The Flash finally came back to answer my pressing questions. Granted, it did so by opening up a whole bunch of new ones. But that’s pretty much to be expected.
Barry has no idea how he’s going to get to Earth-2, but he’s not going to give up. Hilariously enough, this is the episode that was clearly meant to link up with the crossover with Supergirl, though it isn’t really mentioned. Barry accidentally pops through dimensions while testing out the tachyon device, and other than his asking how much time has passed there’s no other mention of it.
Harry wants nothing to do with reopening the rifts. He’ll help Barry get faster, but that’s it. This leaves Caitlin and Cisco to come up with absolutely nothing for several hours. Later on, Harry even goes to ask Joe to talk Barry out of it, but Joe tells him he can’t. Once Barry decides he’s doing something, he won’t let it go, so the best bet is to just help him.
Some of the B plot concerns Wally not having enough money to stay in the dorms at college. Barry has to help Joe realize that the circumstances with Wally would be different than with him and Iris. Wally wants to stay with him, but Joe needs to just out and give him the space to get him to accept.
Barry realizes that the best bet to getting a rift open is Cisco, since Reverb had more than a little proficiency with the rifts in general. Cisco isn’t so enthusiastic about it. After several failed attempts, Harry helps out by giving him Reverb’s retooled glasses. He starts to open up a rift, but quits, clearly freaked out. His talk with Barry reveals he’s worried he’ll go all Anakin and wind up just like Reverb. Barry helps him realize that that was more of a Mirror, Mirror type thing since he has friends and a life that Reverb didn’t have. Also, we don’t talk about the midi-chlorians, Cisco. For shame.
Around this time, Harry finds out that Caitlin found out Jay’s real name: Hunter Zolomon. He brings up all of the files he has on Zolomon; since serial killers were uncommon on Earth-2 almost anyone would recognize him as the center of such a massive case. As a child, he watched his father kill his mother, which led to bouncing around the foster/orphanage system before growing into a very disturbed adult. The accelerator exploded while he was getting electroshock therapy, creating the monster known as Zoom.
They decide to use this to their advantage. Cisco was busy between the scenes making a few more cardboard standees. Zoom jumps through the portal the second Cisco makes it wide enough. He and Barry race, with Barry eventually leading him back to STAR Labs. That’s when they use the standees of his parents to catch him with the metahuman boot Cisco made. The standard “we’re not so different” speech begins. And Barry can’t help but gloat about catching him.
Things go off the rails when Zoom breaks the shackle. He began by saying something about being unable to stop the darkness, his eyes going completely black as he says it. I have no idea what this is, but he gets away and kidnaps Wally as punishment. As well as issuing an ultimatum.
There’s a lot of conversation about not doing so, even from Joe. But Barry gives in to the demand anyway. We learn a bit about how he pulled the whole thing off while Wells prepares the device to drain Barry’s Speed Force. Zoom traveled back in time and convinced his time duplicate that he needed to kill him to sell the whole ruse. He literally killed himself to do it. And more monstrously, he took great joy in playing a hero, for the sake of building up hope just to knock it down. And no, we don’t get to find out about the man in the iron mask.
They drain the Speed Force from Barry. Zoom immediately uses it on himself, and then tries to murder Barry. Caitlin talks him out of it, but gets kidnapped as a result. And Barry is no longer the fastest man alive.
I have no clue where The Flash is going next. If I had to guess, the man in the mask is also Jay/Zolomon, somehow. And I’m guessing a second accelerator explosion of some sort is in the works.
Final Thoughts:
- The next episode seems to be about Barry bluffing about his powers. Ought to be good.
- To be fair, guyliner isn’t as obviously a mark of evil as a goatee.
- It’s still a weird sort of Anakin/Vader thing they have going with Zoom’s voice changing with the mask. Tony Todd still brings the horror factor to it.
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