Last week, The Flash set the stage for Barry to get his powers back. But you had to know something else had to happen before they achieve that. Hence, almost the entire episode leads up to it.
A large portion of the episode involves Barry’s indecision. He goes as far as to see his Dad to figure it all out. The crux of his issues with the whole thing is how irresponsible it might be to recreate the explosion, even on a small scale. Nevermind the fact that it could kill him. He gets his father to come back to Central City, possibly for good, over this issue.
Wells, on the other hand, is determined to get Barry to do it. He spends the entire episode prepping the procedure as if there was no chance that it wouldn’t happen. He insist on it, since their Flash hologram isn’t going to fool people forever anyway. Also, Zoom still has Caitlin. The only one to stay out of the discussion is Joe, since he’s wise enough to know that it really doesn’t matter what any of them say. Once Barry makes up his mind, he’s going to do whatever he decided to do.
Cisco, meanwhile, vibes his brother. Since that almost never happens on its own unless things are about to go bad, he decides to go and see him. Dante’s as flippant towards him as ever, though. As they leave the bar they met at, bickering over little things like a ride back, the other shoe drops. A scythe-wielding meta named Rupture shows up, demanding revenge from Cisco for killing his brother. Aside from causing considerable damage to the long suffering STAR Labs van, it’s also revealed that he’s Dante’s Earth-2 duplicate. Zoom lied to him about the cause of Reverb’s death, pinning it on Cisco, and set him loose in much the same way he’s been doing all season.
Speaking of, Zoom takes on the entire CCPD. The only reason no one dies is due to Caitlin’s pleas to spare them. Caitlin spends most of the episode chained to a desk. She’s smart enough to know that just sitting around isn’t going to cut it, so she manages to reach an evidence box with her legs, and is lucky to find a cell phone inside. Zoom never had any intention to leave the police alive in the first place, and orders Rupture to go and wipe them out for regrouping at CC Jitters.
Caitlin warns the team about the incoming attack, giving them enough time to set up a meager defense. They use the Flash hologram to distract Rupture long enough to tase him and get the scythe away from him. Zoom is pissed when he finds out about this. He discovers Caitlin’s hand in it, and tells her that he won’t be listening to her again. He then goes over and kills Rupture for failing him twice in one day, and snaps the neck of almost the entire department other than Joe and Singh. He then uses the news camera that got on the scene somehow to inform everyone that there was not hope left for them, especially if they disobeyed his orders.
This winds up being exactly the kick in the pants Barry needed to make a decision. It turns out that Harry had been working on making the whole thing smaller, and therefore less likely to cause a huge explosion that would blanket the city like the first time. Nonetheless, Barry’s dad is still worried that it will kill him.
Cisco and his brother reconcile after the incident. Dante had found the note Cisco left in case he died on Earth-2. Cisco tells him about his powers, and how they’d led him to believe that something would happen to him, even though it turned out to be his doppelganger.
After locking Wally and Jessie up in the time vault for their own safety, they begin the procedure by injecting Barry with a mixture of the chemicals that were in his body the night he got his powers. Cisco uses the weather wand to direct a bolt of lightning into the satellite dish, sending it down to Barry. The accelerator gets flipped on simultaneously and…
Wally and Jessie picked the lock on the time vault and got out just in time to get hit with the wave of Barry-infused dark matter. Zoom shows up to gloat about how their attempt simply killed Barry. And everyone is horrified.
The Flash seems to have suffered from the same problem Supergirl had. Namely, that the scenes for next week killed any suspense you might have had that Barry was dead. Then again, like they’d actually kill the main character of the show.
Final Thoughts:
- You knew something bad was going to happen when Iris warmed up to the idea that they should be together.
- Harry just happened to have a list of metahumans from Earth-2 sitting around. Might have been helpful to know.
- Barry is trapped in another dimension. Thanks, scenes for next week.
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