The Flash Episode Guide: Season 2, Episode 5 - The Darkness And The Light

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.


Plot

The good news is that the Harrison Wells of Earth 2 (a.k.a. Harry) has come to join the battle against Zoom. The bad news is that he's an arrogant dick and everyone is reluctant to work with him. And that's ignoring that he's the spitting image of the man who caused the STAR Labs team so much pain.

But they will have little time for bickering when Zoom's latest minion - a thief called Dr. Light - begins robbing banks to lure The Flash into a fight. And after Barry's first encounter with Dr. Light leaves him blinded, he'll have to do something truly heroic - go on his first date with Patty Spivot while unable to see!


Influences

Doctor Who (The Earth 2 Harrison Wells acts like some of the more arrogant incarnations of The Doctor, even mistakenly calling someone Ricky as The 9th Doctor did when speaking to Micky Smith), The Steve Martin film Roxanne (the scene of Cisco trying to guide a blind Barry through a date through a headset) and The Flash and Vibe comics of Geoff Johns (Cisco's ability to sense things about "breachers" mirrors the comic-version's ability to find and track inter-dimensional disturbances.)


Goofs

How did Harry travel from Earth 2 to Earth 1 when a speedster's power is needed to jump worlds? Or were they wrong about that when they stabilized the breach in STAR Labs basement?

Why do the Earth 2 meta-humans need to kill their Earth 1 counterparts? It made a sort of twisted sense in the case of Atom Smasher, who was already a hardened killer and actively looking to lay low in Central City. But Dr. Light was actively looking to escape from Zoom and get out of town and it wasn't like anyone was in danger of confusing her and the Linda Park of Earth 1.

Jay Garrick seems to change his tune on helping Barry and proving he isn't a coward pretty quickly between Barry going after Dr. Light and Barry's return to STAR Labs.

Kendra says she just moved to Central City, but we saw her in town the day of The Singularity opening some seven months earlier. Was she lying for some reason?


Performances

The date between Patty and Barry is the high-point of the episode and Grant Gustin and Shantel VanSanten make the whole affair fun and uplifting to watch.

Tom Cavanagh is always a joy to watch but his turn as "Harry" is amusing in a totally different way. You can tell he's having fun playing yet another variation on the Harrison Wells character at this point.


Artistry

The special effects for this episode - with Barry catching Joe's bullets before they can hit Wells, dodging light blasts in his first encounter with Dr. Light and the speed mirages during Barry's final fight with Dr. Light - are of particularly high quality, even by the standards of this show.


Flash Facts

Harry Wells, indifferent to the deaths his Earth 1 counterpart caused, refers to Ronnie as Ricky, much to Caitlin's annoyance. This may be a nod to Doctor Who, where some versions of The Doctor were arrogant and didn't bother remember people's names. Indeed, the Ninth Doctor continually addressed Mickey Smith - the boyfriend of his companion Rose Tyler - as Ricky.

There are several characters in the DC Comics universe who go by the name Dr. Light.

The first Doctor Light was a Justice League villain with the unlikely name of Dr. Arthur Light. Dr. Light possessed an advanced power suit that gave him the ability to project and manipulate light energy. There are two conflicting stories as to how he acquired the suit. One says that he stole advanced technology from the planet Thanagar after accidentally opening a portal there. The other had him developing the suit with the aid of his partner, Jacob Finlay. In either case, Dr. Light eventually internalized these powers and no longer required a special suit.

The second Doctor Light was a Japanese scientist by the name of Kimiyo Hoshi. Both a medical doctor and an astronomer, she was empowered with the ability to generate and control light like a living star by The Monitor during the Crisis On Infinite Earths. Arrogant and spiteful, Kimiyo was a reluctant hero, at best and continued to live her life as a scientist, only utilizing her powers when absolutely necessary. Still, she did serve in Justice League Europe for a time and became good friends with the Wally West incarnation of The Flash.

The DCTVU version of Dr. Light appears to be an amalgam of both versions of Dr. Light. Like the first one, she is a thief by trade. Like the second one, her powers are natural rather than technologically based, though she is described as drawing power from starlight rather than generating it naturally. She is also an Asian woman, though the comic-book Dr. Light was Japanese and Linda Park (in the comics at least) was an American of Korean ancestry. (Strangely, the actress who plays Linda Park on the show - Olivia Cheng - is a Canadian of Chinese ancestry!)

The ability to channel energy by absorbing starlight is the main power of the man DC Comics heroes who went by the name Starman.  The first Starman, Ted Knight, was a member of the Justice Society of America along with Jay Garrick.

The DCTVU version has the ability to generate blinding bursts of light as well as focused lasers capable of cutting through a bank vault. She also seems to be able to convert the light into explosions with a concussive element capable of knocking people over.

Dr. Light's costume on the show uses the same black and white color scheme of both Dr. Lights from the comic.

Curiously, no version of Dr. Light until now, has ever worn a mask.

Cisco's powers, as described in this episode, are consistent with those of his New 52 counterpart.  In the comics, Vibe is described as having the power to find and track inter-dimensional breaches. He acquires these abilities after his DNA is rewritten following his being caught in the event horizon of an Apokolyptian Boom Tube.

The trick Harry suggests to Barry - running so fast that he creates a speed mirage of himself - is a trick that The Flash used in the classic comic books to confuse those enemies who had a chance of hitting him. This trick was also used by The Reverse Flash in 109.

The new barista at C.C. Jitters that Cisco asks out is named Kendra Saunders. She has the same name as the modern Hawkgirl in the DC Comics Universe and we will discuss her history in a future entry.

At the episode's end, Cisco adopts the name of his comic book counterpart - Vibe.


Technobabble

A human from Earth 1 is genetically indistinguishable from their Earth 2 counterpart.

Stars have a temperature of 5,300 degrees Kelvin and a blinding luminosity.

Cisco claims he can use STAR Labs satellite to scan for any irregular solar radiation emissions to track Dr. Light.

Barry temporarily acquires solar retiinopathy. His retinas are severely damaged but, owing to his faster-than-normal healing abilities, Harry estimates that he will recover fully within 6.25 hours.

Harry's Metahuman Awareness App watch flashes red when pointed at a metahuman and blue when pointed at a regular human.

Barry creates a speed mirage of himself by running so fast that he creates multiple after images of himself.


Dialogue Triumphs

Cisco: So let me get this straight? You're the doppelganger of the man who murdered his (Barry's) mom, and is responsible for both Ronnie and Eddie's deaths?
Caitlin: Yeah, but he's not even the doppelganger of the Dr. Wells that we knew, because that Dr. Wells' body was taken over by The Reverse Flash, who was really Eoboard Thawne and Eddie's distant relative from the future.
Harry: (pause) Yeah, I didn't follow any of that. I'm my own man. I had nothing to do with the murder of your mother or your friend Ricky.
Caitlin: His name was Ronnie!
Harry: Him either.

Joe: I just want one week where we're not surprised by somebody from our past!

Cisco: (To Harry) You know, our Dr. Wells may have been evil but you're just a dick.

Harry: What did he do to you? I know he caused The Singularity. He killed Barry's mother. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. What did he do to you? You can barely look me in the eye? Why is that? What did he do to you?
Cisco: He shoved his hand through my chest. He stopped my heart.
Harry: (chuckles) Ouch. Okay THAT would do it.

(Iris sees Harry and tenses up)
Iris: You... look just like him!
Harry: I'm guessing my counterpart did something to offend her as well?
Cisco: Her fiance died because of him.
Harry: (pause) Oh.
(Harry turns and leaves the room)
(Cisco is monitoring Barry's date with Patty through the sunglasses Barry is wearing)
Cisco: Dude, she looks amazing! You have to tell her how amazing she looks.
Barry: You look amazing, Patty.
Patty: Uh, thanks. I actually had a really hard time trying to figure out what to where. Like, if I should wear a dress or if this color was a little weird?
Barry: No! You look great!. Um, yeah, no, that - what WOULD you call that color?
Patty: Um - huh.. I don't know?
Cisco: I can't tell! The feed's black and white!
Barry: Yeah, well, whatever it is, that color should thank you for wearing it.
Cisco: (laughs) My man!

Party: I think another thing too. I think you can't see me.
Cisco: Abort!
Barry: What?! What do you mean?
Patty: I think you can't see me. Come on, I would not be a good detective if I couldn't have figured this one out.
(They both laugh)
Barry: Uh - yeah.
Patty: Yeah.
Barry: I'm really sorry and embarrassed that I didn't say anything.
(Barry tucks his glasses into his jacket pocket) 
Cisco: Barry?
Barry: I had my pupils dilated earlier and I really didn't want to cancel.
Cisco: Barry! I lost my eyes!
Barry: No, you have a great smile.
Patty: Really? How do you know I'm smiling?
Barry: Just a hunch.

(As Patty guides a still-blind Barry)
Patty: Funny how we've skipped straight to the hand-holding part.
Barry: Yes.
Patty: We've arrived at my car.
Barry: Ah. (pauses) Well, do you think we've reached the good night kiss stage?
(Patty guides Barry's hands onto either side of her face. He smiles and they kiss. They both break the kiss,  laugh and Barry opens his eyes, which have finally focused again)
Barry: This is burgundy, by the way, And you look great in it.
Patty: Now you can see?
Barry: I can.
Patty: That must have been some kiss.
Barry: I guess so.


Continuity

Harry Wells created a series of Meta-human Awareness Apps. They are capable of instantly detecting the presence of a meta-human and can even sense the approach of a speedster seconds before they arrive.

Eight months earlier on Earth 2, Jay Garrick, as The Flash, publicly accused Harry Wells of creating the metahumans with his experiments and dark-matter radiation being expelled beneath STAR Labs.. Wells denied the charges and Garrick was unable to prove anything.

Harry Wells has a daughter.

The breach in the basement of STAR Labs on Earth 1 connects to the basement of STAR Labs on Earth 2.

Harry Wells now takes responsibility for creating the metahumans of his world.

Once again, it is confirmed that the Big Belly Burger franchise exists on both Earth 1 and Earth 2.

Joe tells Barry about the break-in at Mercury Labs from 204 and how Dr McGee claimed to have seen Harrison Wells.

Barry refers to Eddie's sacrifice erasing Eobard Thawne from existence in 123.

Linda Park is seen for the first time since 203. It turns out her Earth 2 counterpart is Dr. Light.

Eric Larkin, the editor-in-chief of the Central City Picture News, is seen for the first time since 111. He is killed by Dr. Light.

Joe taught Iris how to fire a pistol and gives her one to protect herself.

Patty refers to the shark-monster from 204. She named him King Shark. Cisco approves.

Cisco decides - to avoid confusion - that the should call the Earth 2 Harrison Wells "Harry".

Cisco gets a "vibe" of Dr. Light robbing a bank. This is the first one he's had since 202.

The local newspaper on Earth 2 is called The Central City Citizen. This also the name of the future Earth 1 newspaper Eobard Thawne consulted regarding the stability of the timeline.

Jay Garrick and Harrison Wells know each other. They don't like each other. At all. Wells is determined to beat Zoom as quickly as possible. Garrick wants to train Barry further before attempting a direct confrontation

Jay says that Dr. Light was a thief, not a killer and could be reasoned with. Wells says Zoom has the ability to manipulate people into doing what the wants now and they can't count on that fact.

Eobard Thawne and Harry have very different musical tastes. According to Cisco, Thawne's were better.

Zoom apparently knows that Barry Allen is The Flash and that he dated Linda Park.

Patty once arrested her boyfriend (soon to be ex-boyfriend) while on a date, after he got drunk and insulted the waitress.

Coffee does exist on Earth 2. Indeed, Jay thinks it may be the one constant in the multiverse.

Jay Garrick fought Zoom many times and nearly died in all of those encounters. He admits to being afraid of Zoom and maybe shying away from fights with him. Garrick does not trust Wells at all and notes that Wells was happy to deny responsibility for creating the metahumans on Earth 2 so long as he was making money off the crisis with his Metahuman Awareness Apps.

When Patty was 9, she drowned and was legally dead for two minutes before her dad revived her.

Earth 2 has a Tahiti, but Jay Garrick has never been there. He has, however, been to Atlantis and loved it. Atlantis in Earth 2 is above water and Jay has a close friend from there. He describes it as the kind of place you never want to leave.

Jay and Caitlin are blasted by Dr. Light before they can have their first kiss.

Barry and Patty have their first kiss.

Barry is much faster than Jay, despite Jay having more practical experience and having mastered a few more tricks with his speed than Barry.

Harry deduces that Cisco has powers and uses his Metahuman Awareness App to prove that Cisco is a metahuman  The watch also detects Barry as a metahuman and says Caitlin is not a metahuman. He reveals this fact to the rest of the STAR Labs team.

Cisco is able to use the mask to get a "vibe" on where Dr. Light is.

The trick Harry suggests to Barry - running so fast that he creates a speed mirage of himself - is a trick that The Flash used in the classic comic books to confuse those enemies who had a chance of hitting him. This trick was also used by The Reverse Flash in 109.

At episode's end, Dr. Light is locked up in the pipeline and the STAR Labs team - minus Jay Garrick - decides to go with Harry's plan to use Dr. Light as bait to lure Zoom into a trap.

We first saw Kendra Saunders in 123 among the people watching The Singularity open. She says that Central City is bigger than she's used to and very different from where she used to live. She agrees to a date with Cisco.

Harry is seen stalking Barry, Caitlin and Cisco at CC Jitters.

Zoom has Harry's daughter held hostage.


Location

The opening scene, where Jay Garrick accuses Harry Wells of creating the metahumans, takes place at STAR Labs on Earth 2, eight months earlier.

We see Harry's daughter being held captive by Zoom in a cage somewhere on Earth 2.


Untelevised Adventures

Jay Garrick refers to having fought Dr. Light before, saying that she is a thief rather than a killer and that she can be reasoned with.


The Fridge Factor

Averted hard in the case of Patty, who figures out that Barry is blind on their date. Granted, it wouldn't take a detective to figure that out, but it's a welcome change from the usual comic cliches where the hero's love interest never notices things like the hero wearing sunglasses at night.

Averted again as it is Iris who stops Dr. Light with a well-placed gun-shot.


The Bottom Line

It isn't bad. But there's a lot going on and very little of it (the new Harrison Wells, Cisco's powers being revealed to the team, Dr. Light being an evil version of Barry's ex-girlfriend/Iris' co-worker) is given the weight it deserves. Ironically the best parts of the episode are when things slow down and we get to see Barry and Patty's first date and Jay flirting with Caitlin, talking about how Earth 2 is different from Earth 1.

The Flash Episode Guide: Season 2, Episode 4 - The Fury of Firestorm

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.



Plot

With Dr. Stein's health failing and his Firestorm powers manifesting erratically, the STAR Labs team start looking for a possible "match" who might be able balance him out. They find two possibilities - scientist Dr. Henry Hewitt and ex-football star Jefferson Jackson. Caitlin immediately takes a liking to Dr. Hewitt, but is he really the best man for the job?

Meanwhile, as Barry continues his flirtation with Patty Spivot and Joe learns the seemingly tragic reason behind his wife's return to Central City, a burglar with a familiar face breaks into Mercury Labs...


Influences

Various Firestorm and The Fury of Firestorm comics (the characters of Jefferson Jackson and Henry Hewitt, and the many stories where the Firestorm powers went wonky because one half of the Firestorm Matrix needed another person to bond with)


Goofs

Jax asks Caitlin if Ronnie was the man who flew into the breach and saved everyone. Yet in the first episode of Season Two, it was implied that nobody noticed the flying man and everyone thought The Flash had saved Central City.

Why doesn't The STAR Labs team hand Hewitt over to the CCPD? He did blow up the lab that employed him. And Iron Heights has the ability to hold an explosive metahuman now, if it turns out they're wrong about him losing his powers. And while putting Hewitt in prison knowing everything he does about STAR Labs isn't a great idea, it's not like holding him in The Pipeline until he agrees not to talk and trusting him to keep his word is a workable solution either.


Performances

Once again, Victor Garber steals the show as Professor Stein.

Franz Drameh offers a surprisingly strong performance as Jefferson Jackson.  He immediately makes Jax into a likeable and heroic figure in the opening scene, where we see him trying to warn people of the explosion and stopping to help an injured teammate. This helps to keep him sympathetic despite his reluctance to get involved at first and you really feel his joy at being able to fly.

Candice Patton hasn't been given a lot to do as Iris West. But her scenes here, in which she confronts the mother who abandoned her twice, show that she's a great actress when given something to do besides play the damsel in distress.


Artistry

The soundtrack for this episode is fantastic. The music as Jax and Professor Stein merge is of particular note.

There's a lot of ironic humor in this script, with Joe telling Patty she'd better learn to lie (that DOES seem to be a pre-requisite for being a character on this show!) and Cisco saying he'd love to be a superhero, even as he's been hiding his newfound powers from everyone but Professor Stein.

The closing sequence is very well directed and choreographed.  And wow - a twice surprising ending!


Flash Facts

The name Jefferson Jackson comes from the original Fury of Firestorm comic. In that book, Jefferson Jackson was a friend of Ronnie Raymond, who played with him on their high-school's basketball team. The two double dated with their respective girlfriends and Jefferson helped Ronnie in dealing with the class bully.

The DCTVU version of Jefferson "Jax" Jackson is a star quarterback on the Central City High football team rather than a basketball player. He had a 4.0 GPA and wanted to go to college, but his family couldn't afford to send him there. He suffered an injury on the night of the Particle Accelerator Explosion which destroyed his ability to play football and his chances of going to college. Instead, he became a mechanic.

It is speculated that the DCTVU version of Jefferson Jackson was created due to a failure to bring back Luc Roderique, who played Jason Rusch in Episode 110.

On the show, Rusch was a graduate student who had helped Professor Stein with his work. In the comics, Rusch was the young genius who replaced Ronnie Raymond as Firestorm following the events of the story Identity Crisis.

The DCTVU version of Dr. Henry Hewitt is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Hudson University - the same college Professor Stein worked for. He dual-majored in applied physics and bio-engineering. After acquiring energy absorption and projection powers, he seems to become more powerful the angrier he gets.

In the comics, Henry Hewitt was the name of the Firestorm villain Tokamak. Hewitt was a scientist and CEO who attempted to recreate the accident that created Firestorm. He was unsuccessful, but did give himself the power to absorb and project energy as well as the power of flight, though he had to forge a special atomic containment suit. He was seemingly defeated by the Ronnie Raymond Firestorm after his suit was breached, but emerged years later as an enemy to the Jason Rusch Firestorm.

Tokamak takes his name from a device used to contain plasma within a magnetic field that becomes more unstable as it increases in power.

Francine West claims to be suffering from MacGregor's Syndrome. This is a frequently cited fictional disease in DC Comics media adaptations. In the movie Batman and Robin, it was the disease which plagued Nora Fries, which inspired her husband - Dr. Victor Fries - to put her into cryogenic suspension until he could find a cure. Alfred Pennyworth also suffered from the condition. On Arrow, it was the condition which plagued William "Clock King" Tockman.

In Batman and Robin, MacGregor's Syndrome's symptoms were never discussed beyond Alfred Pennyworth becoming increasingly weak and tired.  In Arrow, it caused a build-up of fluid in the lungs, causing oxygen deprivation and eventual multi-system organ failure. Francine West claims ex-drug addicts frequently develop it.

Henry Hewitt worked at Eikmeier Technologies. This may be named in honor of Brooke Eikmeier - a writer on The Flash TV show and The Flash: Season Zero comic book.

The latest Earth 2 villain who attacks Barry at the end of the episode, though unnamed, appears to be modeled on King Shark. Originally a Superboy villain, King Shark had two wildly conflicting origins - one that named him as a mutant that evolved from sharks as man evolved from apes and the other that named him as a son of an ancient Hawaiian Shark God.  The New 52 incarnation of King Shark is a member of the Suicide Squad and has no clear background as of yet.

Curiously, The Flash: Season Zero comic introduced an Earth 1 version of King Shark in an eight-part storyline told in The Flash: Season Zero #11-18.  This King Shark was a sick man named Shay Lamden, who was caught in the Particle Accelerator Explosion while undergoing an experimental treatment involving shark cells.  The merger of dark matter and shark DNA transformed Shay into an ever-hungry monster, who the DCTVU version of Amanda Waller eventually recruited into The Suicide Squad.


Technobabble

Cisco creates a new version of the stabilizer Eobard Thawne created to merge the two halves of the Firestorm Matrix, using the power source from Thawne's wheelchair.Cisco transfers the stabilizer into a "power cane" that will enable Professor Stein to walk but he guesses it will only last for a few days.

Caitlin notes that when the Particle Accelerator exploded, the dark mater released collided with Professor Stein and fused him with The Firestorm Matrix, altering the normal molecular processes that occur within his body. The highly reactive molecules created by this process needed something to bond with in order to stabilize - i.e Ronnie Raymond. As a result, Stein is becoming more unstable the longer he goes without merging with a suitable partner.

Caitlin finds two potential candidates, based on an analysis of people who were affected by the dark matter, showed signs of gene rearrangement mutation upon being hospitalized and who also share Professor Stein's blood type.

Caitlin claims that if she can isolate the genetic locus of the two candidates and cross-reference it with the mutations in Professor Stein, she may be able to find a match.

Caitlin's analysis of the blood samples Barry retrieves from both Firestorm candidates determines there is no agglutination and cross-matching was negative for both. She also determines the dark matter mutated their genes in a similar way to Professor Stein's.

Barry notes that more of Jefferson Jackon's alleles match up with Stein's than Hewitt's.

The splicer releases a molecular primer into the body of a perspective partner. This causes a rush-like sensation, after which the partner can make physical contact with Professor Stein and the Firestorm Matrix takes over.

Caitlin and Cisco describe Firestorm's powers as the ability to process fission and fusion, harness excess energy and turn it into nuclear blasts. He can also fly.

The "shark teeth" that Patty finds contain human DNA.

Like Professor Stein, Henry Hewitt requires a grounding agent to remain stable after his latent powers are activated.

Professor Stein develops a 142 degree temperature, though the exact scale is not noted. Caitlin notes that he's going into rapid oxidation and requires some kind of coolant.

Caitlin compares Hewitt to a tokamak - a controlled fusion device used to contain plasma within a magnetic field, which becomes more unstable as it becomes more powerful. This leads to her suggesting they make Hewitt so angry that he literally blows a fuse.


Dialogue Triumphs

Barry: (Opening Voice Over) Everyone secretly thinks they've figured out what their life is going to be like. But what no one ever considers is that Life has its own plans for you, whether you like them or not. And so you're left with a choice. You can either embrace the change and move forward. Or fight it and be left behind.

(Upon Barry's return with blood samples from Henry Hewitt and Jefferson Jackson)
Cisco: Damn!  That was fast, even for you!
Barry: (wincing) I may have skipped the "asking for permission" part.

Iris: I'm sure that you've been through a great deal. And I can appreciate you feeling like this is suddenly the right time for you to want me in your life. But that doesn't mean that it's the right time for me.
Joe: Iris...
Iris: No, Dad. It's okay. I've thought about this a lot. And it wasn't fair for me to make you the bad guy. (turns back to Francine) So I want you to hear this from me. I don't hate you, Francine. I do wish you well. But we have lived separate lives for over twenty years. Let's keep it that way.

Patty: I'm not really good at lying.
Joe: Well, you'd better learn. Quick.

Caitlin: Professor Stein is getting worse. And Hewitt's like this because of me. And now Jefferson Jackson will never come back because of what i said about him. I just... didn't believe that he had what it takes!
Barry: This isn't because you didn't believe in him. Sometimes great possibilities are right in front of us and we don't see them because we choose not to. I think that... we need to be open to exploring something new.

Caitlin: My husband, Ronnie? He used to be Professor Stein's other half. He actually helped build the Particle Accelerator and when it exploded he was affected by it too. Ironically, that's how he got the chance to show the world what he was truly capable of. And he died saving this city.
Jefferson: Wait - he was that guy who flew into the black hole?  That was him?
Caitlin: He was a hero. You can be one too.
Jefferson: I never wanted to be a hero! What I wanted was to go to college, but we couldn't afford it. Football was my way in...until that got taken from me.
Caitlin: I know. Look, I know The Particle Accelerator took something from you but it also gave you something in return. Something even more spectacular - the opportunity to be part of something bigger. To be part of a team that's working to protecting people from losing what you lost. I believe you were meant to be a hero.

Jefferson: Well, like my coach always said - "Out of yourself and into the team".

(After Jefferson and Professor Stein merge)
Caitlin: Jax? Is Professor Stein...?
Jefferson: How will I know?
Professor Stein: (Voice Over)  Hello Jefferson. Now you know.
Jefferson: Woah! So I get Grey as my co-pilot?
Professor Stein: (Voice Over) Did no one ever inform you of that fringe benefit?

Professor Stein: If I may offer a bit of parting advice? Cisco, I know you're scared. But this ability you have is a gift, not a curse. It's naturally to be apprehensive about the unknown but look at Jefferson. He took a leap and it changed his life for the better. The very thing that makes you different is what makes you special.  Tell your friends.

Barry: Things aren't always what they seem. Our fears can play tricks on us, making us afraid to change course. Afraid to move on. But usually, hidden behind our fears, our second chances waiting to be seized...
(Cut to Caitlin updating her file on Firestorm to change Ronnie's name to Jefferson's)
Barry: Second chances at life...
(Cut to Jefferson, as Firestorm, flying and whooping in sheer joy)
Barry: At glory....
(Cut to Iris, sitting on a couch, looking sad)
Barry: At family...
(Cut to The Flash, stopping and watching Patty at CC Jitters, through the window)
Barry: At love. And these opportunities don't come around every day. So when they do we have to be brave, take a chance, and grab them while we can.
(As Barry thinks this, a large, clawed hand reaches out and grabs his head, as we pull back to reveal a giant man-shark creature) 


Continuity

Cisco refers to the events of 122 and how they tapped most of energy in the power cell from Eobard Thawne's wheelchair making a dampening field to contain the metahumans they'd been holding. That same cell is used to craft a new stabilizer for Professor Wells, which Cisco is able to turn into a "power cane".

Iris' favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip.

Jefferson Jackson is apparently prone to allergies, as he keeps over-the-counter 4 hr. allergy pills with his kit in his garage.

The motto of the Physics Department of Hudson University is"Vector, Variance, Hypotenuse, Proton, Neutron, Go H.U."

Dr. Tina McGee makes her first appearance since 118.

Dr. McGee makes reference to still needing to find a replacement for Dr. Snow (i.e. Caitlin) who had started working for Mercury Labs during the break between Season One and Season Two but quit to rejoin STAR Labs in 201.

Dr. McGee makes reference to Eddie Thawne's death and knows about how he was romantically involved with Iris West. She says that she admires Joe West's gift for discretion, which is why she asked for him to handle the report regarding her burglary.

Dr. McGee identifies her burglar as Harrison Wells, but notes that not only was he alive and well but he was walking again. This confirms that Harrison Wells' "death" at the end of Season One is public knowledge and that McGee does not know that Wells was really Eobard Thawne.

Francine West claims to be suffering from MacGregor's. This is the same syndrome that William Tockman a.k.a. The Clock King from A214 had. She claims to have felt weak, says the disease is common among ex-addicts and says she won't live longer than a year.

Cisco officially calls Barry's special treadmill "The Cosmic Treadmill".

Henry Hewitt had a sealed police record. Apparently he had been charged on one count of battery and two counts of aggravated assault and been sentenced to anger-management therapy.

Jax calls Professor Stein "Grey".

Cisco is now a skilled enough hacker to break into sealed police records and to shut down sections of the city's power grid.

Francine West gave birth eight months after she left Iris and Joe. Iris tells her to stay out of her and Joe's lives because the news that he might have had a son who grew up without him would destroy him.

Hewitt's powers are said to have burned out and he is locked up in The Pipeline until he agrees to keep quiet about what happened.

Professor Stein and Jefferson leave at the end of the episode to meet with Stein's wife, Clarissa, in Pittsburgh, where they'll meet up with the colleague Stein mentioned in 114 as possibly being able to help Ronnie and Stein in mastering their powers. He does not name this colleague but does confirm it is a woman.

Caitlin gives Jefferson a compass that used to belong to Ronnie.

In the episode's end, Barry is attacked by a shark-man and Patty fights the creature as well, only for it to be brought down by an exotic weapon wielded by a man who looks like Harrison Wells.


The Fridge Factor

Caitlin is portrayed as far more eager and naive than usual in this episode, instantly spilling the beans on the secrets of STAR Labs and Firestorm's secret identity to Henry Hewitt.


The Bottom Line

Darn near flawless. It's a little repetitive, covering a lot of the same ground as the original Firestorm origin last season. But Jefferson Jackson is an engaging new protagonist and his story is a good one. This episode's closing sequence may be the best in the show's history. And just when you think it can't get better, King Shark shows up!

The Flash Episode Guide: Season 2, Episode 3 - Family of Rogues

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot 

When Len Snart (aka Captain Cold) is kidnapped, Lisa Snart has no choice but to turn to STAR Labs and The Flash for help. It turns out the situation is more complicated than that, with Captain Cold being blackmailed into helping his father with a heist. Meanwhile, Joe West's wife Francine has returned to Central City. This proves problematic as Joe told everyone that his wife - a drug addict who abandoned their family - had died tragically to avoid upsetting Iris. And as Professor Stein recovers from his sudden collapse, Jay Garrick begins work on a way home.


Influences 

Various The Flash comics involving Captain Cold and Golden Glider, though the characterization seems based upon Geoff Johns' interpretation of Leonard Snart - particularly The Flash #182.


Performances

There's a lot of good duet scenes in this episode. Peyton List and Carlos Valdes have tremendous chemistry as Lisa and Cisco. Ditto Danielle Panabaker and Teddy Sears as Caitlin and Jay. And Shantel VanSanten is starting to grow on me as surely as Patty seems to be growing on Barry.

The verbal dialogues go beyond the romantic subplots, however. Unsurprisingly, Michael Ironside proves a suitable menacing foe as Lewis Snart and Wentworth Miller once again has a brilliant turn bringing Captain Cold to life. The two play off each other brilliantly as father and son. And it's always a treat to see Grant Gustin and Wentworth Miller lock horns as Barry and Len.

Vanessa Williams isn't in the episode long as Francine West but she does have a suitable presence for such an important character for what little time we see her. Hopefully we'll get to see more in the season to come.

Once again, Jesse L. Martin damn near steals the show with his scene trying to tell Iris the truth about her mother.


Artistry

The opening sequence with Barry running to save Iris as she jumps out the window of a building as her investigation goes awry is a fun little sequence all around. The writing, the direction, the effects and the performances all work in tandem. One wishes that had done more scenes like this with Iris sooner.

In fact, the writing of this episode in general is very sharp, with a number of great dialogues and some very witty lines. Even the subplot with Joe's wife - while rehashing a lot of old territory with Joe learning he needs to be honest with his daughter - proves enjoyable since we see here that Joe actually is learning to trust in  Iris' maturity.

The use of music throughout the episode and the soundtrack are both good.

The scene with Cisco having a gun drawn on Lisa and Cold having a gun drawn on The Flash is very well directed.


Flash Facts

While the "superhero saves reporter love interest who jumps out a window" trope is more famously applied to Lois Lane and Superman, The Flash saving Iris West when she gets into a tight spot while chasing a story - as Barry does here - occurs just as often in the original The Flash comics.

CC Jitters makes a custom drink called The Flash. It's a brewed coffee with an extra shot or espresso.

While never being named in the original comics, Len and Lisa Snart's father was an abusive man who beat both his wife and children. Lisa and Len's mother was largely absent and Len all but raised his sister alone.

In the original comics, Mr. Snart was not a career criminal. He was an ex-cop, who lived off of disability. Reportedly he had been kicked out of the Central City Police Department after it was determined that he was drunk on duty during the incident where his partner was shot dead.

As in the comics, Mr. Snart violently beat his children in order to teach them a lesson. In The Flash #182, he specifically discourages them from telling anyone that they love them and that showing emotion is a sign of weakness. This explains Captain Cold's cool and detached persona.

As in the comics, Len Snart is violently protective of his sister and will break his usual rules against crimes of passion to see anyone who hurts her suffer.

This is not the first time Peyton List and Michael Ironside played father and daughter.  Ironside was General Sam Lane on the Smallville TV show, where Peyton List played Lucy Lane.

David Rutenberg's body is found in a Danville Meatpackers truck. Danville is the name of a middle-class district in Central City - the one Barry and Iris west lived in in the original Flash comics.

As the heist begins, the security guards are watching a team called The Diamonds playing another team called The Salamanders.  In the DC Comics Universe, The Diamonds are Central City's Major League Baseball franchise and The Salamanders are the franchise in Keystone City.

The Flash bypassing a security system by trying every possible combination on a keypad at super-speed is another classic trope from the comics.  So is a speedster catching a bullet at super-speed and pretending to be shot to put a villain off-guard.

In the original comics, Captain Cold couldn't bring himself to kill his own father despite ample reason and an opportunity in the Rogues' Revenge storyline. Heatwave obligingly finished the job for him.

In a nod to her costume's color scheme in the original comics, Lisa Snart rides off on a golden motorcycle with a matching helmet.

Professor Stein exclaims "Excelsior!" as they successfully pass a book through the breach to Earth 2. This is the catch-phrase of comic writer Stan Lee as well as the State Motto for New York. It is a Latin word meaning "still higher" or "ever upward".


Technobabble

Professor Steins's heart-rate after he collapsed was 147 Systolic over 82 Diastolic. He claims this just a few points higher than the average range for a man of his age. That's actually a little high, with a Systolic number over 140 signifying Stage One Hypertension.

Stein theorizes that super-speed and a certain level of stability are required to traverse the breaches between Earth One and Earth Two.

Jay Garrick likens the breaches to doors, suggesting that the hallway between the doors is continually shifting and collapsing in on itself. If they can stabilize the door, it should stabilize the hallways so Barry can use it.

Cisco devised a method of tracking Captain Cold's gun since he didn't have a chance to plant a tracker on it when he was kidnapped to rebuild it. The method works the same way as thermal imaging, only instead of infrared heat signatures it seeks out ultraviolet cold signatures.

Cisco added therma-threading into The Flash costume. This allows Cisco to remotely super-heat Barry's costume in order to quickly melt any icy build-up.

The biggest challenge in Lewis Snart's heist is getting past a Draycon Systems keypad.

Lewis Snart injects thermite explosive into the necks of people in order to control them.

Barry determines, based on his examination of David Rutenberg's body, that his head was removed by an explosive. This is due to the thermite residue and the perforation around the neck being too jagged to suggest a cutting implement or weapon.

Jay Garrick once again refers to purifying heavy water without residual radiation.

Cisco detects traces of thermite on Lisa Snart's skin around her neck.

Barry determines the bomb casing injected into Lisa Snart must be made of some kind of ferromagnetic material. Caitlin plans to surgically remove the bomb as Barry holds it steady with a magnet. Cisco warns against this, saying that such a concentrated bomb will explode if exposed to magnetic friction and an oxidant.

Barry, in pretending to be a techie thief, refers to a diamond Snart stole a year earlier being locked behind an Amertek Industries Phase 3 Suppression Door with a Draycon XL-1218 keypad.

The gun Cisco builds to extract the bomb from Lisa Snart has an operating pressure of over 1,000 PSI. The only problem is that the gun uses compressed air, meaning there is a risk it could set the bomb off. Thankfully, it does not.

The Cold Gun is capable of disrupting a laser grid for somewhere between two and three minutes.

Jay Garrick was able to stabilize the breach using CFL Quark Matter - negative energy density with positive surface pressure. This is a breakthrough that Earth 2 perfected that Earth 1 has not.


Dialogue Triumphs

Professor Stein: All right. No more tests today. All of you are leaving now. As am I. Cherish the gift of youth as I will go cherish my much-needed nap.

Captain Cold: You know what they say - "Live fast and die young".

Lisa Snart: The first time my father came after me I was 7. The second time I was 8. That's when I learned that a bottle hurts worse than a fist. He used to say he was trying to teach us lessons. I must have been a slower learner because the lessons never stopped.

Barry: You're a criminal, Snart. But you live by a code. It sounds to me like Lewis doesn't. Like he won't care if people die. That's why I can't leave this alone.
Captain Cold: Then everyone will know who The Flash is under that mask.
Barry: I don't care. I will take you down anyway. Both of you.
Captain Cold: We'll see about that. Thanks for dinner.
(Snart leaves the table, leaving Barry stuck with the check as the waitress walks up)

(As Barry walks into his hide-out)
Captain Cold: These visits are getting old.
Barry: Third time's the charm.

The Flash: Tell me this - what kind of man puts a bomb in his own daughter?
Lewis Snart: A very rich man.

(After Len shoots him through the chest with his cold gun)
Lewis Snart: You're working with The Flash?  I thought you hated him?
Captain Cold: Not as much as... I hate you.
(Len kneels down by his now dead father.  Barry walks over and takes the cold gun away without a struggle)
The Flash: Lisa was safe. Why did you do that?
Captain Cold: He broke my sister's heart. Only fair I break his.

Barry: What's funny is that I finally figured out your secret.
Len: And what secret would that be?
Barry: You'd do anything to protect your sister.
Len: Well, I know your secret too. Better hope I don't talk in my sleep.
Barry: You won't. Today just proved what I've always known. There's good in you, Snart. And you don't have to admit it to me. But there's a part of you that knows you don't have to let your past define you. A part of you that really wants to be more than just a criminal
Len: So I should be a hero like you, Barry? What exactly does that pay again?
Barry: It's just a matter of time. Something you'll have a lot of in there.
Len: Not as much as you think. Be seeing you.


Continuity

At CC Jitter's reopening, Iris refers to how Barry rebuilt the coffee bar at night and The Flash Day from 201.

Lisa refers to the events of 122 and how Captain Cold could have killed The Flash but didn't.

Cisco refers to the events of 116 and how he rebuilt The Cold Gun for Len Snart.

Lewis Snart's rap-sheet includes larceny, armed robbery, aggravated assault and assault with a deadly weapon.

Lewis Snart abused his daughter and son. He first hit his daughter when she was 7. She still has a scar on her right shoulder from the abuse.

Linda Park - Iris' fellow reporter, whom Barry briefly dated - is seen for the first time since 116.

Francine West was a drug addict who abandoned her family after Joe West checked her into rehab. He told everyone that she died and spent the next 20 years trying to forget her.

According to Jay Garrick, there are Big Belly Burger franchises on Earth 2.

There was also a Particle Accelerator Explosion that created the metahumans on Earth 2.

Barry uses the alias Sam when infiltrating Cold's gang.

Barry refers to Captain Cold's stealing The Kahndaq Dynasty Diamond in 104.

At the end of the episode, Len Snart is locked up in Iron Heights prison. Joe says he's already got Patty working on the paperwork to transfer Snart to the higher-security metahuman wing, even though Snart has no powers of his own.

Golden Glider remains at liberty.

According to Jay Garrick, Earth 2 has perfected the means of generating CFL Quark Matter.

Jay elects to remain on Earth 1 until Zoom is dealt with.

Professor Stein briefly manifests orange flames around his head and fists like Ronnie did in his Firestorm form. The fire briefly turns blue before Professor Stein passes out again.

At the end of the episode, we see Harrison Wells emerging from what appears to be the breach in the Star Labs basement.


The Bottom Line

A near-perfect episode, where even the weakest sections (i.e. the subplot with Joe's wife) are entertaining even if they do seem like padding. The entire cast is running on eight cylinders and the script is top-notch in every respect with a lot of great character moments and developments that show the cast is changing.

The Flash Episode Guide: Season 2, Episode 2 - Flash of Two Worlds

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

Jay Garrick has revealed himself to the STAR Labs team, telling a tall tale of how The Singularity was a portal to another Earth. An Earth where he is a hero called The Flash! And where a villain named Zoom seeks to destroy every other being in the universe with super-speed powers.

Meanwhile, Joe West has sidelined his Metahuman Task Force as nobody was interested in joining it. Nobody, that is, except a rookie officer named Patty Spivot, who has a mind for science and her own reasons for fighting metahuman criminals. She'll get her chance sooner than she thinks, as Zoom recruits another villain from another world - Sand Demon - to kill The Flash and Spivot becomes an unwitting hostage.


Influences

The Flash Vol. 1 #123 (the comic which established the idea of multiple Earths when Jay Garrick and Barry Allen met for the first time), The Fury of Firestorm #51 (the character of Sand Demon) and The Flash comics of Gardner Fox (backstory of Jay Garrick) and Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato (New 52 Patty Spivot)


Goofs

Just how did Jay Garrick get through STAR Labs new and improved security without the benefit of super speed powers?

Barry's sudden suspicion and jealousy of Jay Garrick seems horribly out of character, even granting Barry's increased paranoia over the past few months. (Thankfully, Iris calls him out on it...)

The face Carlos Valdes makes when he has a Vibe Vision just plain looks silly.

For the second week in a row, Barry seems to semi-accidentally kill a super-villain!


Performances

Teddy Sears all but steals the episode as Jay Garrick. Sears is reminiscent of a young Scott Bakula, playing the down-to-earth, intelligent man-of-action masterfully. His chemistry with Danielle Panabaker is quite good and the two of them play off of each other well enough to make some potentially embarrassing dialogue work.

By the same token, Shantel VanSanten has similarly good chemistry with Grant Gustin during their brief moments flirting with one another. She also manages not to seem weak, needy or submissive once, despite spending most of the episode trying to get Joe to give her a job on his task force and being taken hostage purely so Barry has someone to rescue from Sand Demon in the final act.


Artistry

The special effects in this episode are top-notch - from Barry's first encounter with Sand Demon to his rescue of Patty Spivot near the end of the episode.


Flash Facts

The show opens with a new "My name is Barry Allen..." sequence to reflect the new season.

The title of this episode is a reference to The Flash Vol. 1 #123 (September 1961), which was also titled Flash of Two Worlds.

Zoom is the code-name used by the Flash villain Hunter Zolomon. However, this Zoom does not seem to bare any relation to that character as of yet.

Zoom manifests blue lightning when he moves. This energy is reminiscent of the villain Cobalt Blue, who - in the comics - was Barry Allen's long-lost evil twin.

The vision of Zoom we see in Jay's flashback (no pun intended) bares a slight resembelance to The Black Flash - a manifestation of The Speed Force that attempts to lure speedsters to their death in the comics.

Jason "Jay" Garrick was the first superhero to be known as The Flash. First appearing in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940), Jay was a double-major in physics and chemistry as well as a college football star. He developed super-speed powers after a lab accident, knocking over his equipment as he was trying to purify hard water using a cyclotron to remove the residual radiation.

The background of the DCTVU version of Jay Garrick seems to mirror that of his comics counterpart. He also has a background in chemistry and physics and he says he gained his powers in a lab accident that involved purifying hard water without leaving behind any residual radiation.

Jay Garrick's distinctive helmet is a petasos. The petasos was originally a hat developed by the Ancient Greeks and was usually made of wool, felt, leather or straw. It was a precursor to the modern fedora, with its broad, floppy brim making it ideal for rural life as it protected both the back of the neck and shaded the eyes. Metal petasi were part of the uniform for the Athenian cavalry.

A modified metal petasos with wings was the symbolic helmet of the Greek god Hermes - the messenger of the gods, who was said to be gifted with amazing speed thanks to a pair of winged sandals. It was for this reason that Jay Garrick adopted a metal winged petasos as part of his costume as The Flash.

Jay Garrick's Flash went on to become one of the founding members of The Justice Society of America - the first superhero team in history.

In Showcase #4 - the first comic Barry Allen appeared it - it was revealed that Barry Allen was a comic reader and that he took the name of The Flash in honor of his favorite superhero since he was a boy - a superhero who looked like the Jay Garrick version of The Flash!

This incongruity - in an effort to answer fan questions as to whatever happened to Jay Garrick - was explained The Flash Vol. 1 #123 (September 1961). This comic had Barry Allen accidentally run so fast that he traveled between realities, winding up in the world where Jay Garrick was The Flash!  It was explained that there were multiple Earths that occupied the same position in time and space but were separated by a fifth dimension that could be passed through by vibrating at a specific frequency.

Coincidentally, this general description perfectly fits Hugh Everett's relative state formulation of quantum mechanics - a.k.a. The Many Worlds Interpretation. Everett published this paper just four years before The Flash Vol. 1 #123 came out. As far as we know writer Gardner Fox didn't read it! But Professor Stein cites the theory when attempting to explain what Jay Garrick has told them to Joe West.

Professor Stein also mentions the idea of a multi-verse - multiple universes - which has been cited in both numerous DC Comic books to explain away the various alternate realities making up their comic line and by physicists.

Professor Stein also labels Barry's Earth as Earth 1 and Jay Garrick's world as Earth 2. These are the exact designations used in the comics to label the respective Earths of Barry Allen and Jay Garrick.

It was theorized that the writers on Earth 1 who wrote the comics featuring heroes from Earth 2 had a psychic gift to see between realities that caused them to envision the adventures of Jay Garrick and his friends as daydreams, which they transposed into comics. This is similar to the ability that Cisco has begun to manifest in the DCTVU.

Patty Spivot is a character in The Flash comics. She was originally Barry Allen's lab assistant in the pre-Crisis comics and later became head of the Blood Analysis department of the Central City Police Department. In the New 52 Flash comics, she was Barry Allen's co-worker and girlfriend for a time.

Apart from being an attractive blonde woman with an interest in science, the DCTVU version of Patty Spivot doesn't have much in common with any of her comic book counterparts.  The DCTVU version is a beat cop turned detective who has no interest in working in a lab despite her scientific background (triple major in biology, chemistry and physics). The comics versions were scientists, through and through.

Sand Demon was a minor villain and enemy of Firestorm, who first appeared in The Fury of Firestorm #51. A crooked wrestling manager known as Eddie Slick, one of his wrestlers - King Crusher - mutated into a giant monster. Firestorm saved the day but also exposed Slick's providing illegal steroids to his wrestlers. The Las Vegas gangsters Eddie worked for weren't pleased and buried him alive in the desert. It was here that Eddie developed an ability to meld with the earth around him and reshape it and himself. He later went on a rampage and was easily defeated by Firestorm after being transformed into glass and then broken.

The DCTVU version of Sand Demon is also named Eddie Slick and has the exact same powers as his comic book counterpart, though we do not discover his background before he was recruited by Zoom. We do know that the Earth 1 version of Eddie Slick is a career criminal, like his comic book counterpart and the Earth 2 version has demolitions training.

Cisco's visions in this episode seem to be a form of clairvoyance - the power to perceive information about an object, person, location or event through extrasensory perception. In this case, Cisco is able to see what Sand Demon was doing at early points in time just after he touched the sample of Sand Demon's cells.

Joe notes that Iron Heights is now equipped to handle metahuman criminals.  In the original comics, Iron Heights was a prison specifically built to handle metahuman criminals and many of The Flash's enemies were kept there.

Earth 1 Eddie Slick claims that he was in Blackgate Penitentiary at the time of The Particle Accelerator explosion in December 2013.  In the comics, Blackgate Penitentiary is the largest prison in Gotham City and where most of the non-insane and non-powered enemies of Batman are locked up.

Both Barry and Patty are Monty Python fans and make reference to The Bridge Keeper from Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Perhaps not coincidentally, this episode originally aired on the 40th anniversary of the release of that movie, on the same day that a special edition was rereleased in theaters.

Sand Demon makes his hideout in the abandoned Woodrue Grow House. This is likely a reference to Jason Woodrue - a scientist who later became the half-man/half-plant super-villain known as The Floronic Man.

Jay teaches Barry a new trick - how to harness his speed to create targeted electrical bursts, effectively generating ball lightning and throwing lightning bolts. This is a power that The Flash has used before in the comics.

The DCTVU version of Sand Demon is defeated in the same manner as his comic book counterpart, with Barry transforming him into glass with a controlled lightning strike and shattering him.

Sand Demon is a fairly obvious rip-off of The Sandman - a Spider-Man villain created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.

The scene where Patty calls out for The Flash, both Barry and Jay yell "Coming!", and they run to her along opposite sides of a brick wall is a visual reference to the cover of The Flash #123.

Jay and Barry compare their respective nicknames - The Scarlet Speedster and The Crimson Comet. These were indeed the alliterative nicknames they were given in their respective comics.

Cisco drops the name of his comic-book counterpart's superhero identity, talking about the "vibe" that he gets before having a vision of something that happened in the past.

Professor Stein and Cisco detect 52 separate breaches in Central City. This is yet another nod to the significance of the number 52 in the DC Comics Universe.


Technobabble

In a nod to the comics, Jay Garrick he says he gained his powers in a lab accident that involved purifying hard water without leaving behind any residual radiation. 

Professor Stein cites Hugh Everett's relative state formulation of quantum mechanics - a.k.a. The Many Worlds Interpretation when attempting to explain the ideal of parallel universes and multiple Earths to Joe West.

Caitlin determines that Jay Garrick's heart rate and blood pressure are both lower than normal, the oxygen levels in his blood are impressive and that he does have regenerative capabilities but there's no other evidence of The Speed Force in his system. She also measured his autonomic reactions while asking him about his past - i.e. giving him a lie detector test - and determined he was telling the truth about being from another Earth.

Barry notes that the walls of the building Sand Demon first confronted him is too porous to take fingerprints from.

Barry determines the fire in the building where he first fought Sand Demon was caused by arson, based on the random gasoline burns as well as the fact that the sprinkler system did not go off.

Patty Spivot determines that the fire was started by someone cutting through a gas pipe using a sand-blaster. She theorizes, however, that a metahuman was responsible since there's no commercial sand-blaster that she knows of that is capable of such precision. She also takes fingerprint samples off the pipe and a sample of the sand left behind.

Jay Garrick identifies the "sand" that Sand Demon transforms into as human cells whose myosin II protein have emigrated into the cell's periphery.  These cells have the ability to rearrange and harden, given them the appearance of sand.

Professor Stein theorizes that they can detect the breaches caused by The Singularity through tracking exotic matter or trans-dimensional energy. Theoretically, this energy should leak from one universe to the other. This means that they can use an electro-photography program and the STAR Labs satellite to take pictures of the whole city and locate the breaches.

The Earth 1 Eddie Slick says he prefers using substances that are hard to trace like acetone to set a fire.

Sand Demon requires exposure to high humidity in order to maintain his composure. This requires him to make his hideouts in greenhouses or grow rooms. Failure to stay hydrated will cause his body to dry out and collapse, like dry sand.

Jay's plan to stop Sand Demon depends upon Barry focusing the electrical energy he generates when he runs and focusing it into a bolt that will fuse Sand Demon into glass, like lightning striking a beach.

Sand Demon constructs a concussive bomb as a distraction, as his body can absorb the force of the blast whereas The Flash would be affected normally despite his speed.

Professor Stein describes the "breaches" as pockets of time and space folded into and upon themselves.


Dialogue Triumphs

Barry: My name is Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive! To the outside world, I'm an ordinary forensic scientist. But secretly, with the help of my friends at STAR Labs, I fight crime and find other metahumans like me. I hunted down the man who killed my mother but in doing so I opened up our world to new threats. And I am the only one fast enough to stop them. I am The Flash!

Barry: Okay, so... Jay? How exactly do you know all of this?
Jay: Where I came from, I was a speedster like you. They called me The Flash.

Jay: Look, Barry I don't what else I can do to prove to you I'm on your side.  I've been poked, prodded - I even subjected myself to a full body scan!
Caitlin: (defensively) I was being thorough!

Iris: What has happened to you?
Barry: Are you - me?
Iris: Yes, you.  The you that I grew up with. The you that is my best friend. The you that became The Flash. I haven't seen that you in a very long time.
Barry: A lot has changed, Iris.
Iris: Yeah, it sure has. You have learned how to not trust people. What is it about Jay that you don't like? (pauses) It's because he reminds you of Harrison Wells.
Barry: I trusted that man. For months. We all did. (pauses) And you know what? Eddie is dead. Ronnie is dead. And a whole lot of other people in this city?  They are dead. Because we trusted him. I'm not going to let us make that mistake again.
Iris: Barry, not everyone is Harrison Wells. Besides, you defeated him because you trusted in people. Because you believed in them. This team that you have here? They will follow your lead. They will do what you say. But if they think that you don't believe in them, it won't be long before they don't believe in you.

(Upon hearing the crackling lightning of The Flash running)
Sand Demon: Is that you, Flash? Found your way here?
(Sand Demon turns around to see Jay Garrick standing there.)
Jay: I came quite a distance.

(Jay Garrick tries, without success, to punch Sand Demon several times at regular speed)
Sand Demon: Quite a bit slower on this Earth, aren't you, Flash?
(Jay lets loose with one upper-cut that tags Sand Demon and sends dust flying out of his jaw)

Jay: This is a lot harder than I thought. Losing something that was such a big part of who I was for so long.
Caitlin: I lost something that was a part of me too. It's hard. But it gets easier every day. You just have to find a new way to live.(pauses) Just because it's a different life doesn't mean its a worse one. And, speed or no speed, in my book you were still a hero today.

Jay: What is it with alliteration and nicknames?

(After telling Joe the story of her her father was killed by The Mardon Brothers)
Patty: Two murderers got super powers. So, that's why I'm here, sir. That's why I'm so hell-bent on being on your task force. Because there's some bad people out there and they can do... anything. And I may not have powers, but I want to stop them. And you're the only person I know who wants to do that too.

Cisco: Something's happening to me. I'm starting to perceive things. Horrible things. It started after Wells killed me in the other timeline. It came back when Atom Smasher attacked on Flash Day. And then again when Sand Demon showed up. I get a vibe... and then a vision of something that already happened... and then it's gone. That's how I knew where Slick was.
Stein: Cisco, this is amazing! We have to study this. Figure out just what to do
Cisco: No, no, no! We're not doing any of that and we're certainly not telling anybody, either!
Stein: Cisco, I would think you would be the one most intrigued with knowing exactly what this is and how it works!
Cisco: I'm seeing things I don't want to see and knowing things I don't want to know! I just want it to stop! Professor, I don't want anyone to know about this. Not yet.
Stein: It's okay to be afraid, you know.
Cisco: Wells told me this was in my future. That he gave me this power. But everything he did was evil. That's what scares me, Professor. You have to promise me... you won't tell anyone about this.
Stein: I promise.


Continuity

It is revealed that the dead Al Rothstein from 201 was the Earth 1 version of Al Rothstein and that Atom Smasher was the Earth 2 version of Al Rothstein.

Jay reveals that he has been trapped on Earth 1 and powerless for six months, since The Singularity opened.

Jay has been The Flash for about two years on his world, yet he seems to be far more experienced than Barry and has manifested powers Barry hasn't, such as the ability to throw lightning bolts. He was also much faster than Barry, being capable of almost reaching the speed of light.

Patty Spigot has been with the CCPD for seven months. She was a triple major at Hudson University (biology, chemistry and physics), is in peak physical condition and she rated at the top of her class in marksmanship.

Barry extinguishes the fire that Sand Demon started using the vaccum-generation trick he mastered back in 120.

Joe notes that Iron Heights - the large prison between Central City and Star City - is now equipped to handle metahumans.

This episode takes place one day after The Green Arrow first announced himself to the people of Star City in A401.

Jay Garrick says that the helmet from his costume belonged to his father, who wore it when he fought in the War of the Americas.

Jay Garrick says that Zoom first appeared shortly after he got his speed powers and that he killed a lot of people on Earth 2. Garrick says it took him two years to track Zoom down.  He claims Zoom is obsessed with destroying him and that he is determined to make sure he is the only speedster in any world.

Patty Spigot's father was killed by Mark Mardon -a.k.a. The Weather Wizard. Her father ran a shoe shop and was killed during one of The Mardon Brothers' bank robberies several months before they got super powers. She says she wants to join Joe's taskforce not out of revenge but because someone has to stop the bad metahumans and Joe is the only person who seems interested in doing so.

Patty Spigot is promoted to Detective and joins Joe's taskforce as his partner.

Joe West's wife is revealed to not be dead, though she is not named in this episode.

Cisco refers to his previous visions from 120 and 201.

Cisco tells Professor Stein about his newfound power.  Stein agrees to keep Cisco's secret.

Professor Stein and Cisco detect 52 separate breaches around Central City, with the largest one being located within STAR Labs. Stein is about to describe what lies beyond that breach before he collapses.

The end-of-episode stinger gives us a vision of what seems to be an alternate version of Central City. Here, we see a school group touring STAR Labs, which we are told was founded in 1991 and specializes in artificial intelligence, genetics and metahuman studies. It has the motto "Bringing You Tomorrow's World Today" and was founded by Harrison Wells, who is introduced to the students as the Savior of Central City.


Location

We see a scene on Jay Garrick's Earth in his unnamed home town, where he fights Zoom before being sucked through The Singularity.

The end-of-show stinger seems to take place on yet another alternate Earth, where Harrison Wells is a respected scientist and is described as the Savior of Central City.


The Bottom Line

An intriguing episode where the quality of writing shows in the research and the world-building rather than the dialogue. Still, the new cast prove themselves worthy of joining the ensemble and the special effects work in the action sequences is some of the best yet. The last ten minutes make this episode truly magical.

The Flash Episode Guide: Season 2, Episode 1 - The Man Who Saved Central City

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

It's been six months since the defeat of The Reverse Flash and much has changed in Central City. The Flash now operates openly but he also works alone, determined to keep any other people in Barry Allen's life from dying while working to rebuild the city at night, one broken building at a time. Joe West and Cisco Ramon are hard at work too, developing a special police task force capable of fighting metahuman criminals and the the tools to do the job.  They will all find themselves tested shortly, as a new metahuman with murder on his mind seeks out The Flash.


Influences

The JSA comics of David Goyer, James Robinson and Geoff Johns (details regarding Atom Smasher) and The Flash comics of Geoff Johns (references to The Flash: Rebirth and the general tone of the writing.)


Goofs 

Al Rothstein was one of the names on Harrison Wells' list of people who died during the particle accelerator explosion in 107, so how can he be turning up dead some 21 months later or have been on his honeymoon in Hawaii at the time of The Particle Accelerator Explosion?  (Possibly there is more than one Al Rothstein in Central City?)

How can The Reverse Flash's video confession to Nora Allen's murder still exist when Eobard Thawne never existed?

Henry Allen's leaving Central City - while not a goof - is rather sloppily written.  A man has been in jail for the better part of two decades and wants to get out of town so as not to step on the toes of his devoted son?  There's a LOT better reasons Henry might want to get out of Central City for a while - see the world and revel in his newfound freedom by traveling?  Go to the places he dreamed of seeing while he was in prison?  Maybe visit the places he and his wife talked about going but never had the chance?


Performances

Candice Patton gets a nice silent moment, as Iris looks at Eddie Thawne's picture on the memorial wall at the police station.

Jesse L. Martin and Carlos Valdes play off of each other beautifully and the partnership between Joe and Cisco leads to some of the funnier moments of the episode. The two actors had an amazing chemistry in their few moments alone last season and its good to see that continuing this year.

Another good dialogue occurs between Grant Gustin and Danielle Panabaker. Barry and Caitlin are the two characters who have lost the most respectively due to Eobard Thawne's schemes, with Caitlin having lost the man she loves twice as well as her job and Barry - at this moment - feeling like he's accomplished nothing with his heroism except getting his friends killed.  It's good to see the two of them get to unload on one another and both actors play the moment well.


Artistry

The set design on The Flash Day ceremony is brilliant.

There's a nice symmetry in the script, with the flashback depicting a depressed Barry some six months after his mother died and Barry's state of mind some six months after Ronnie Raymond died saving him and Joe giving him an inspiring speech each time.


Flash Facts

In the comics, Al Rothstein was the name of a metahuman who was primarily known as The Atom Smasher. Originally known as Nuklon, he was one of the founding members of Infinity Inc. - a superhero team made up of the children and heirs apparent of The Justice Society of America. In Al's case, he was the godson and namesake of Al Pratt - the original Atom. Rothstein later joined the JSA under the name Atom Smasher and adopted a costume that utilized the same blue mask as Al Pratt's costume.

Atom Smasher's costume on the show is similar to his costume from the comics, save that the comic version wore a cloth mask  rather than the retracting armored helmet we see in this episode.

In the comics, Atom Smasher's powers were a legacy from his grandfather - an atomic scientist turned reluctant supervillain called Cyclotron. Atom Smasher's chief power was the ability to increase his size up to a height of 60 feet. This in turn gave him increased strength and durability, which increased proportionately with his size. At his maximum height, he was capable of hurting Power Girl with a single punch

In the show, Atom Smasher draws upon ambient radiation to fuel his powers.  The comics version of Atom Smasher had no need to do this.

Interestingly, this version of Atom Smasher shares his comic book counterpart's tendency for making questionable moral decisions. During his time in The Justice Society, Atom Smasher bent the laws of time to save his mother from dying in a plane crash and left a super-villain for dead at the same point in time. He later killed a brutal dictator to help his friend Black Adam retake his homeland.

Superheroes being awarded the key to their city and having a day devoted to them with a ceremony that is disrupted by a super-villain attack is a long-standing tradition in superhero comics. It seems to happen with particular frequency to The Flash. So much so that one episode of Justice League United - Flash And Substance - was devoted to that exact storyline.

The Flash performing construction as super-speed to help clean up after a disaster is another long-running gag from the classic comics.  Superman also does this a fair bit.

In his speech at The Flash Day ceremony, Mayor Bellows says that The Flash restores hope as well as protecting the people of Central City. In the Blackest Night event, Barry Allen was the one person on Earth judged most worthy of temporarily wielding the Power Ring of a Blue Lantern, who draw power from Hope as Green Lanterns draw power from their Will.

Barry carries a handkerchief. This is a nod to the comics where Barry is somewhat old-fashioned, being the sort who still wears bow-ties to formal occasions.

Caitlin's plan to take down Atom Smasher by feeding him more radiation than his powers can cope with is another classic comic-book cliche for dealing with  energy-absorbing villains and monsters.

The spotlight with The Flash symbol on it used to lure Atom Smasher out into the open is, of course, a nod to The Bat Signal from the Batman comics, which is used by the Gotham Police Department to summon Batman to Police Headquarters.


Technobabble

Al Rothstein had petechiae on his face and the whites of his eyes and bruising around his neck. This indicated he was strangled to death by someone very strong and very large.

Cisco constructs a device that he dubs The Boot as the CCPD's first special anti-metahuman weapon. In essence, The Boot is a rifle that fires a metal circlet. This circlet attaches itself around the ankle or lower leg of a metahuman and administers a non-lethal but incapacitating electric shock. It fails to work on Atom Smasher, however, due to his high level of invulnerability and his being able to outgrow the circlet.

In the flashback to the day of The Singularity, we see that The Flash was able to contain and stabalize The Singularity by adding to its angular momentum.  In order to close it, the inner and outer event horizons had to be merged. To do this, Firestorm had to separate in the eye of The Singularity. Professor Stein theorized that the energy of the fission should do the trick. He was right, but Ronnie Raymond was seemingly lost in the resulting explosion.

Iris discovers that the hospital next to the site of The Flash Day ceremony had all of their X-Ray and CT machines go dead at the same time Atom Smasher grew bigger.  Cisco investigates this further, determining the same thing happened at every hospital with a one mile radius. This leads to the conclusion that Atom Smasher absorbs radiation to fuel his powers.

Cisco is impressed that Mercury Labs owns a 6K Proton Splicer.

All humans contain small amounts of radiation due to contact with cel phones, microwaves, and televisions. Human bodies are natural conductors.


Dialogue Triumphs

(As Ronnie and Caitlin kiss)
Prof. Stein: Thank you for NOT doing that when I was inside you.
Ronnie: That happened one time!  Let it go.

Barry: My name is Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive. When I was a child I saw my mother killed by something impossible. My father went to prison for her murder. Then an accident made me the impossible. And I became The Flash. I used my powers to find the man responsible for my mother's death. I thought i wound finally get justice for my family. But I failed. It's been six months since The Singularity. I'm on my own now. Decided it's better that way.  Keeps the people I care about safe. There's only one thing I can do now. I run.

(Talking about trying to get Barry to attend the Flash Day ceremony)
Iris: Someone should try to get through to him.
Joe: Maybe his best friend?
Cisco: Joe, believe me, I've tried!
Joe: I meant her.

Mayor Bellows: Our wounds run deep and I know many of you are afraid of what threats tomorrow may bring. But The Flash doesn't just protect us - he restores hope where it was lost! That's why I'm honored to present The Key to the man who saved Central City - The Flash!

(Team Flash discover a three-block radioactive dead-zone around a hazardous waste reclamation plant)
Professor Stein: That's where you'll find your atom smasher!
(Iris and Cisco just look at Professor Stein strangely)
Professor Stein: (laughs nervously) Because he absorbs atomic power. And he... well, smashes!
Cisco: Come here.
(Cisco hugs Professor Stein)
Cisco: That's a great name. Welcome to the team.
Professor Stein: Thank you.

"Harrison Wells": Hello Barry. If you're watching this, that means something has gone horribly wrong. I'm dead. And the last 15 years have been for nothing. Bummer. 15 years. You know... when I realize in all those years helping raise you, we were never truly enemies, Barry. I'm not the thing you hate. And so I'm going to give you the thing that you want most. It won't matter.You'll never be truly happy, Barry Allen. Trust me. I know you.  Now (clears throat) Erase everything I said up to this point. Give the following message to the police. (pauses) My name is Harrison Wells. Being of sound mind and body, I freely confess to the murder of Nora Allen, in her home, on the night of March 18th, in the year 2000...


Continuity

Barry makes reference to Gorilla Grodd, last seen in 121.  Reference is once again made to Joe West's fear of gorillas.

Jay Garrick is first seen taking a picture of Barry while he's at work, investigating the Rothstein murder.

Captain Singh, last seen in 123, has grown a goatee.  He has also granted Joe's request to establish an anti-metahuman task force, with Cisco as his scientific adviser.

As the episode opens, Cisco does not have a police badge. By the episode's end, he does, though it is unclear if he is considered a full police officer or if he serves in a capacity similar to a CSI like Barry.

Caitlin is said to be working at Mercury Labs, which was last mentioned in 118.

Eddie Thawne's picture is seen hanging on a memorial wall at the CCPD police station.

We see the events at the end of 123 through one of Barry's flashbacks.  While being able to hold the singularity in check by running around its interior at super-speed, he was not able to reverse it. Firestorm was able to close The Singularity by separating in The Singularity's eye.  This resulted in Ronnie Raymond's apparent death.

Mayor Bellows is seen for the first time since 117.

Jay Garrick is also seen in the crowd at the Flash Day ceremony, standing a bit behind Iris.

During the fight with Atom Smasher at The Flash Day ceremony, Cisco has another vision as in 120. He sees Atom Smasher speaking to a figure covered in blue-lightning - presumably Zoom.

Caitlin mentions Dr. Tina McGee, head scientist at Mercury Labs, last seen in 119.

Barry was given STAR Labs as part of Harrison Wells' living trust, but Barry's ownership of the property was contingent upon him watching a video message from Wells on a flash drive given to him by Wells' law firm. He refuses to watch it until Caitlin offers to watch it with him.

For the first time, Professor Stein names a metahuman criminal.

Cisco is now capable enough as a hacker than he can break into security camera feeds.

During their second fight, Atom Smasher says that "he" said Barry was some kind of big hero. The "he" turns out to be Zoom.

Comic books exist in the DCTVU and (unsurprisingly) Cisco is a fan. He credits his idea for The Flash Signal to some comic he read once.

As Barry lures Atom Smasher into their trap, Joe West says "Run, Barry, Run." - the catchphrase of Harrison Wells during Season One.

Before he dies, Atom Smasher tells Barry that he was trying to kill Barry because someone called Zoom promised to take him back to his home if he did so.

Henry Allen is cleared on all charges thanks to Wells' confession.  Rather than stay in Central City, however, he elects to travel for a bit, though he promises to be there should Barry ever need him.

At the end of the episode, Cisco alters The Flash costume so that the lighting bolt symbol has a white circle backing it, as they saw on the future newspaper in 120.

Jay Garrick reveals himself to Team Flash, not yet revealing how he got through STAR Labs new and improved security, but saying only that their world is in danger.


The Fridge Factor

Averted in that it is Caitlin who comes up with the plan to stop Atom Smasher by feeding him more radiation than he can absorb.


The Bottom Line

The Flash is back and as good as ever. There are some nagging questions about just how the laws of time work in this universe, given how little things have changed compared to what did and should have changed.  Presumably some kind of explanation is coming up and I'd be willing to be part of that explanation comes next week along with an explanation of just who Jay Garrick is.

The Flash Episode Guide: Season 1, Episode 23 - Fast Enough

For a summary of the episode guide layout & categories, click here.




Plot

"Harrison Wells" has been captured but Eobard Thawne has one ace left up his sleeve. The particle accelerator he built has been reactivated and could be his ticket home with Barry Allen's help. And in exchange for that help Thawne's ready to give Barry Allen what he wants most - a chance to go back in time and stop his mother's murder.  But is Barry ready to let his greatest enemy go in exchange for the life he's always dreamed of?


Influences

The Flash: Rebirth (Barry's origin story here and being inspired to heroism by his mother's murder and father's imprisonment), Flashpoint (the idea of Barry Allen creating a parallel universe by stopping his mother's murder) and the comics of Geoff Johns (general tone, the use of time travel and paradoxes and the back story for Cisco Ramon a.k.a. Vibe)


Performances

It's impossible to single out any one actor as being particularly good in this episode. The script gives everyone in the cast at least one moment to shine and they are all radiant stars.


Artistry

The script for this episode is very well crafted, giving all of the core cast at least one great moment or quotable line.

The use of Don't Dream It's Over for Ronnie and Caitlin's wedding is a perfect choice of music.

The special effects in the Speed Force time-travel sequence and the last minute of the episode have reset the bar for what superhero television shows can accomplish.


Flash Facts

The episode's opening "My name is Barry Allen" speech is switched out in this episode, with Grant Gustin delivering the words in a more somber tone and the speech ending with the words "That day is today." instead of "I am The Flash".

Eobard Thawne is disappointed that Barry didn't deliver him Big Belly Burger when he came to visit him in his cell - a reference to a popular fast food franchise in the DC Universe.

Eobard Thawne tells Barry that he was born 136 years in the future.  In the original comics, Eobard Thawne was from the 25th Century - not the 22nd Century.

Eobard Thawne mentions The Speed Force - the extra-dimensional energy field that all speedsters in the DC Universe can tap into to fuel their powers.

Thawne's belief that he can change Barry's past by causing a tragedy is very in-line with the motivations of Hunter Zolomon - the second Reverse Flash.

One possible reason why Thawne lost his connection to The Speed Force after altering the timeline in the hopes that the death of Nora Allen would cause Barry to never become The Flash is the fact that - in some versions of The Flash's story - Barry Allen IS The Speed Force.  If this is the case in the DCTVU, then preventing Barry from becoming The Flash would likewise destroy The Speed Force, logically robbing Thawne of his powers.

Henry tells Barry that he might understand his objections to Barry's trying to change the past if he were a father himself.  In the comics, Barry does indeed become the father of  twin siblings - one boy and one girl - who gain his powers and become known as The Tornado Twins, Don and Dawn Allen.

Stein says that when Barry collides with the hydrogen proton he plans to shout something like "Eureka!" or "Excelsior!"  Eureka is Ancient Greek for "I have found it" and was reportedly shouted by Archimedes upon his discovery of a method to accurately measure the volume of an irregular solid. Excelsior is a Latin word meaning "ever upward" and is also the trademark catch-phrase of legendary comic writer Stan Lee.

Cisco calls the time machine that Eobard Thawne was constructing a Time Sphere. The reason Thawne smiles at this is because that is the actual name of the ship in question.  The Time Sphere is the name of the vehicle used by the time-traveling hero Rip Hunter in the comics. Thawne later refers to Rip Hunter as the inventor of The Time Sphere and notes that he was "an interesting man".

Thawne explains that the reason why Cisco is able to remember his death in an altered timeline is due to his having been given powers in the particle accelerator explosion that allow him to "see through the vibrations of the universe". In The New 52 universe, Cisco Ramon developed the power to emit sonic vibrations as well as some extra-sensory powers after a similar accident involving the destruction of advanced technology.

Cisco quotes Douglas Adams, saying "So long and thanks for all the fish" in response to the revelation that they could potentially destroy the world using the particle accelerator.  These were the last words the dolphins communicated to humanity before leaving the Earth just before it was blown up in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Another nod to the number 52 - according to Thawne's calculations, Barry will only have 1 minute and 52 seconds to save his mother before the wormhole closes.

Eddie says that he canceled a date with a dancer named Katie Rogers on the night that he first met Iris West, stopping the purse snatcher who had grabbed her backpack.  Katie Rogers was also the name of the heroine of a 2009 graphic novel - The Trouble With Katie Rogers - published by Ape Entertainment.

The song playing at Caitlin and Ronnie's wedding is Don't Dream It's Over by Crowded House. The song is about two people coming together and believing in their love, despite circumstances contriving to separate them.

Barry has a number of visions of both the past and the future as he enters into The Speed Force. Among these are images of a bronze statue of himself.  This is a reference to The Flash Museum, which had such a statue in front of it.  The Flash Museum, as its name implies, was a museum devoted towards the life of The Flash, his enemies and his allies.

Barry also has a vision of a pale-skinned, blonde-haired woman with ice powers. It appears to be Caitlin Snow, having assumed the identity of Killer Frost - the heat-draining super-villain who shares her name in the comics.

Right before he sees the night his mother died, Barry sees himself, The Atom, Sara Lance and Captain Cold facing off against a giant robot foot.  This scene is taken from preview footage from the trailer for the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow TV series.

A metal petasos-style helmet with wings on the sides flies out of the wormhole, which Thawne takes as a sign that he should go. This might be because said hat is part of the uniform of Jay Garrick - The Flash of Earth 2 in the pre-Crisis DC Comics Universe.

A number of bystanders are seen watching the singularity start to devour Central City.  Among them are Len Snart, Captain Singh, Henry Allen and a young woman named Kendra Saunders, whom we know will become Hawkgirl in the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow show.

Technobabble

Thawne says he needs Barry to rupture the space-time barrier and create a stable wormhole which he can use to return to his home time.

Professor Stein notes that Thawne's actions have already changed the past, creating the parallel universe in which The Flash TV show takes place.

Thawne's plan is for Barry to collide with a hydrogen proton moving at the speed of light in STAR Labs' particle accelerator. This will punch a hole in reality and create a portal connecting their time with infinite times - a wormhole through which one could travel backwards to the night Nora Allen died or forward in time to Eobard Thawne's time.  This requires Barry to run fast enough to trigger the reaction - too slow will crush him like a bug splatting against a windshield.

Professor Stein says that Barry will have to move at Mach 2 in order to time travel using the particle accelerator. Mach 2 is 1,522.4141 mph.

Ronnie notes that the tiles Wells set aside for building a time machine are made of tungsten.  Cisco notes that tungsten does have the highest melting point of any element. Unfortunately, tungsten dust is flammable, meaning that the pressure of the wormhole could cause a hole to be melted into the exterior of the time machine's casing and trigger an explosion due to temporal shearing.

Cisco theorizes that Thawne fits his costume inside of his ring using compressed micro-tech.

Thawne says that a cobalt resin being used to cement the tungsten tiles will prevent degradation in conditions of extreme heat.

Thawne says that Cisco was altered by the particle accelerator explosion and is able to see through the vibrations of the universe. This is why Cisco is able to retain traces of another timeline in his memory.

Stein notes that even if Barry can hit the hydrogen particle at the right speed, the resulting wormhole could collapse into a singularity - i.e. a black hole.  This would be a global catastrophe.

When Barry and Joe have their second talk about whether or not Barry should attempt to change the past, Barry sits on "the cosmic treadmill".  In the comics, The Cosmic Treadmill was the device that allowed Barry Allen to time-travel.

According to Thawne's calculations, Barry will have 1 minute and 52 seconds to save his mother and return home once the wormhole stabilizes.

Though it isn't named as such, Eddie's method of killing Eobard is a classic example of The Grandfather Paradox - a classic physics problem which states that a time traveler could not go back in time and kill their own grandfather.  The act of killing their grandfather would cause them not to exist, which therefore means they could never go back in time to kill their grandfather in the first place. The paradox would not, however, appear to stop a man from acting on future knowledge to prevent his future ancestors from being born.

Stein notes that the accretion disc has already assembled once they get outside the STAR Labs building. The accretion disc the fused material that forms an orbital motion around a singularity. It has an energy level of at least 6.7 tera-electronvolts.


Dialogue Triumphs

Barry: My name is Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive. When I was a child, I saw my mother killed by something impossible. My father went to prison for her murder. Then an accident made me the impossible. To the outside world, I'm am an ordinary forensic scientist, but secretly I use my speed to fight crime and find others like me. And one day I'll find who killed my mother and get justice for my father. That day is today.

Barry: Why were we enemies?
Eobard: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter anymore. What matters is that neither of us was strong enough to defeat the other. Until I learned your secret. I learned your name. Barry. Allen. And finally I knew how to defeat you once and for all. Travel back in time. Kill you as a child. Wipe you from the face of the Earth!  But then you - future you, that is - followed me back and we fought. We both landed some pretty solid shots. And then you - future you - got your younger self out of there. I was so mad!  And then I thought, "what if you were to suffer a tragedy?" What if you were to suffer something horrible, so traumatic that your child self could never recover? Then you would not become The Flash.  And so I stabbed your mother in the heart. And I was free. Finally able to return to a future without The Flash. Only to realize that in traveling back, I lost my way home. Lost my ability to harness The Speed Force and without it I was stuck here. Stranded in this time. Unable to return to my home. And the only way back was The Flash. But The Flash was gone. And so, I created him.

Barry: I can save Mom.
Henry: At what cost?

Ronnie: (To Caitlin) I realized that although sometimes I'm more than one man, I'm not whole unless I'm with you.

Barry: What do you think I should do?  I need someone to tell me.
Iris: I think - that for once your life, Barry Allen, you should stop thinking about other people. I think you should do what's in your heart. Do what you need to for yourself.

Cisco: It was an alternate timeline. One that Barry reset. But I never forgot it. It just kept coming back to me. And I can still picture the way you looked at me when you called me a son. And you crushed my heart with your fist.
Eobard: Cisco... I'm sorry.
Cisco: Yeah. It sucked.
Eobard: Oh, not for killing you. I'm sure I had a good reason. I'm sorry for the fact that you were able to retain traces of another timeline. You're able to see through the vibrations of the universe.

Eddie: Dr. Wells made it pretty clear when he told me about the future. I don't matter. As far as history is concerned I don't save the day or get the girl.
Martin: And... you believed him?
Eddie: He had a newspaper from the year 2024.
Martin: And I have a mug that says "World's Best Boss". I doubt my teaching assistant would testify to its authenticity.

Barry: You know, I've dreamed my whole life about saving her. Freeing my dad. I never thought I'd have to lose another parent to do that.
Joe: Barry...
Barry: Joe, it's true... it's true. I've always been so focused on everything that I lost that night. But I've gained so much too. I was born with one father and that tragedy gave me another. And I don't think I can lose you.
Joe: You won't ever lose me. Ever, do you hear me?  Ever.

Eddie: We've all been so focused on Barry's destiny, I forgot I have one too. And it's you. Iris West. Every moment of my life led to meeting you. Screw the future.
Iris: (laughs) Screw the future.

Ronnie: Is this actually binding?
Martin: My father made me become a rabbi before he would send me to M.I.T. This will be "legit", as the kids say.
Ronnie: No kids say that.
Martin: Let's not fight on our wedding day.

Ronnie: I owe you a real ring.
Caitlin: I don't need one. I have everything and everyone that I could ever need right here. If all the events of the past year have led us to this moment, it was worth it. I love you, Ronnie.
Martin: I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.
Ronnie: Stop telling me what to do. (kisses Caitlin)

Cisco: May the Speed Force be with you.

Barry: Goodbye, Dad.
(They hug)
Joe: Goodbye, Son.

Eobard: Barry, what you're seeing is The Speed Force. Your past. Your present. Your future. All at once. So you need to focus on where you want to go. So think about that night.  Think about your mother...

Eddie: He was wrong, it turns out. I'm a hero after all.
Iris: You are, Eddie!  You are! You are my hero.
Eddie: That's all I ever wanted to be.  Your hero...

Martin: Barry, that event has an energy level of 6.7 tera-electronvolts! It cannot be stopped!
Barry: I have to try.


Continuity

Eobard Thawne claims that cows are extinct in his time.

Eobard Thawne claims to have been born in the year 2151 - 136 years in the future.

Thawne reveals that he remembers an entirely different past with Barry Allen and that he originally came back in time to kill Barry, but then killed Nora Allen in the hopes that the tragedy would stop Barry Allen from becoming The Flash. He was right, but he was depowered in the process and thus forced to recreate the events that turned Barry Allen into The Flash.

Barry refers to how he altered time after going back one day in 116.

Iris refers to the original name given to Barry - The Streak - which was last mentioned in 105.

Caitlin says that Barry has never gone as fast as Mach 2 before.

Cisco's theory from 122, that Wells was using the device in his wheelchair to power his super-speed is confirmed.

Cisco tells Eobard Thawne about his visions of having been killed by him in the alternate timeline from 115.  Thawne, in turn, tells him that the particle accelerator explosion gave him powers and that a great and honorable destiny awaits him.

Eddie refers to the conversation he and Eobard had about the future in 121.

Eddie's favorite food is the dim sum at Mama Chows.

Eddie refers to how he first met Iris, stopping the mugger who stole her backpack in 101.

Martin Stein is a Rabbi and apparently legally qualified to perform weddings in whatever state Central City is located in.

Caitlin and Ronnie are legally married on the lawn of STAR Labs, with Martin conducting the ceremony. Joe, Eddie, Barry, Iris and Cisco attend the wedding, with Cisco acting as the ring bearer and Iris as the maid of honor.

There are three versions of Barry Allen at the scene of Nora Allen's murder as of this episode - a future version of Barry, the ten-year-old Barry and the 25-year-old Barry of "now".

Eobard Thawne says "Now run, Barry, run!" as Barry begins his run to the past, in the same manner in which he said those same lines when Barry Allen tried to reverse a tornado in 101.  These were also the words Henry Allen said to a young Barry on the night Nora Allen died.

The visions that Barry has while in The Speed Force show him a young Iris and Joe shortly after his mother's death, Caitlin Snow as Killer Frost, The Flash Museum, Barry in prison and an image of The Atom, Sara Lance, Captain Cold and himself facing a giant robot foot stomping down at them before he sees the night Nora Allen died.

The future Barry raises a hand and shakes his head at the present Barry, indicating that he shouldn't save Nora's life.  Barry decides to obey and hides until The Reverse Flash leaves. He does, however, ensure that his mother does not die alone and reveals his identity to her.

Eobard Thawne identifies Rip Hunter as the inventor of the first Time Sphere and says that he was "an interesting man".

A metal petasos-style helmet flies out of the wormhole, which Thawne takes as a sign that he should go - a possible reference to The Flash of Earth 2, Jay Garrick.

Eddie Thawne shoots himself in the chest, killing himself - an action that causes Eobard Thawne to fade out of existence. His body is later dragged into the re-opened wormhole that forms above STAR Labs after Eobard Thawne is erased from existence.


Untelevised Adventures

Eobard Thawne refers to several future battles with Barry Allen and how the timeline we've come to know over the past season was the result of his killing Nora Allen.



The Bottom Line

Flawless, save that the uncertainty of the cliff-hanger ending is annoying when we're looking at a four month gap before Season 2 starts.