The Flash depowered Barry Allen last episode. And they’ve been adding characters that should have a similar ability set. This episode’s ending was obviously suspicious due to that.
Barry just can’t seem to go back to how he was before. Interesting, when you consider the week he spent as the fastest quadriplegic alive (also thanks to Zoom). He even gets to enjoy the suckage of public transit and all that implies.
Cisco’s attempts to see what Zoom has done with Caitlin only really confirm that he hasn’t killed her. Harry’s fed up with the whole situation, and decides that now is the perfect time to hunt down Jessie. He’s able to do that now thanks to the fact that, since they’re from another Earth, they create a cell phone dead zone around them. Cisco is pissed that this is the reason he’s dropped so many calls.
Wally goes about hounding Joe to get The Flash to talk to him for most of the episode. He was able to quickly put two and two together and figure out that one of his family members was “the person close to The Flash” as Zoom put it. Near the end of the episode, he finally gets his wish, and thanks him for the life saving sacrifice he made. It really doesn’t go anywhere from there, but it’d probably blow his mind to find out that it was Barry under the mask.
Caitlin refuses to eat or do anything Zoom tells her to, especially when he’s wearing the suit. As a compromise, since in his twisted mind she still has a thing for him, he removes her shackles and lets her have the run of the place. She quickly winds up near the prison cells and meets the enigmatic man in the iron mask. And her Earth-2 counterpart.
Caitlin makes a deal with Killer Frost for mutual aid. The idea being that Killer Frost would help her escape from the place proper if she breaks the cell holding her. Caitlin does, but Killer Frost was going to kill her the entire time. Her incarceration helped her figure out that the reason Zoom spared her was due to the fact that she looked exactly like Caitlin. As such, murdering the hypotenuse would work to her favor.
Harry actually finds Jessie (dead zones, duh), but Jessie’s still mad over the whole “him killing a guy to save her” thing. She wants nothing to do with him and sends him off. His drive back to STAR Labs takes a curve when a metahuman steps in front of the van and stops it with his bare hands. Harry’s dazed from the crash, and even though he brought his future gun with him, it’s no use to him in that state. The meta grabs him, and Cisco is automatically alerted since he tracks everything since the cold gun got stolen.
They contact Jessie thanks to the van’s GPS, and a little bit of sleuthing reveals that they’re dealing with Griffin Grey. He disappeared months ago, and he wants Wells to fix him. See, he got the shit end of the stick in the superpower lottery; he has amazing superstrength, but every time he uses it, it ages him severely. He’s 18 going on 39 because of it.
Their first attempt to save Harry fails, but they figure out that Griffin’s power ages him, thanks to Barry taking a chemical barrel to the ribs. Speaking of, those barrels must be the same ones from EVERY SHOOTER EVER because one of them explodes when Joe shoots it. Anyway, they realize that their only hope is to weaken him to the point where he’s old. Luckily, Cisco and Jessie put in a call to Emily Smoak and got a bit of dwarf star alloy to reinforce the Flash suit. Unfortunately, it would only be enough to block one punch to the chest.
They go after Griffin once again. Barry dodges to a point, but eats his gimme punch pretty early on. He takes one more punch before Griffin literally ages himself to death. That’s still sad, considering all of the pathos he dealt to Wells about his condition. But Barry survives his fight with the world’s weakest One Punch Man, and they get Harry back.
Harry and Jessie have their reunion and reconcile. Zoom still thinks Caitlin will come around. And Harry lets Barry know that he’s decided to do whatever possible to help him get his powers back.
The Flash has clearly been building towards Wally getting powers, at the very least. My guess is that Harry’s small scale attempts to get Barry back will be unsuccessful, leading to the decision to ramp things up. Or maybe not.
Final Thoughts:
- I’m less and less sure the iron mask guy is another Jay. It might be his father, given the code he taps out. Just tinfoil hatting things.
- Those barrels reminded me that it’s been forever since I’ve seen an Area 51 cabinet.
- It strikes me that this would’ve been an excellent time for Cisco to figure out how to shoot the sonic blasts his counterpart used.
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