The Flash is DC’s television adaptation of the comic book of the same name. It airs Tuesday nights at 8/7 Central on The CW. Our writer, Nicole Drum recaps the series each week updating you on the latest episode here in The FlashBack.
Welcome back, Flash fans! This week’s episode, “Things You Can’t Outrun,” opens with our adorkable hero, Barry and his pseudo sister-best friend-unrequited love, Iris leaving a theater after seeing what sounds like was a zombie movie. Iris gets a call from Detective Thawne and Barry gets a call from Cisco. Something’s going on and Barry slips away from a distracted Iris to asisst where the police are chasing someone after an armed robbery. The speedster pulls the bad guys out of the car, drops them in the backseat of the police car, and is back by Iris’ side in, well, a flash. He’s starving, does she want to get food?
Cut to the Darbinian crime family having a meeting at the Amarasian Oasis restaurant. They are suddenly surrounded by a strange gas and die one by one. Let’s hope Barry’s dinner is better than that.
Back at the police department Joe has brought all the old case files from Barry’s dad’s trial down to Barry’s lab. Joe tells Barry that he wants to help exonerate his father, but then Thawne comes in and informs them about the suspicious Darbinian massacre at the restaurant.
At the crime scene they sort out that this poison responsible for the deaths had to be inside the building because the doors are locked from the inside. Barry has another one of his awesome Sherlock moments (I’m starting to live for these moments in the show) and realizes that some of the victims got further from the table than others meaning that the gas may have been being directed to attack one at a time. Yikes.
Back to S.T.A.R. Barry works out some theories as to how the poison killer may operate (because he’s clearly metahuman) and Joe just doesn’t care. Joe cares about putting the bad guys behind bars, but a poison gas metahuman wouldn’t exactly work behind bars. He’d escape. Cisco has the great idea of restructuring the particle reactor as a prison.
And flashback time. We go back to the night the accelerator was turned on with Caitlin and meet Ronnie, her now-deceased fiance (played by the sufficiently handsome Robbie Amell, last seen on the cancelled CW series The Tomorrow People. Fortunately his acting skills have improved!) They’re happy. They’re talking honeymoon and wedding plans and everyone at S.T.A.R. is feeling pretty good. Dr. Wells turns on the accelerator, pops a bottle of champagne and then…the stream suspends in air before splashing down and then there is a loud bang.
Back to the now, Dr. Wells snaps Caitlin back and asks her to come with him to the accelerator but Barry is not only a hero in costume but he’s a nice a guy and recognizes that she’s uncomfortable. He has her take him to the police station to help with his investigation. At the station people are just generally not great to Barry and Caitlin covers as he uses his speed to complete a report for his boss, Singh.
Meanwhile at home Joe is watching the old video footage of Henry Allen’s interrogation. It’s heartbreaking: Henry tells the arresting office that Joe would vouch for him not being a killer. Joe closes his laptop super quickly when Iris comes in, explaining things away as work-related. Thawne rolls up (that dude and timing, really) and covers by telling Joe that he’s looking for him so they can do another sweep of the crime scene. Thawne also tells Iris (on his way out) that he has to tell her father about them. Oh boy.
Back at S.T.A.R. Cisco has gone down to the particle accelerator and he has flashbacks to the night of the accident as well. We really get to meet Ronnie Raymond in this flashback as he and Cisco went down into the machine when the alarms started going off with the hope of stopping the explosion and saving lives. Ronnie tells Cisco that he has to close the shielded doors to save the others if Ronnie doesn’t come back within two minutes. Cisco grudgingly agrees after Ronnie tells him how important it is to him that Caitlin is safe and then Ronnie goes off to certain death in the belly of the beast. (I have a sad. I’m having to remind myself that there is more to come.) Dr. Wells gets Cisco out of his trip into the past and offers a shoulder, but Cisco talks instead of about the modifications and specifications they’ll need to make to turn this chamber of doom into a proper metahuman prison.
While waiting for some test results at the crime lab, Caitlin and Barry also have Ronnie on their minds. Caitlin explains that he wasn’t supposed to be working the night of the accident and tha the was only there to be with and support her. The test results are in and they find a second strand of DNA in the lungs of one of the restaurant victims and that changes everything. This metahuman can’t just control gas; he becomes gas. And that DNA isn’t in any database. Things just got complicated.
Image Credit: CW
At the mall, our gaseous murdering metahuman attacks a judge in an elevator and strongly implies that said judge had given him the death penalty. Hmm. Word comes over the radio about the gas attack in progress and Barry suits up, racing to the mall to help. Sadly the judge is gone but Barry, seeing a cloud of gas, confronts the killer. The killer is a creepy-looking guy. Actual scary. And he has another name on his list. Barry tries to punch him, but that doesn’t work so well when you can turn to poison gas and well, the killer tries to poison Barry. It almost works, but Barry has that super-fast metabolism working in his favor and he is able to rush to S.T.A.R where the team extracts a live sample of gas from his lungs with a syringe. Ow. Cisco continues his naming streak and dubs this week’s villain “The Mist.”
Recovered from his experience Barry goes to talk to Joe and let him know that this killer transforms to gas, not control it. Barry is a really nice guy and he feels really badly that he couldn’t save the judge, just like he feels badly for not being able to save his parents. He even says he could break his dad out as the Flash, but Joe reminds him that he’d have to live his life on the run and promises that he is going to get his dad out the right way. He also tells Barry that he can’t save everyone and that’s okay.
At the station Thawne is dealing with calls about the red streak and Iris comes to talk to him, letting him know she’s gonna come clean to her dad. I’m already over this pair. Yawn.
Barry goes to talk to Caitlin about Ronnie and offers to go down into the hole where the accelerator was with her for support. Flashback to when Ronnie was lost. Cisco closes the door and Caitlin comes to get Ronnie, but it was too late. He calls on the walkie-talkie and says he’s fixed the vents so the explosion will go up and not out, saving people in the building. Caitlin explains that she is hurt and upset that no one will know what Ronnie did. Barry, trying to be kind, tells her that he knows and Ronnie died as a hero. Caitlin about rips my heart out when she responds: “I didn’t want him to be a hero. I wanted him to be my husband.”
And now for the part of the episode where we really start cooking with gas (yes, bad pun, roll with it.) At the lab, Barry figures out that the chemical in the gas is the same used on death penalty prisoners. This leads to the discovery that Kyle Nimbus was impacted by the particle accelerator blast as he was being executed. This lets the figure out his connections to the crime family, to the judge, and they figure out that last name on his list: the arresting officer, Joe. Nooooooo! Barry starts to rush out and Caitlin gives him a vial of poison gas antidote, just in case.
Joe is at Iron Heights to see Henry and express how sorry he is, that he knows Henry is innocent. Henry isn’t super thrilled, but does tell Joe that what matters is that he has always believed in Barry. I freaking love Henry.
Barry calls Thawne to warn Joe and Thawne directs Barry to Iron Heights. Barry may be fast, but he arrives just after The Mist has killed the guard and attacked Joe. Barry manages to save Joe with the antidote. He vibrates his face to blur his identity from Henry. He then confronts Nimbus, but is warned over comms that he can’t breathe in any of the mist without the antidote. They suggest that Barry makes Nimbus chase hime and that the continuous use of his powers will wear Nimbus out. It works and when Nimbus reforms into a person to breathe, Barry knocks him out.
Joe wakes up in the hospital with Barry asleep in a chair beside him. They talk and then Iris comes in with Thawne and she starts to confess, but Joe is a detective. He already knew (not to mention that Iris is a terrible liar.) He’s not happy. He’s pretty mad, but he does want his daughter to be happy. Oh and that he will try not to shoot Thawne.
In the new metahuman prison of doom, The Mist is pounding his fist pointless against the cell walls. Caitlin is really not comfortable with working upstairs from this, but Dr. Wells assures her she will get used to it. Cisco is acting a little weird and starts to tell Caitlin something important about the night of the accident, but she shuts him down. She says she’s okay and that she loves Ronnie even more for his sacrifice. And that she needs ice cream. Or a drink. Or both.
Barry goes to visit his dad and they talk about his mom. Henry tells Barry that he was slow to walk, but when he eventually did, it was straight into his mother’s waiting arms.
And all is well in Central City again. Barry speeds about, stopping a purse snatcher. Iris blogs about the “streak.” Caitlin and Cisco share a laugh. And Dr. Wells? He is looking at the Flash costume and has his very own flashback to that fateful night of the accident: upon getting the message from Cisco that Ronnie has saved them, Dr. Wells says he will be right down, but instead he goes into his super secret chamber and pulls up a surveillance video. Of Barry. In his lab. Being struck by the lightning. And, in the creepy fashion we have come to associate with Dr. Wells he says “see you soon, Barry.”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!
Dr. Wells is still creeping me out. What is he up to? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
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