Well, it’s been six months, and The Flash is back for the fall season. And they left things on such a cliffhanger! Which is why what they did, while necessary, is slightly frustrating.
They start things off six months after the last episode. Sure, its a given that things would turn out, but I would’ve personally preferred to see that as it happened opposed to flashbacks. And daydreams. Which is what we get a lot of, throughout the episode. Barry has apparently decided that doing things alone is better than getting people around him hurt. Not like he’s had all that much in the way of metahuman opposition, as he’s mostly been dealing with the usual sorts of emergencies. And going all Bob Vila at night.
Joe shows up at a crime scene to find Barry there, already examining the victim, Al Rothstein. Old Al seems to have been strangled to death by someone huge, and his radiation badge is totally clean despite working in a nuclear plant. Cisco now works for the CCPD, making equipment for the new Metahuman task force. Iris shows up and they all talk about the whole “Flash Day” celebration that Barry has no intention of going to.
Iris finally convinces him to go, even though Barry swears he doesn’t deserve to be called a hero for saving Central City from the singularity. We finally get to see how the situation ended. Stein realized that to close the damn thing, he and Ronnie would have to seperate in the eye of the singularity, since all Barry’s attempt did was stop it from sucking up the Earth. In doing so, Ronnie was lost; Barry was only able to find and save Professor Stein. Barry feels guilt over this, and pushes everyone away over the intervening months.
Everyone shows up to the ceremony. Barry shows up at the very last second to accept the key to the city. And then a hot dog cart hits the stage. Barry gets the Mayor out of the way, and then goes to get his teeth knocked in by the guy that threw it. Cisco hands Joe the weapon he’s been working on called “The Boot”, which looks like a bulky tech bazooka. It launches an electrified shackle that latches on to the guy’s leg. Unfortunately, it makes him bigger and stronger. Barry wakes up, chucks some propane tanks at the guy that Joe shoots to create an explosion. The explosion reveals that the guy is Al Rothstein… or at least someone with his face.
Rothstein didn’t rise from the grave, as the coroner confirms. Cisco also notes that Rothstein wasn’t even in town the night of the accelerator explosion. Iris, however, found out that during the attack, the X-ray and CT machines in the nearby hospital became non operational. Well, shit, it wasn’t Cisco’s fault, so it had to be the guy with Rothstein’s face. While he goes off to make sure it wasn’t his fault that little Timmy couldn’t get an X-ray, Iris convinces Joe that they can’t keep in letting Barry lone wolf it up. Cisco takes Rothstein’s rad badge to Caitlin to see if she can make heads or tails of it, while commenting on how her new digs at Mercury Labs are pretty sweet. He namedrops Sarek in the process; that’s why we love you, Cisco.
Barry heads out alone, without his com, to deal with the “Atom Smasher” as Dr. Stein names him to Cisco’s approval, even though everyone was there to support him. Barry asks the Atom Smasher why he’s there, and why he stole Al’s likeness, and there’s mention of a “he” who presumably sent him. It goes pretty badly; Barry gets his ass kicked again, and he only gets away because Cisco hacked the fire alarms to distract Smashy.
Barry makes it back to STAR Labs, and falls unconscious in the hallway. When he comes to, Joe tells him that they’re not letting him do this alone anymore. Barry goes to see Caitlin. She tells him to stop blaming himself over Ronnie’s (apparent) death, She blames herself more, since she didn’t take Ronnie up on his offer to leave Central City.
Barry offers her a handkerchief, which just happens to be wrapped around a flash drive Dr. Wells lawyer gave to him earlier in the episode. It contains a living will, but Barry tells her he hasn’t watched it out of fear. Caitlin offers to watch it with him. Thawne starts it off with his usual “I know you” shtick, and then tells him to erase everything he just said, and give his video confession to the murder of Barry’s mother to the police.
With the team back together, Barry decides it’s time to wrap up the whole Atom Smasher thing. They make a plan to lead him into an active reactor in the hopes of overloading his ability to absorb radiation. The plan works, and Barry has just enough time to ask him who sent him and why. Smasher tells him that he was promised passage back home in return for defeating The Flash by someone named Zoom. Then he dies.
Barry’s father is finally freed from prison. They have a big party for the event, and everyone is happy, until Barry pulls his father aside and asks him what his plans are. Turns out he doesn’t want to cramp Barry’s development into a hero.
They’re all talking this over at the lab when someone we’ve gotten some vague shots of throughout the episode steps in, having broken through all of the nice, new security measures Caitlin and Cisco had just installed. He identifies himself as Jay Garrick, and tells them that their world is in peril. And he’s here to help.
Final Thoughts:
- This one felt really jumbled. The combination of flashbacks and the beginning of this season’s plot made things fell kind of disjointed.
- Face stealing technology must be the next big thing.
- It always strikes me as odd when they have hero celebrations for people that try to keep a secret identity.
- At least Cisco looks like himself again.
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