The Flash: Three Burning Questions From The Midseason Finale

The midseason finale of The Flash had lots of great moments in it. Barry Allen finally caught up (briefly) with the man in yellow that killed his mom, and he finally told Iris West how he truly feels about her, for better or worse. We even got to see Barry have a moment with his imprisoned dad and another with his surrogate dad, Joe West. Plus Caitlin Snow found out her dead fiancée isn’t really dead; he just bursts into fire and doesn’t want to see her again.

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All those aspects of the episode were great, but the number one job of any midseason finale is to give us fans something to ponder while we wait for new episodes to return a few weeks from now. “The Man in the Yellow Suit” certainly succeeded in that regard, leaving us with quite a few things to debate during what’s certain to be a long wait until January 20.

Here are the three questions that I find myself returning to the most:

• Harrison Wells is definitely the Reverse-Flash … or is he?

For anyone hoping that Harrison Wells wasn’t going to turn out to be the killer of Barry’s mom, last night didn’t look too good. After all, we saw him with the Reverse-Flash’s costume, adding the tachyon technology to it. He even sounded like Reverse-Flash when he wished himself Merry Christmas. So that’s case closed, and all that’s left is to see the drama that unfolds as Barry tries to figure out it’s him, right?

Maybe, and the show wants more than ever to believe that. Still, not all fans are convinced, taking to Twitter and message boards last night to wonder about how Wells was beaten up by Reverse-Flash inside the force field if he is Reverse-Flash. And that is a quandary.

Since almost everyone agrees Wells is a time traveler, it could be that his future self is Reverse-Flash and needed to beat up his present self to make it look good (another example of how time travel gives me headaches). Or, as hard as it might be to believe, it’s still possible Wells is a bg red herring.

Many fans have pointed out that the doctor could actually be the TV version of Zoom, who was Wally West’s personal Reverse-Flash in the comics. Zoom’s real name was Hunter Zolomon, and like Wells pretends to be, he was paralyzed from the waist down. His motivation was to cause tragedy that would temper Wally and turn him into a better hero, which could be what Wells is playing at as well.

On top of that, Zoom didn’t draw from the Speed Force like most of the speedsters in the comics. His powers were actually time-based, giving him the appearance of nearly impossible speed. That would explain a lot with Wells, especially his need for tachyon device to have an alternate means of becoming really fast.

It’s an interesting theory, one that still leaves room for Eddie Thawne to become the Reverse-Flash we saw last night, though that would also involve him traveling through time. It could also be one of Eddie’s descendants, still harboring a family grudge for the way Barry wins Iris from Eddie – something we can assume is still a possibility. All I know is that despite what we saw, it’s not guaranteed that Wells killed Barry’s mom, and he almost definitely didn’t do it when it happened without some kind of time travel chicanery.

Next: Two speedsters in the lightning?