‘The Flash’ Killed [SPOILER]… Or Did They?

Spoilers for The Flash Season 8, Episode 2 “Armageddon, Part 2” past this point.

If you were worried about what was going on with Detective Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) after he was absent in the season premiere of The Flash, and a stray mention suggested he might be dead? Well, you should have been worried, because as revealed in the season’s second episode, Joe West is indeed dead. But that doesn’t mean Jesse L. Martin is leaving The Flash, or that he’s “actually” dead. What do we mean by that? Read on! Don’t stop reading! Never stop reading!

To take a big step back, last episode Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) found out thanks to new villain Despero (Tony Curran) that somehow, for some reason, The Flash is going to destroy the world. This week, we got a few more details about why he does it; specifically, Despero shared that something breaks The Flash’s mind and drives him insane.

It seems like the reason is the villain of the week, who has the power to drive people crazy, as well as use telekinesis to throw them about in the air. But Barry beats her, and along with the rest of Team Flash feels pretty pleased that they’ve survived the day. Despero was wrong, Barry won’t go nuts, and world is saved.

Then Barry asks about Joe, and everyone, stunned, tells him that isn’t funny. After freaking out and searching every room in the West family home, he’s finally confronted with the truth: Joe West died six months earlier. Swearing it’s not true, Barry immediately runs away the second Despero appears to kill him — after all, now that The Flash is clearly crazy, it’s time for the massive alien to save the world. And that’s where we’re left at the end of the episode: Joe West dead, Despero triumphant (sort of), and Barry seemingly on track to cause the titular armageddon.

…Only, here’s the thing: Martin was re-upped as a series regular for Season 8, and he’s in the opening credits. That doesn’t preclude the show shockingly killing him off in the second episode, but there’s actually a much more The Flash based explanation for what’s going on here, and it potentially gets into some spoilers for upcoming episodes.

Jumping back into “Armageddon, Part 2”, there are a couple of plot points that aren’t addressed by the supervillain du jour’s rampage, and also don’t seem to be the work of Despero. First, when he’s about to investigate a case for the CCPD, Barry is stopped by Kristen Kramer (Carmen Moore), and told to turn in his badge. He’s being accused of being a mole for Joseph Carver (Eric Nenninger) way back in Season 6 — which of course he’s not, but someone clearly set him up a long time ago. Next, the team is evacuated from S.T.A.R. Labs following a radiation leak, one they didn’t discover because their alert system stopped working a week earlier. And finally, there’s the death of Joe West, something that happened six months ago — i.e., the end of Season 7 — but Barry has no memory of whatsoever.

The explanation the show would like you to believe is that Barry is losing his mind, something that potentially is backed up in the final scene of the episode where he recruits Jefferson Pierce, aka Black Lightning (Cress Williams) to fight “injustice.” That’s partially dancing around the whole Arrow-verse is forming the Justice League without ever calling themselves the Justice League thing. But Pierce’s shocked expression also indicates that even he thinks maybe something is wrong with Barry.

But here’s an alternate theory: Barry being framed, the radiation leak, and the death of Joe West are all the machinations of Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse Flash (Tom Cavanagh). We already know that The Flash’s ultimate enemy will be appearing in — the latest — the fourth episode of the season, and here’s the synopsis for “Armageddon, Part 4”:

BARRY FACES OFF WITH EOBARD THAWNE – Barry (Grant Gustin) is shocked when Eobard Thawne (guest star Tom Cavanagh) returns in the most unexpected way, and with a tie to a loved one. Damien Darhk (guest star Neal McDonough) offers advice to Barry but there is a catch. An epic battle begins with Reverse Flash pitted against The Flash, Team Flash, Batwoman (guest star Javicia Leslie), Sentinel (guest star Chyler Leigh) and Ryan Choi (guest star Osric Chau).

Seems a pretty short leap to assume that the twist of this event is that Despero isn’t necessarily the villain (at least not initially), it’s once again Thawne. He messed with time to hurt Barry, leading to the death of Joe. And to take it one step further, I’d bet that Barry will have to team up with Thawne to battle Despero in the finale of the event, probably for “I get to kill Barry, not you,” reasons. Oh, super-villains.

The question, of course, is how fixed a point in time Joe’s death is, now that Thawne has presumably killed him. Again, pure speculation, but I’d guess not that fixed, since we’ll probably see Joe alive and well once this event is in the books. The Flash has had a tricky time (no pun intended) with changing the course of history in the past, but here they’ll probably let it slide to bring Papa West back into the fold.

So if you’re worried Joe West is dead, and Jesse L. Martin is leaving The Flash? Worry not. At least, not yet.

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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