[SPOILERS for those not caught up on The Flash season 3 ahead.]
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Season 3 of The CW's The Flash kicked off by adapting the Flashpoint DC comic book storyline - wherein Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) creates an alternate timeline, after he travels back in time in order to save his mother from being killed by Reverse-Flash/Eobard Thawne (Matt Lescher). Barry hung around in that Flashpoint alternate reality for only a single episode before he restored things to the way they used to be... or rather, before he tried to restore the original timeline. The rest of the first half of The Flash season 3 revolved around Barry and his friends' efforts to deal with the ripple effects of Flashpoint.
The effects of Barry meddling with time on The Flash season 3 so far have included Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) gaining speedster capabilities, Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) developing her Killer Frost super-powers and the emergence of Savitar, the mysterious "original" speedster and Barry's new enemy #1. However, as the trailer for the second half of The Flash season 3 teases, Barry now has an even bigger concern than defeating Savitar - namely, stopping him from murdering Iris West (Candice Patton), based on the glimpse of the future (and Iris' death at Savitar's hands) that Barry got in The Flash's 2016 midseason finale.
The CW has unveiled a trailer for the second half of The Flash season 3, offering a glimpse at scenes from Barry and Iris' blissful new life as a couple living together, as well as Barry's efforts to prevent the terrible future event that he saw, with the help of his loyal allies. In addition, this new trailer shows Caitlin continuing to struggle to maintain control over her Killer Frost tendencies when season 3 picks back up. That doesn't come as a surprise though, based on the foreboding vision that Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) previously had of himself as Vibe, battling Caitlin's supervillain alter ego in the future.
The Flash's producers have said that Barry will be exploring any and all options to save Iris from her potential (deadly) fate, but that begs the question: can changing the future (or, rather, trying to) have the same unforeseen - and, in particular, undesirable - consequences as meddling with the past can? Jay Garrick (John Wesley Shipp), who is set to play an expanded role in The Flash season 3 when it resumes next year, has already cautioned Barry once about the complex nature of time and how Iris' death may even be a potential future that never comes to pass. Indeed, there's more than one infamous story about a character who has attempted to change their fate after getting a glimpse of it (or believing they've been shown a glimpse of it), only for their actions to inadvertently create that very future they sought to avoid. Is Barry in danger of making that very mistake?
Our hero's problems are far from other, in other words, and all the more so in light of the predictions that Savitar made in The Flash midseason finale (when he spoke through Alchemy/Julian Albert). It won't be all sorrow and seriousness for Barry and friends when The Flash returns, of course, what with the show's musical crossover with Supergirl being visible on the horizon. Still, the hope is that the second half of The Flash's third season will deliver more in the way of unexpected plot twists and dramatic turns than its first half managed to provide, thanks to its (forward) time-traveling storyline.
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The Flash returns in January 2017 on The CW.
Source: The CW