Tonight's episode of The Flash revealed that a future version of Barry Allen is, in fact, Savitar, but it's a twist which leaves us with more questions than answers. For example, why would he want to kill Iris West? What led to him being so heavily scarred and embarking down a villainous path? We'll be waiting until next week to learn more and a first look at the episode can actually be found down below.
In the meantime, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg has confirmed that we'll learn why this future version of Barry wants to kill Iris. "You get that in the next episode, and the mystery is ongoing, but obviously Savitar is a version of Barry Allen, a heavily scarred version." He then went on to elaborate on why the decision was made to make Barry Allen the big bad of season three as Speed God, Savitar.
"What’s really cool for anyone who thought that there wasn’t a plan, or we didn’t know, or we were making this up as we go, this was always where we were heading. The idea that the darkest villain we could come up with was actually a very damaged version of our hero was interesting and fresh to us. We’re not only competing with all the stuff that we’ve done on Flash, but we’re always competing with everything we’ve done on all the other shows. So to have our lead actor be both the hero and the villain isn’t something we’ve done before, so that was exciting for us as storytellers."
It's an interesting move, but also a very confusing one. The death of Iris West clearly pushed this Barry over the edge, though it's also possible he's one of the time remnants who managed to survive as we've been into the future and seen that the Scarlet Speedster ultimately overcomes his grief and returns to being a hero. Of course, that's just one possible future and if this emphasises anything, it's that time travel is seriously confusing! As always, be sure to share your thoughts in the usual place.