Best Arrowverse episodes – No. 28
Finish Line (The Flash season 3 episode 23)
The Flash‘s third season may be remembered less fondly than its predecessors but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the creative team managed to pull things together as it sped towards its conclusion. As a result, we got “Finish Line” – the impressive season finale that brought the grim season to a close, leaving the show at an intriguing crossroads.
After Savitar’s plot to kill Iris was foiled, the evil Barry Allen time-remnant was slowly fading from existence. But in order to avoid his impending doom, he desperately tried to immortalize himself throughout time – another plot that ultimately failed. In the end, the self-proclaimed God of Speed took on The Flash, Kid Flash, Jay Garrick, Vibe and Gypsy before he met his end in a shocking twist that saw Iris kill him moments before he was erased.
This was a moment that righted the season’s wrongs as Iris West-Allen was no longer being portrayed as the helpless damsel that needed rescuing – she was the hero that rescued Team Flash and put an end to Savitar once and for all.
From H.R.’s emotional sacrifice to Killer Frost’s path to redemption, there were a lot of emotional hooks throughout the episode that also proved to be worthy, if predictable, conclusions to some of the season’s secondary arcs. But it was all capped off by a tear-jerking moment that saw Barry redeem his time-traveling sins by imprisoning himself in the Speed Force prison.
While not the show’s best season finale, it was miles ahead of almost everything else that the season produced and it, in the moment at least, brought The Flash back to where it needed to be.