Another episode, another heartbreaking moment for Barry Allen.
The episode opens with team Flash discovering that the Turtle has died in his cell, and Jay rightfully accuses Harrison Wells of being involved. Although Jay doesn’t buy Wells’ story, the team continue with their tasks for the day.
In an attempt to stop Zoom, Wells and Cisco work together to find a way to trigger Cisco’s vibes. Wells figures out that fear is the trigger, and dresses up as the Reverse Flash in order to scare Cisco into vibing. It works, only for Cisco to find out that the actual Reverse Flash (Eobard Thawne) has returned. Cue the dramatic music as Barry finds out that the man who murdered his mother has come back. Only this time, Thawne has no clue of The Flash’s real identity and hasn’t actually killed Barry’s mother yet. With a little bit of control on Cisco’s vibes, the team learns that Thawne has taken Dr. McGee captive so that she could help him use tachyons to get back to his time in the future, and attempts to kill her once she helped him. But of course, our favorite speedster arrives just in time to save Dr. McGee, destroy Thawne’s machine and takes him back to Star Labs after a race around the city. By initially capturing the Reverse Flash, the team doesn’t realize that they’ve ruptured the timeline, causing Cisco to be in a state of “chronic seizing”, and the only way to save him is to let Thawne go back to his time. Honestly, it’s quite sad that Barry never gets to have his moment of victory when it comes to the Reverse Flash. Barry eventually decides that he must send him back to save Cisco, and with the guidance from Wells, manages to do so.
Meanwhile, Jay takes Caitlin to see his Earth-1 doppelganger and reveals it to be Hunter Zolomon. The name should be familiar to fans as Zolomon is Zoom in the comics. Now, I really do think he still could be Zoom on the show as well. Last season, the writers managed to stay true to the comics and still make Eobard Thawne the Reverse Flash, even though he was half Harrison Wells.
Showing Hunter Zolomon so early on in the show could have two reasons – the writers wanted to give a nod to the character as a kind of homage to distract us, or they wanted the fans to come up with more insane theories about Zoom
But I do have a few ideas on who Zoom could turn out to be:
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Hunter Zolomon: Granted it would be too obvious for Zoom to be him, and he has no relationship with Barry (as of yet) so that would be kind of bland. But the writers could still work him into the story. We don’t know what kind of person Zolomon is, or if Jay was actually telling the truth.
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Jay Garrick: Have you ever seen Jay and Zoom on Earth-1 in the same room? I didn’t think so. Jay could just be lying to the entire team to get what he wants. Maybe the Zolomon that was introduced to us is the real Garrick, and Earth-2 Garrick is just trying to mess with everyone. That’s gotta be hard for Caitlin. And we have seen how much “Jay” seemingly hates Wells, so what better way to get his revenge on him by taking his daughter captive and still hanging around to see Wells in pain over the momentary loss of his daughter?
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Henry Allen (from Earth-2): Can you imagine Barry trying to take down someone who looks like his own father? What a challenge it would be. But I only think it could be Henry because of the build of Zoom. There are a lot of fans who’d like Zoom to be Barry’s doppelganger from Earth-2 but he really isn’t big enough to be Zoom.
The episode overall had a lot going on. I personally did not like the scene where Cisco was about to die (seeing him die the first time was bad enough), but Barry finally catching the Reverse Flash seemed too easy. He needed another challenge, another way to let Thawne go and still brood over his mother’s death. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the direction of the show. The writers have proved to be excellent at turning things around, yet still giving us the loved characters from the comic books.
