My Thoughts On The Reverse Flash's Season 6 Return

Alright, I'm just gonna say it. As someone who has been a massive fan of the Reverse Flash character since Season 1 of the Flash series (despite some writing hi-cups along the way), I must say that I was a bit disappointed with his Season 6 return. There was admittedly so much hype on my end to finally have an awesome villain show up on the show post-Season 2's awesome Zoom era, and I felt like they butchered the opportunity a little. Now yes, Tom Cavanagh is indeed an absolutely fantastic actor and one of the major highlights of the show with his portrayal of various Harrison Wells and of course Eobard Thawne in disguise. This episode does get to show off those acting chops of his (primarily with his Nash Wells character's emotional arc here). However, the explanation, or lack there of, of why Thawne continues to look like Wells on the show is getting utterly ridiculous now.

I hate to say it, but although Reverse Flash is quite possibly my favorite character on the show, and I'm always happy to see Tom reprise the role, the writers consistently skimp out on any form of explanation as to how Thawne ends up in certain places and why he still guises himself as Wells. They even reference it in this episode with Barry literally asking about the whole Thawne-Wells possession idea, but no one answers him and the show just continues on as if the writers are saying "See? We know what you're thinking audience...we're just not going to explain it".

Are they saving it for some crazy reveal later on in the series (it better be worth the wait) or did the writers threw themselves into a corner a long time that they're hoping to just get by with a great performance by Tom and the excitement of fans of the character to sneak pass unexplained logic leaps? Now, I did enjoy this episode from a dramatic storytelling angle with Nash's tragedy being revealed and exploited by Thawne and the general excitement of seeing the Reverse Flash return. Sadly, there's only so much that a series can offer up in surface level content before some of the deeper components start to show themselves to be neglected. In this case? Explaining Thawne's entire "situation" seasons back to present day Earth-Prime.

Sad to say considering how much I love the character, but it's come down to the point where I simply won't accept anything less going forward than a straight forward, spoon fed (yes I said it), everything laid out on the table breakdown of why, where, when, and/or how Eobard is the way that he's been throughout certain points of history. Thawne gets erased on Legends by the speed force via Black Flash and then just pops up again working with Nazis from another Earth. During the Earth-X situation, Barry stupidly lets his greatest nemesis escape and we never get any word about where he ran off to or what the team was doing to try to keep taps on him or find him (their greatest nemesis people). 

Then the future prison story where we never know how he actually got caught with Cicada's dagger, when he got caught, who caught him (assumingely Barry?), or which version of the character was imprisoned. To then the Crisis on Infinite Earths situation where he never appears or is even mentioned once during the crossover even though we've been teased for ages about Flash and Reverse Flash's red skies Crisis conflict. "See you in our next Crisis" was such a tantalizing line wasn't it? Now we have this possession story where Thawne is somehow connected to the Wells doppelgängers even though he's technically not a Wells and only used his likeness as stated on the show.

Again, I still love the character and I still consider him to be the highlight of the show's gallery of villain conflicts, but we're now passed the excitement phase. Now it's time for solid foundational storytelling to step in and officially take over. This episode felt like the show didn't really know what to do and needed a guaranteed boost of fan excitement, so they went to their well (no pun intended?) and pulled out Thawne dangling him around like colorful keys in front of a baby. Hey...it worked. I enjoyed having him back on the show, but not at the cost of diving into glaringly untapped plot elements. The Flash has always been a series that explores its comic booky components with a heavy indulging of scientific talk and breakdowns via its scientist characters. Eobard Thawne is one giant "Cisco in front of a chalkboard" explanation scene that's begging to happen...but never does and it's starting to get a little frustrating.

And again, BRING MATT LETSCHER BACK!!!

Bonus Thoughts:

I know that there are a few interviews online where the producers do bring up certain stuff about Thawne but those things are not present in the show so the question is “Is it fair for fans to have to look up interviews to get story elements revealed or should it all be displayed within the content itself?". Also, I know that there are tons and tons of videos online of fans explaining Thawne's timeline appearances but these turn out to be conflicting drawn out speculations and theories (as interesting as they are to listen to). I'm sure there are context clues on the show leaving a bread crumb trail to follow, but I'm not too trusting of the writing to believe that the crumbs lead to an actual answer. Instead, I get the feeling that if one were to actually follow what the show has revealed so far, it would lead to some lazily thrown together statement like "That's the thing about time travel. The more you do it, the less the rules apply to you". Or perhaps we can just say "Negative Speedforce...that's all you need to know". 

Seriously, someone get Cisco a chalkboard and let's actually do some traditional meta human analyzing for someone who now desperately needs it.