Plot
As The Flash contends with a dangerous new Black Hole assassin called Sunshine while trying to conserve the last of the Speed Force energy, Cisco and Cecile try to find a way to force Eobard Thawne's mind out of Nash Wells' body.
Influences
The Indiana Jones movies (Nash and his world's version of Allegra having a relationship like Indy and Short Round, Nash having a signature hat), Fight Club (Cisco compares Nash's seeing the other Harrison Wells to Tyler Durden in this movie) and The Exorcism of Emily Rose (title, exorcism theme).
Goofs
Granting that Cecile has often been a source of well-meaning comic-relief on the show, her bringing vampire-fighting gear to help with a scientific inquiry is just idiotic.
Iris evokes the name of the Ringmaster and Cicada in talking about how metahumans have limits. Strictly speaking, Cicada was a wielder of meta-tech rather than a true meta and the classic Ringmaster in the comics used technology, not metahuman powers. (Of course given that this is the fake Iris, this may be meant to be another hint that she isn't who she says she is.)
Performances
It is a credit to Tom Cavanagh's skill as an actor that he can wring so much drama out of a scene where he talks to himself and says nothing more than "It's not my fault" and "It's all your fault" over and over.
Artistry
The fight scene between Sunshine and the CCPD is well blocked and thrilling.
Flash Facts
Thawne, posing as Nash, talks about having once stopped a swarm of psychic starfish on Earth-26. This is a reference to the classic Justice League villain Starro The Conqueror.
Sunshine is an original villain to the Arrowverse, but her powers - teleportation, invisibility and melting things - are exhibited by the classic Dr. Light in the comics. Unlike Dr. Light, however, Sunlight is dependent on ambient sunlight and does not generate energy on her own.
Iris makes reference to a villain called the Ringmaster who is nothing without his rings.This is a nod to an obscure Pre-Crisis Flash villain called The Ringmaster, who was an author named Beau Baer that had been hypnotized by the Golden Glider and outfitted with special ring-based gadgetry and made to become a rival superhero to The Flash. The Glider also abducted Iris West-Allen and tried to make her love the Ringmaster, before killing her and framing Flash for the crime. Once Baer was freed from Glider's control, he retired The Ringmaster and he was never seen again.
Technobabble
Eva McCulloch created a device she calls the Prismatic Refractor, which is capable of converting ambient light into energy.
Cisco hacked every Quantum Kinematic database on Earth-Prime and nobody knows anything about building an artificial Speed Force apart from the fact that The Reverse-Flash managed to do it in the future.
Cisco designs a Speed Gauge which measures the intensity of the velocity Barry generates whenever he uses his powers. The Speed Gauge lights up one of several colored lights based on how much energy Barry is using. Black is neutral, green is a small amount of energy, going through yellow and orange to red for maximum output.
Caitlin says that Nash's brainwaves appear to be multiple brainwaves woven together intricately when viewed as a three-dimensional pattern.
It is never explained just why Thawne was able to appear to Nash despite not being a true Wells. The most likely explanation is that Thawne was dragged along for the ride along with everyone else in a body that scanned as a genetic match for Nash Wells, given that Thawne did
Thawne, posing as Nash, claims to have a neuro-splicer in his belongings. He says that he doesn't think it could be used to separate thousands of brainwaves but Cisco thinks it could if it were super-charged using the EMP in Nash' gauntlet at 1500 volts per meter.
Whatever the device in Nash's belongings actually is, it knocks Barry, Caitlin and Cisco out long enough for Thawne, in Nash's body, to get to the STARchives and Rip Hunter's Time Bubble. Cisco later identifies this effect as a recoil loop.
Caitlin says there's no way to know what effect Velocity-X would have on Barry now, given how his powers have evolved in the past few years.
Cisco says that Thawne is just a series of negative tachyons that have gotten into Nash's body. Hitting Nash with positive tachyons should drive Thawne out, which leads Cisco to build a PTD (Positive Tachyon Device) capable of doing the job.
Cisco uses Cecile's empathy powers as a Thawne-detector, sense all she can read from Nash is pure hatred when Thawne is controlling him.
Without a physical body of his own, Thawne has to inspire negative emotions in his host to draw upon the Negative Speed Force.
Thawne's negative tachyons proliferate at a rate far faster than the output capabilities of the PTD. This means that it will only be a matter of time before he takes over Nash's body, according to Cisco, unless they find a way to help Nash fight back and stop feeding Thawne negative emotions to feed off of.
Cisco can't find any trace of Thawne's negative tachyons inside any organic matter on Earth, but he and Barry think he's just been dissipated - not destroyed. Cisco compares him to a "red-eyed, pissed-off Voldemort.
Nash describes being possessed by Thawne as like being underwater - you can see and hear what's going on at a distance, but you aren't really in control of anything.
Dialogue Triumphs
(Barry runs into his lab at the CCPD, with Sunshine in hot pursuit. She easily cuts through the lock on the sliding metal security door and walks inside.)
Sunshine: Come out, come out wherever you are.
(Sunshine chuckles as the steel security shutters slam down over the windows. At the same time, Joe comes in behind her, closing the door as he draws his gun. Sunshine shrugs and raises her hands, getting ready to draw on her powers as the last of the shutters slide into place over the skylight, plunging the room into darkness. Our point of view shifts as everything goes green and several officers armed with laser-sighted rifles emerge from the corners of the room, with their sights set on Sunshine. They are wearing night-vision goggles, as is Barry, who grins as he emerges from behind a support column.)
Barry: Yep. You're helio-kinetic. So without access to sunlight, you're just an ordinary thief.
(Sunshine looks around, knowing she's beaten as four laser sights move around her chest as Barry holds up a pair of meta-dampener cuffs.)
Barry: Limits suck, don't they?
Dialogue Disasters
Caitlin: Nash needs help. Not maiming.
Iris: Metas are the ones with limits: not people.
Continuity
The opening scene reveals that Kamilla has been replaced with a mirror duplicate like Iris was.
Eva McCulloch is apparently capable of creating duplicates of items in the mirror universe, but to finish her R-CEM machine she believes she needs the original Prismatic Refractor. She tasks the mirror duplicates with retrieving the original and bringing it to her.
The R-CEM is central to Eva McCulloch's long term plans.
The original Prismatic Refractor was sold to Mercury Labs several months earlier.
Joe and Chief Singh meet at C.C. Jitters to discuss Joe's RICO investigation into Dr. Carver.
Joe and Chief Singh agree they have to investigate the possibility of a mole in the CCPD working for Carver independent of Internal Affairs.
Joe tells Chief Singh that The Flash is aware of the investigation as well and thinks there's a dirty copy at work in the CCPD as well.
Nash says that he's been seeing other versions of Harrison wells from the Pre-Crisis Earths and they've been talking to him. He mentions the Wizard Wells (Earth-13), the French Wells, the New York Wells (who he likes) and Harry Wells of Earth-2.
Thawne poses as Nash as part of a plan to escape. Barry catches him before he can steal Rip Hunters' time bubble.
Barry nearly looses his temper and vibrates his hand through Nash's chest as Thawne taunts him about how he failed to save his daughter the last time they fought in 522.
Cecile brings holy water, garlic, a wooden stake, salt and a Ouija board when Cisco asks for help getting Thawne's mind out of Nash's body.
The alternate universe version of Allegra Garcia whom Nash Wells raised like a daughter was named Maya. Nash began teaching her everything he knew after finding her rooting through his tent looking for food and she found a secret hidden inside the Blood Bloom - an idol he had just stolen from the mouth of something called The Wollip..
The Blood Bloom contains a gem worth three-times more than the crystals on the surface.
Nash's first rule is that the prize is everything. Another one of Nash's rules is you don't give anyone anything for free. He gives Maya his hat as thanks for her finding the gem for him.
Thawne is somehow able to access Nash's memories and traps him inside his worst one, which involves being in a cave where he can see blinding daylight outside. This causes Nash to suffer, which Thawne can draw upon to tap the Negative Speed Force.
A new metahuman with light powers robs Mercury Labs while the Iris and Kamilla clones are trying to steal the Prismatic Refraactor.
Frost goes to fight the robber, who introduces herself as Sunshine.
The Velocity-X samples are kept inside a vault hidden inside a fake pinball machine in the main room of STAR Labs. It is unlocked by pressing your thumb against a hidden fingerprint scanner inside the change slot.
Sunshine has the power to teleport across short distances, can seemingly become invisible and has the ability to melt steel with her bare hands. She also reopens the wound Frost got from the Dr. Light in 610.
Barry's body rejects the Velocity-X outright.
Sunshine's real name is Millie Rawlins. She's a former US Army soldier, who was transferred to covert ops after she developed the metahuman ability to bend sunlight in her immediate vicinity following the STAR Labs particle accelerator explosion. Sunshine was her call-sign.
Joe recovered the Prismatic Refractor and refuses to let it out of his sight until ARGUS picks it up. The Iris clone tries to get it stored at STAR Labs but Barry says that he can't stop Sunlight so there's no point in trying to hide it at STAR Labs.
Joe tells the Iris clone twice that she should check on Barry as she keeps asking him about the Prismatic refractor.
The Iris clone tells Barry that maybe The Flash can't fight Sunshine, but maybe Barry Allen can out-think her.
Cecile says she can barely feel Nash through all the shame and guilt after Thawne traps him in his worst memory.
Thawne is able to connect to his Negative Speed Force and nearly escapes his bonds before Cisco puts a pair of meta-dampener cuffs on him and Cecile knocks him unconscious with her Ouija board.
Chief Singh shows up to oversee the transfer of the Prismatic Refractor to ARGUS personally, saying he now agrees with Joe's assessment that there is a mole in the CCPD.
Sunshine is revealed to have been in Joe's office the whole time he and Chief Singh were talking.
Barry sets a trap for Sunshine, luring her into his lab at the CCPD, which has steel shutters that can be locked over the windows and skylight. Once the windows are closed, she has no source of power.
Chief Singh suggests that Sunshine may have been spying on the CCPD all this time and altering the records for Carver instead of there being a mole.
Cecile's mother died in 1995.
Cecile describes the feeling she reads from Nash as being paternal, like how she feels about her daughters, but also being tinged with her feelings for her dead mother. This leads her to conclude that the alternate Allegra was Nash's daughter (or something close) and Thawne is feeding on Nash's feelings of loss regarding her death.
Barry suggests they use the MAD 2.0 to access Nash's mind and help him drive Thawne out, similar to how they used it in conjunction with Cecile's powers to access The Thinker's mind in 423.
Maya died trying to grab a memory cell from a sonic emitter from the highest peak of Corto Maltese on Earth-13. Rather than lose hold of the cell and pull herself up off a ledge, she lost her grip and fell off the mountain while Nash was helpless to do anything but watch.
When Nash admits that Maya's death was his fault, it cuts off the pain that Thawne was feeding on, causing his energy to erupt from Nash's body as a red lightning storm.
Cisco says there's nothing he can do to stop Nash from seeing and hearing the other Wells doppelgangers. He says that he'll be able to draw off their knowledge, however.
Cisco gives Harry back his picture of himself and Maya.
Harry goes off to explore and find some new adventure on Earth-Prime.
Cisco suggests that Nash should try and reach out to Allegra, noting that he never got along with any version of Harrison Wells at first but eventually he became good friends with every incarnation of them he worked with.
Harry Wells appears to Nash and tells him that what Cisco said was what he was trying to tell him.
Barry apologizes to Caitlin for not following her orders.
Barry says that the start for building their Speed Force is in Nora's journal, thinking that Thawne must have taught her how to make her own Speed Force.
The Iris and Kamilla doppelgangers stole the Prismatic Refractor while the CCPD was distracted fighting Sunshine and replaced it with the copy.
Eva McCulloch says her ultimate goal is liberation.
Location
Earth-719, 8 Years Ago.
Earth-13, 1 Year Ago.
Untelevised Adventures
The flashbacks reveal Nash Wells' history with an alternate universe version of Allegra Garcia, who is confirmed to have been his protege and basically his daughter and to have died because she couldn't let go of a prize.
Iris mentions a never-before seen villain called The Ringmaster.
The Bottom Line
A weak script that is salvaged only by the performances of the strongest actors in the show and the fact that most of the extraneous characters from this season aren't included in the story. It is somewhat saddening, however, that the return of the Reverse Flash is more of an annoyance than a major event but that's Season 6 of The Flash in a nutshell - everything is a distraction from the main plot and it's almost impossible to single out the main plot.
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