I assume this is Joan Garrick?), who discovers that Iris’ body is infected with “negative tachyons” that are increasing at an exponential rate. During the checkup, Iris gets another headache, and this time, she sees a glimpse of the other Forces (Strength, Sage and Still). Nora decides that the only way to help Iris is for her to go back to 2022 to enlist Barry’s aid. And Bart chooses to stay behind to look after his mother.
In the past, Nora learned that all the Forces have a negative counterpart, and it’s these Negative Forces that are killing Iris. It’s quite convoluted, but basically the Negative Forces want to use Iris to poison the Positive Forces so they can get back at Barry for destroying the Negative Speed Force during a previous battle against the Reverse-Flash. Or something like that. Anyway, Barry is preparing to fight the Negative Forces, but he refuses to let Nora help him, ordering her to return to 2049.
When Nora returns to the future, she finds Iris’ condition has worsened. Joan suspects she won’t survive another “temporal attack” and says the only thing they can do is pray that their father in the past can find the strength to defeat the Negative Forces.
Later, Iris suddenly wakes up from her comatose state, wildly saying that the Forces are fighting Barry, creating a new moment in time. Joan, Nora and Bart realize that Iris is watching an event happening in 2022, which is somehow changing the future. Iris begins babbling nonsensically about visions and sacrifices and suddenly she’s teleported back to 2022, strategically placed by the Still Force right in front of Barry’s big lightning attack. The blast seemingly kills Iris, who then fades away into green light, which somehow helps resurrect Eobard Thawne. Don’t ask me how or why. It just did.
The writing on this show has gone completely insane. Like on-drugs insane. I don’t know if the writers were high when they wrote it, but it sure seems like the only way for the audience to enjoy this is to be high on something themselves. The more you think about this plot, the less sense it makes. So I’m going to quit while I’m ahead and focus just on Bart.
Bart had no reason being in this episode. He accomplished absolutely nothing and served no real purpose. Iris didn’t even need to go to 2049 in the first place. Everything still could have happened the exact same way with Iris in the present. But by putting her in the future, the show created a situation where Bart and Nora were forced to act out of character. When Joan (or whoever she was) told them the only thing they could do to help their mom was to pray that their dad could win a fight 27 years in the past, those two young adults should have immediately raced back in time. To save their mom’s life, they totally would have defied their dad’s orders and helped defeat the Negative Forces once and for all. But I guess the writers worried that this would rob them of their “dramatic” cliffhanger?
Honestly, it feels like the only reason Jordan Fisher was in this episode was because his contract stipulated that he must appear in three episodes per season. At least he didn’t have to put on that horrible Impulse costume here. And we didn’t get any melodramatic crying, which was a surprisingly nice touch. That’s it. I should focus on the positives.
Next time, we’ll wrap up Season 8 of The Flash with “Negative, Part 2.”
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