Spoiler Warning: If you haven’t watched “Infantino Street” yet, go no further. Also, if you watched the episode but don’t want to read a guess about how the finale might play out then stop before the “Theory” section.
In The Flash’s penultimate episode of Season 3, we finally reached the fateful moment that the entire season has been building up to: Iris’ death. The show has been dragged down by that singular focus for the back half of the season, as Team Flash continued to have increasingly bad ideas about how to save Iris from Savitar. As we recently learned, this is pretty much all Barry’s fault from messing with time and using time remnants, and future Team Flash evidently not accepting one of the surviving remnants who just wanted to live a nice, Barry Allen life. It’s a mess, but one thing “Infantino Street” got very right was that it actually allowed that terrible moment between Iris and Savitar to play out. I’m not saying that Iris should die, and I don’t think she actually does, but at least subverting the trope of a last-minute save was something unexpected for the series. Essentially: yes, Barry, there are consequences (something Flashpoint didn’t really teach him well enough).
That’s still a pretty harsh lesson to learn. Everything Team Flash did, including throwing that Philosopher’s Stone into the Speed Force, helped to empower Savitar. Ultimately it does all come down to Barry, but he (and the team) are still learning how to handle his powers and abilities, both in fighting evil metas and in the tantalizing reset that it seems to offer.
It’s also unfortunate because of the fact that the show has never done Iris any justice as a character. She had a fiancee — and he died to save everyone from Barry’s mistakes. She had a job — but that’s all fallen by the wayside as she stands around S.T.A.R. labs watching her friends come up with ways to save her, and yet, she’s almost never included in the conversation. The only request we get to see before her possible death is to eat caviar. Surely she had some other things she might have wanted to do?
All of this made Iris’ actual death far more devastating though, instead of less so, because the first time she really got to have a moment to herself on the show was through a recording she made for Barry if she died. It was pretty horrifying, and an emotional gut-punch to see Barry and the team fail at the one thing they have been working to prevent all season (even though they never did a very good job of it along the way).
However, as I said, I don’t think that Iris is really dead. We know that her death is the lynchpin of the Savitar loop. If that changes, then the timeline will change to destroy Savitar — or at least break the loop and allow Barry to take out this aberration version of himself. For Iris to really die ... The Flash has been dark this season, but I really don’t think it’s that dark. That would propel the show into such a bleak place to start Season 4, and we’ve already seen how that pervasive darkness hurt this season. So if Iris survives, how? We saw Savitar kill her, and Barry hold her lifeless body.
The Theory
My theory is thus: HR is the key. There were a few scenes that felt pretty shoehorned in for plot during “Infantino Street,” including a quick jaunt to see Wells 2.0 and the introduction of a “transmogrifier.” This nifty device can turn you into someone else, which is how Barry transformed into Lyla to break into ARGUS. Later, we see HR not only spill the beans of Iris’ location to Savitar, but also him beating himself up over it, and having a heart-to-heart with Cisco about how useless he’s been to the team. He’s essentially been a one-man cheer squad, but he hasn’t directly helped them solve any of their big issues. With Cisco, he talks about how much the team has done for him, and how he let them down. In a final scene, we see him looking at a shard of Savitar thoughtfully.
Did HR use the transmogrifier to “become” Iris, and take her place?
Here’s how it could have worked: Savitar pushed Iris aside and ran around while Barry tried to blast him with the Speed Force bazooka. During that time, everyone was watching him (including our view). Did HR pull the switcheroo then? I think that Wally — who is faster than Barry, and who they were hoping could get to Iris fast enough to save her — healed from his Savitar injuries (we know Speedsters can heal extremely fast), and that HR asked him to transport him there and take Iris to safety.
Another clue: In Cisco’s vibes, HR was on the roof of a building with a kind of bazooka gun while Savitar held Iris. That didn’t happen this time — it was Joe with a gun, Barry with the bazooka, and HR being left behind in STAR Labs. But was he really on the scene as Iris?
Obviously there are a few flaws in this theory. Once Savitar kills “Iris,” if that was really HR then surely he would have morphed back into being HR? But then again, what do I know about the subtleties of the transmogrifier?
It would also mean that HR would have to, pretty quickly, convince Wally to escort him to his death. And, it would be the second time in three years that a suicide saved the day, not to mention the third Harrison Wells that would have gone through in as many seasons.
There are some other ideas about remnants or Irises from other Earths, but that would all just be repeating the same mistake that created Savitar. As dumb as Team Flash can be about that kind of thing, it would also be another murder — Is murdering Iris West 2.0 or 15.0 any better 1.0? It seems extremely unlikely. No, the Flash likes sacrifice, and the introduction of the transmogrifier in this key moment, along with HR’s comments that he hadn’t contributed enough to the team, feels like it’s setting up HR’s death.
Losing HR doesn’t mean he wouldn’t just be replaced by another Wells or a previous one (Wells 2.0 doesn’t really need to stay on Earth-2 now that Jessie Quick has chosen to live on Earth-3, which was his entire reason for leaving Team Flash). The team really is too big, though, and Season 3 proved that the writers don’t really have enough for all of these characters to do (actually that’s not true — there’s plenty for those characters to do, but instead we spent 15 episodes focused on Barry and his mistakes and him feeling really bad about it). We also don’t know how things with Killer Frost will play out, and how that balance within her of her Caitlin side may affect things, though I don’t know that she is involved in the saving of Iris.
Again, all of this presumes that Iris survives, because otherwise that’s a terrible weight for Barry to handle moving forward, knowing that not only did he fail to save the love of his life, but he actually killed her (or a version of himself did).
So let me know your theories in the comments, and what you think might happen in the finale. Do you think Iris survives? What about HR?
