The Flash has spent the entire season building up the tension surrounding the true identity of Harrison Wells. Finally, almost all of the cards are on the table. Almost everyone knows who Wells is, and almost everyone knows that Barry is The Flash. Well, at least among the main cast. Everything changes in this one.
The episode starts right where last episode left off; Barry, Caitlin, and Cisco are in Wells’ time vault. The yellow suit is on display, and the future newspaper (or screencap? Whatever you’d call it) is right there for them to read. After realizing who wrote the article, Cisco accidentally activates Giedeon. They try to wipe Gideon’s memory, before realizing they’re way out of their depth. Barry simply asks Gideon to not mention the incident to Wells, to which Gideon obliges. In the end it turns out that Barry created Gideon.
Eddie asks for Joe’s permission to propose to Iris. Joe shoots him down; we already know the actual reason why, but Joe does have his own reasons for it.
Coming to the realization that Cisco is the only one that somehow remembers the alternate timeline (with no real explanation given), they decide that they need to tap into his time-travel related daydreams. The series has constantly dropped Wells into situations where he should really realize that they’re on to him, only to buy a stammered lie. I guess in the future, they accept anything said as truth. In this case, he catches them making a device to deal with Cisco’s memories. he buys their lie that it’s meant to help people that have been recently menaced by metahumans, and actually helps them finish the device! At least this will be the last episode that happens in.
They go to Barry’s lab to plumb the depths of Cisco’s nightmares. The lucid dream is pretty trippy; it’s really just a blue filter and a change of lighting for STAR Labs, though. We see Wells’ admission that he is Eobard Thawne again. Cisco nearly has a stroke when Wells kills him in the dream; but he snaps awake just in time.
Wells calls Barry with eerily accurate timing. The building that Captain Singh’s fiance works has burst into flames. On the exact floor he works on. There are no coincidences anymore, but this never gets acknowledged in the episode. If I had to guess, this was orchestrated by Wells, but I could be wrong.
All season, Tom Cavanagh has managed to perfectly balance the mentoring that his character gives Barry with the fact that he’s really playing an evil, menacing prick. He’s a great actor, and I’m just wondering where he’s going to go over the next season. Because, like I said, this is the episode where the mentor persona is cast off.
They hatch a half-baked plan to get Wells to confess, using Cisco as bait. He reconfigured the trap they originally built to catch the Reverse Flash so that it would keep speedsters out. You know this won’t work because Wells has been one step ahead the entire time, so why should this be any different.
Iris drops a packet of info off to Barry. She’s pieced together that Wells wanted the accelerator to explode. Barry manages to stall any discussion of it.
Caitlin sets the trap by letting Wells know that Cisco found something out about the night that they tried to capture the Reverse Flash, and that he’s in the bunker right now. Wells knows what has to happen, he stops in the hallway to figure out how it will all go down.
Almost everything goes exactly as it did before. The only difference being that this time, Barry and Joe are waiting in a corner of the room. Wells raises his hand as he advances on Cisco, but it doesn’t vibrate, which is an important detail. Cisco gets inside the barrier and activates it.
And Wells walks right through it.
Joe springs from hiding and fires three shots. Barry, realizing that they need Wells alive for a confession to get his father out of prison, chases after them, managing to catch two before hitting the barrier. The third hits Wells center of mass, and he drops like a sack of hammers.
But wait! Dr. Wells is Spy! Remember the guy they caught a couple of episodes ago who could transform into anyone with a single touch? Well, it looks like Wells managed to castle again, sending Hannibal “Everyman” Bates to menace Cisco while he cleaned out his time vault. After some taunting from Wells, Barry rushes into the time vault to find that Wells had secretly kept surveillance on all of them.
Iris isn’t safe; Barry heads out to protect her, but the Reverse flash is quicker to the punch, abducting Eddie. In an undisclosed location, Eddie tells Wells that there’s no point in hiding his face; he knows that the Reverse Flash is Harrison Wells. Wells, ever the troll, introduces himself as Eobard Thawne,m also dropping the bomb that he’s actually a descendant of sorts of Eddie.
This episode hits hard, in the best way possible. There were more things happening than I would really want to cover here. But they’re building towards the season finale, and from here on out, it’s probably going to be nothing but payoff.
Final Thoughts:
- We know Eddie’s not going to marry Iris. We’ve technically know that for several episodes.
- I don’t know where Eddie is going to go from here, but we know Eobard can’t kill him.
- Get on board the Gorilla Grodd hype train!
About Author
