Katsullivan

The Flash was lucky to have Tom Felton but I really hope Julian's run ends with this season. He was just one more white man brought in for Caitlin's sake, for the show to cater to at the expense of their more important characters. If Felton stays for next season, my only prayer is that he has a half-season run that coincides with Killer Frost being the 'first' Big Bad of the season. She gets 'cured' by the mid-season and becomes Caitlin. She and Julian decide to leave Central City and Team Flash and live happily ever after off our screens. I hope Cavanaugh and whatever iteration of Wells he's playing goes along with them. Harry from Earth-2 can succumb to his terminal illness and die for reals.

Every thing from start to finish in this post is excellent. I don't understand the writing for this show. Are the writers really that bad at their jobs? Do they think so little of the IQ of their viewing audience? Do they hate the show and want it to fail? Because there's 'hand-waving' stuff and there's deliberately sabotaging logic and continuity and this show constantly does that.

This was beyond aggravating. I will clarify that it's beyond a Barry thing, it's also a race thing. It's common place in mainstream media for black people to be dissociated from their families: providing home sets for them, parents, siblings, strong family relationships... Think for example about Bonnie Bennett from TVD. It's the same thing here. The Wests are important because they're Barry's defacto family. But see how hard it is for the show to make them important to each other, or at least more important to each other than Barry. When Joe scolded Barry in the Pilot, Iris rushed to defend Barry. But she couldn't do the same when Barry attacked Wally. Many comments have been made about how much Joe prioritizes Barry over both his children. Wally's entry into the West family was made all about Barry, and Joe to a lesser extent. None of Iris's family has any negative reaction towards her life being endangered because of Barry twice, for Flashpoint or for him being Savitar.

Well thank goodness for the spoiler video otherwise I still felt that there was a 30% chance that all the obvious theories were red herrings and they were going to write Candice off the show.

Your perspectives of Iris are always interesting. Interesting how you repeatedly try to give the impression that Iris is older, even when we have a flashback of them in the same grade. As someone else pointed out, at the start of the show, Barry is a professional working as a CSI while Iris is still taking classes and working part-time as a barista. If anyone gives the impression of being older, it's Barry. Yet somehow, you got the impression that Iris is (dead-beat, flakeless) older than Barry? I won't even touch the "sister" part. Such an interesting choice of words here again - obsession. He had a crush as a pre-teen, that matured with his own age and friendship to her. He wasn't stalking her, or clipping her pictures on a Wall of Crazy. If anyone on this show has acted as an obsessed love interest, it's Patty Spallen and her dogged determination in Season 2A. Yet somehow, you are describing Barry's feelings for a beautiful girl, his best friend whom he's known all his life, that has loved and supported him, and believed in him when no one else did - as obsessive? By the way, there is a pattern of reading love/affection towards Black women as somehow "extra-ordinary" or "warped". This exactly. Much like in Clueless* (and sexual relationships between step-siblings is incest), the idea is that the familiarity of growing up together prevents the heroine from distinguishing what her affection for the hero means. I will agree that there are instances of the writing where I think the showrunners are deliberately throwing shade on the relationship between Iris and Barry. Was it really necessary for Wally to define himself as Barry's brother, not Iris's?

double post

The point is that it was brought up again because it was about to become relevant. Most likely HR was working with Savitar. He had a piece of Savitar with him and he knew, from Jessie Quick, how to use it to summon Savitar. He made a deal to die in place of Iris and Savitar accepted it, because the only thing better than killing Iris and wrecking Barry would be letting Barry get wrecked, thinking that Iris was killed and keeping her for himself. What Iris thought about all this wouldn't have been any of Savitar's concern.

@GHScorpiosRule Thanks, I must have missed it.

OK, just to get this out of the way - I don't think Barry is a jerk or asshole or a bad guy. I think he's flawed and imperfect, and he ought to be. That's what makes him an interesting character. I enjoy his character for these reasons. If you're looking at his actions through the lenses that everything he does is pure and beyond reproach, then that's as much a bias as what you're assuming I'm doing. It is a sad by-product of the toxicity in fandom that flaws in characters tend to be exaggerated and used as reasons to hate these characters. (Iris, anyone?) But flaws are not intrinsically bad and pointing out that a character is flawed does not mean that I hate that character. Barry himself admits that he was lying to Iris. When he confessed his feelings to her on Christmas Day, these are his exact words: "I can't lie to you anymore." It does matter that she was his best friend. It'd be totally different if she was just a casual friend or someone who wasn't particularly close to him but Barry was the closest person to Iris beside her father. When Iris comes to Barry for advice on her love life and relationships, she is coming to him because she assumes he is an objective listener - and that is a lie. Barry had good reasons for not telling her but that didn't make it any less a lie of omission. But come on - Barry did not support Iris and Eddie. He was predisposed to dislike Eddie before he even got to know him simply because Iris was dating him. He showed up at Jitters as the Flash and flirted the hell with Iris knowing that it was damaging her relationship with Eddie, and still going ahead to do so. Even when Caitlin called him out for doing so - "don't be the one responsible for their breakup" - Barry didn't care. The fact that Iris's relationship with Eddie was going forward was one of the reasons why he decided to drop that bomb on Iris. Eddie had been kidnapped by Eobard and Barry was throwing Iris's suppressed feelings for him (Barry) at her face, and later on asking her if she would consider changing her mind after Eddie was found. As someone who ships Westallen, I actually like that Barry was so ruthless about his regard for Eddie. As the saying goes, all is fair in Love and War so let's not pretend that he played the role of Supportive Best Friend to her where Eddie was concerned.

Was she foreign born? Because extra-terrestrial DNA or not, if she was born in the US, no constitution is being violated.

The conceit of this story is the style of its narration, with the protagonist playing the role of Hastings 2.0. Apart from the "It was his sled" trope, it would be very hard to pull this "twist" on a stand-alone film. The closest thing that could mimic this story is if a new Doctor Who companion was revealed - at the last episode of the series - to be the Big Bad all along.

To the Snowbarry shippers, maybe. That conversation added absolutely zero to the plot and it told us nothing about either character's motivations or personalities. The fact that Iris has zero reaction to a version of Barry Allen being her murderer should tell you not to have any hopes of agency for her character.

Whether Iris had feelings for Barry or not, Barry was lying by omission by hiding his feelings for his best friend and pretending he was supportive of her relationship with Eddie. Joe wasn't obligated to tell Iris anything - he couldn't violate Barry's trust or privacy that way. Iris's words at him were out of anger and frustration of the whole situation, including the part where Joe was obligated not to lie/gaslight her about Barry being the Flash and he did. Maybe gendered roles play into this, but the main reason why Iris couldn't tell Barry about her feelings was that she herself had never admitted them to herself in the first place. While Barry had a full-on crush on Iris West long before he moved into her house, Iris's own feelings for him developed after that, specifically on a night that was already filled with a lot of trauma, and generated emotions of sympathy, pain, protectiveness etc towards him. For this and any number of reasons, she was one step behind Barry emotionally. It was Barry's Christmas confession and everything else that followed that made her 'wake up' to how she felt about him. And by then, she was in a committed, loving relationship with another man. What is important is that after mourning Eddie, and Iris 'opened her heart' again to love, she realized that she still had feelings for Barry and she acted on them by telling him about them, even without the reassurance of whether he still felt the same way about her.

It's nice to see some black love on prime-time TV so go Joe/Cecily. Give that man a life outside his kids. But the only couple that really interest me are Wally/Jessie. The dynamics of two speedsters getting it on - (Recovery time, anyone?) - should be explored in greater detail. For science. The show needs to stop giving Caitlin LIs that DP is not interested in selling. Throw in this part of Iris's confrontation with Joe in 1x21: Jeez, I wonder why Iris was so upset about not knowing how Barry felt about her. I wonder why she associated knowing that Barry loved her with her not starting a relationship with Eddie. I wonder, as @doram pointed out, why Barry had to be in a coma for 9 months before his best friend, a 25-year-old woman, could have her first real boyfriend. I wonder what the writers meant when they had Iris tell Eddie that she never needed a boyfriend before (before what, exactly?) because her life was so full with her father, and Barry and work. I will be the first person to admit that the show short-changes Iris's PoV. That we don't get many one-on-one conversations between Iris and a confidant that lets us into her head, the same way - just as a random example - we got so many perspectives into Caitlin's thoughts on her dead fiance, then her not-dead fiance, then her reunited fiance, etc. But from what little we have been given... Anyone who watched season 1 and really left with the impression that Iris never had anything other than sibling/platonic feelings for Barry all her life - was watching with an agenda. Funny enough, I was just coming from a discussion about how the "they're like siblings!" description has been popping up more and more these days. I've seen it used to describe Richonne from Walking Dead, Waurel from HTGAWM, Finn & Rey from Star Wars movie (where Rey is supposedly more compatible with someone who is probably her first cousin - yet somehow that doesn't stop the shippers from shipping lololol), and it's been leveled against Westallen from the start, of course. Now could there be a pattern in this? Correlation is not causation, I know, but I guess "But they're like siblings!" is the new "But they're interracial!"

When Barry pulled out the bazooka, who else half-expected him to shout at Savitar: "Say hello to my LITTLE FRIEND!"

Yes, this would have been brilliant. Have Barry get so close to The Dark (it warrants capitalization, trust me), and do something relatively innocuous but still evilish like letting that other Gorilla kill Grodd, or blackmailing/threatening Julian into wearing Savitar's helmet - and then make the time remnant at this point in time. After his "Come to Jesus" moment, he pulls back and starts trying to fight the good fight while the time remnant keeps going along path to The Dark, probably even mocking Barry for his pacifism, declaring that he (the time remnant) is the Barry who will end up saving Iris. If the theories that Savitar doesn't want to kill Iris - he wants to make Barry think he's killed Iris - are true, then this would even make more sense. Of course, sense and these writers are like water and oil.

After reading @doram's synopsis, I am even more dissatisfied with this episode. Barry should have crossed the line with Abra Kadabra, and helped him escape. AK should have turned around and admitted that he didn't know who Savitar was - no one ever did. Which would have then pushed Barry to almost-murdering him, only to be stopped in time by Team Flash. This is what should have led to the Westallen break-up, not that contrived nonsense. It would explain why Iris is not wearing a ring in the future.

I don't care for dark!Iris, not on this show by these writers. Let's not give the popcorn gallery more reasons to hate her.

Maybe the writers should do less SB trolling, and more WA writing? This logic always amazes me. If the writers were really indifferent to SB, and invested in WA --- they'd just write more WA, won't they? For example: that scene in "Into the speedforce" where Caitlin is holding a baby that is staged so that for a few moments before Ronnie appears, it looks like Barry's... why? Ronnie could have made his point without the Creepy Singing Mom and Baby. Just the sight of normal, non-Ice-powered Caitlin, in the background with Ronnie should have been enough. If anybody should have been carrying the baby of a dead man in Barry Allen's nightmare, it should have been Iris carrying Eddie's and Eddie accusing Barry of stealing that family from him. That would have been a far more effective mind-fuck than a scene that was constructed simply to make the Snowbarry gif-makers jobs easier. I personally believe that Patty was also meant to be temporary, but the writers would have found a way to keep her on permanently if there was enough interest in her. I think it constantly surprises and irritates them how much support Candice has, and they might have genuine concern that if they damage Iris/Westallen too much, they will lose their show's unprecedented ratings. Sleepy Hollow is a cautionary tale to anyone who cares to learn.

Yet discussions like this are an example of the typical way that people bend over backwards to deny any instance of racism. There's always another "lesser" evil motivating an act of prejudice. For something so "regular and banal", it's funny how its occurrence is so vehemently protested.

This, IMO, is the problem with this show and its "color-blindedness". It's apparently set in some utopic version of Earth where racial tensions with the systematic discrimination and implicit bias are non-existent, and that would be all well and good if we don't see the writing exhibiting the same systematic discrimination and implicit bias. It's not a coincidence that the most developed people on the show are Barry, any version of Harrison Wells, Julian Albert, followed by Cisco Ramon. That the most developed woman on the show in terms of back story, screen-time and POV is Caitlin Snow. That Joe's importance rests in the way he supports Barry to the exclusion of his biological children. That Wally is such a neglected character that someone in the writer's room suggested that Kid Flash would leave his soon-to-die sister for a booty call, and another person in the writer's room thought it was a great idea. That Iris might be the second-billed star, but a casual watcher of this show would think she was just a recurring guest star. That the show repeatedly has two people of color (Cisco & Iris) reaffirm that their lives are worth less than the "souls" of their white best friends.

This is a beautiful arc that would have elevated this season ten-fold. I am not exaggerating. You have managed to keep the same milestones as the current show, and still developed a coherent plot that is far superior to what we have been given. It never fails to amaze me how people whose professions are to do this fail so spectacularly.

I imagined a lot of discussion after the sizzle was released but this is way more than I bargained for so hope no one will mind too much if I don't respond to the many quotes/replies left for me. To add my 2 cents to the current discussion: I agree with @quarks that the fact that they established an elaborate set for Iris's various working places is one of the reasons why it stands out that they are marginalizing her. I am quite certain that there was some directorial/writing change on staff between 1A & 1B because the set-up for Iris to be integrated into Team Flash through hers and Mason's investigation of Wells was obviously retconned. I don't think it matters that Caitlin or Patty get recycled sets. I don't watch these other shows so it makes no difference to me if Caitlin is living in Felicity's house or Patty is living in Kara's. What matters is that we never see Iris in her home. She and Eddie have one bedroom scene of undetermined location and we never see Iris in her home environment. Besides a physical set, we don't even know where Iris lived between Eddie & Barry. Did she move back home? There are certainly a lot of cozy breakfast and supper scenes at the table. But then in 3x9, Barry mentions that her apartment is too small for two people? So what is the truth? . Meanwhile the sizzle reel, while spectacular, just reminded me of everything wrong with this Save Iris story. The entire reel is (mostly) about Barry, Savitar, and the battle for Iris's life and conversely, Barry's soul and there isn't a single word of dialogue from Iris. Lots of shots of Candice, looking beautiful and acting her face out (and her hand too - that one-second of her touching Savitar's cheek and him melting has been giffed in slow-motion all over tumblr) but not even one word from her. The lengths the writers go to silence this charismatic gem is ridiculous.

That pattern of putting black women in "protective glass", which serves to "protect" them from passionate relationships and sexual portrayals is just one expression of misogynoir. The desexualization of Black women started from the Mammy trope and it still influences their portrayal, even when they're in established relationships. A recent and very classic example is the Vampire Diaries and their portrayal of Bonnie Bennett - the writers were happy to depict her being violently attacked and verbally and emotionally traumatized by friends and enemies alike, but deemed too "good, and strong and pure" to be in the same kind of passionate, dysfunctional relationships that every other white woman (bar none - I mean even the "Mommies" of this show got game; Bonnie's eventual "true love" (who they killed off for Real) was first in love with an MILF) was allowed to. How much of this is conscious malice or subconscious bias is debatable. I know of at least one Flash writer that hates Iris/Candice and ships Snowbarry (she favorited a tweet by a Snowbarry fan that likened her to a monkey). Then you read of guest writers who have their Westallen scenes "toned" down or outright erased, by the core writers and the room for debate diminishes...

Privilege summarized in one sentence. Because racism is a Special Kind of Evil.