The scientist Harrison Wells has has had a lot of conflicting names and labels on The Flash. He's a mentor and a murderer, a mastermind and a man out of time. Even Harrison Well's evil endgame of The Flash doesn't add up. On one hand, Eobard Thawne himself has told the audience that he just wants to get home to his time. However, the operating system Gideon said pretty plainly that Thawne was there to kill Barry. Something is up.
We know that killing The Flash is why Eobard Thawne traveled back to the past in the first place. He was chasing Barry Allen and ended up in Allen's family home. What if — and this is probably the case so get your ibuprofen ready for the following headache scenario — what if past Thawne was there to kill future Barry and future Barry was there to save his mother's life, which inevitably caused her death? Because why else would Barry lead someone so dangerous to his homestead? It has to be some kind of loop like that, which would render her demise unavoidable.
At the end of last Tuesday's episode "Grodd Lives," Harrison Wells (I know he's Eobard Thawne, but I came to love this shady character under a different name first and I'm having a hard time letting go.) finished work on a a kind of thumb drive inside a vial of some sinister substance that he explained was his key to going home. What is it? Has he been harvesting this from all of the metahumans that crossed his path? Is he regaining a power, or creating a portal?
This turn of events in Harrison Wells' storyline is so mysterious, we don't even now where he is. Entertainment Weekly's Chancellor Agard speculated that Wells and Eddie are inside the particle accelerator, which at the very least will provide us with more fun references from Cisco. However, even Harrison Wells needs fresh air, and he would surely have been detected leaving and entering S.T.A.R. Labs by Cisco and Caitlin.
Maybe I've been watching too much Once Upon A Time, but I'm starting to wonder if Harrison Wells' ticket home will somehow give him an advantage in this epic battle against his rival, Barry. Is Harrison Wells trying to create an alternate universe? He's seemed pretty strictly adherent to keeping the future on track, but he could be waiting for the opportune moment to change the time line.
We also know that, while Eobard was born in a time that's centuries to come, a lot is riding on an event less than 10 years in the future, in which Barry Allen will go missing. This makes me think that Eobard Thawne needs to time travel again so that he can retrieve Barry Allen from 2024. Some of us need to get groceries on the way home and some of us have nemeses to kidnap.
Will Harrison Wells ever cease to be frustrating? Wanting to get home is an honorable goal. Eobard Thawne is basically Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz with super powers. However, it doesn't change the fact that the Reverse-Flash has it out for Barry Allen. There's no way that The Flash's Big Bad is just going to leave and be out of our hair forever.
Image: Cate Cameron/The CW
