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! Flash Fact: this episode was pretty awesome so I hope you’re extra excited for the recap! Last night’s episode opened up with a motorcycle chase. It’s not a regular motorcycle chase, however, because the Flash is on top of it. Three criminals are trying to evade capture so the Flash awesomely just redirects traffic (with help from Wells, who isn’t being creepy at this moment) to force the three fugitives to one location. Once they get there and have to stop to avoid hitting each other the Flash swipes their keys. Presto! The Royal Flush gang has been captured! Here’s another Flash Fact: I love when an episode starts out with a little Easter egg.
The Nerd Squad having done their thing for the day Dr. Wells goes home and we are introduced to a bit of his private life. The creepy doctor has an extremely nice, fabulously modern almost all glass fancy house. Wells literally walks through his house, turns on some classical music and promptly gets a phone call that creeps out Creepy Jeans himself. The caller tells Wells that he hasn’t yet paid the piper and then those glass walls promptly start shattering. Wells uses his super secret speed power to get to safety. Cut to the next morning and the police roll up to investigate. Speaking of rolling, the police find Wells in his wheelchair, being calm. Cisco and Caitlyn show up as well, revealing that no one really knows much about Wells’ private life. We also get a flashback where Wells is playing chess with Hartley Rathaway, his protege. It is also Cisco’s first day at S.T.A.R. in said flashback and it’s pretty clear that Rathaway feels threatened. Wells reassures him that he’s still “his guy” in regards to the work. I don’t know about you, but I don’t buy it.
Barry also doesn’t buy the generic explanation of Wells getting random haters because of what happened with the accelerator so he uses his superspeed to do his forensics. He pieces the window back together and notes that there is no point of impact. That means the window wasn’t struck, it was shattered by other means. Wells explains that he knows exactly who did it and reveals what the flashback already sort of told us: Hartley Rathaway did it. Wells refers to him as the prodigal son and says he’s returned. I’m frankly too busy squeeing at the appearance of another one of the Flash’s canon foes as Hartley Rathaway is better known to comics fans as Pied Piper.
Image Credit: CW
We also find out that Rathaway is kind of a jerk. The Nerd Squad each tell their own take on him and we get some flashbacks showing just how much of a condescending creep Rathaway is. I don’t like him, even if he is kind of adorable in a warped Harry Potter type of way. Barry also takes some time to try to explain physics (specifically frequencies) to Joe, but Joe uses the opportunity to express his concerns about Wells’ influence in Barry’s life. I like Joe. Joe is smart. Go Joe…well crap, that conversation got cut short. Rathaway is attacking, oddly enough, his own father’s company. He’s also doing a bit of bragging about his special sound wave skills, but Barry easily defeats him with speed. Defeated, Harry Potter Piper Rathaway drops a mini bomb: Wells really isn’t who he says he is. See? Even the villains know!
Back at the lab they lock Rathaway up in their metahuman prison. We get some exposition about his own sad origin story (seems Rathaway got screwed over in the accelerator explosion, too, specifically really bad ear pain.) We also see that Rathaway is a polyglot and then Wells and Rathway have a chat in Latin. Someone’s fancy. Fancy and smart: he knows the team’s listening so Rathaway tells them that Wells is the dangerous one. What does Creepy Jeans do? He decides to own up to having been warned that the accelerator could explode. This doesn’t sit well with the team and Wells loses their trust.
Even with trust lost Cisco must science on and he pretty quickly figures out that Rathaway was phoning it in on his attack on his father’s lab. Rathaway could have destroyed the whole building with his sonic tech which can only mean one thing: IT WAS A TRAP! And it was. Harry Potter Piper Rathaway escapes and Cisco sounds the alarm. Of course Wells has some sort of weird episode and just collapses, unable to move which is unexpected and Cisco is nearly blown to bits because the Piper used his special hearing aid to create an explosive. Piper also then punches out Caitlyn, hacks into the lab’s computer, steals some files, takes back his sonic gauntlets and vanishes before Barry shows up.
Don’t worry. Cisco isn’t dead. He’s just banged up. Wells takes the blame, then says he is going to earn back some trust. We get another nifty flashback, this time showing that Wells is not only creepy but a real jerk when he fires Rathaway for warning about the accelerator, then threatens him when he says he will turn whistleblower. Back in the present, Wells has a press conference where he admits to knowing the accelerator could have exploded. He apologizes, but he also helps Iris out a moment by letting her ask him the only question of the press conference. Oh yes, Iris. I almost forgot about her since she was kind of blah this episode. She got a job with the poorly-named Central City Picture News earlier in the episode and his having a crappy time of it with her more seasoned coworker/idol. Newsflash, princess: you’re a newbie. You have to do your grunt work. There’s some exposition about gumption earlier and when Iris gets to ask the only question she explains that it was gumption. It was rather boring, but at least it’s not Thawne time.
Anyway. Wells reassures Cisco that he’s awesome and more so than Rathaway because Cisco is a good guy with heart. At about the same time Rathaway dons his hoodie of nerdtastic villainry and challenges Wells and the Flash to a real-life chess game. Piper blocks traffic on a bridge over the damn and has some fun flipping cars while he waits for the Flash. Flash runs around saving people while the nerd squad figure out that Rathaway stole files that let him know about Barry’s special frequency. What does a genius with a fancy sonic device do with that? Why he fine-tunes his devices to create a killing frequency to rip the Flash’s organs apart and makes it so the Flash activates himself by trying to defeat the Piper! Science is rad, folks. So rad that Wells gets to try his hand at hero for a moment and save Barry: he utilizes the satellite radios in cars on the bridge to emit a frequency that destroys Piper’s device. SCIENCE! And while I’m fairly certain that the level of success of this endeavor would depend on the quality of the stereo systems in each of the cars, it is a pretty handy trick and the Piper is defeated. And Barry doesn’t die.
Wells’ actions restore his team’s trust. Barry confirms it when he gives Wells a framed photo of them all (they took a superspeed selfie at the beginning of the episode that just feels like a bad idea to me.) The team is back to normal. Barry goes to see Joe and they have a really great father/son type chat about how no one could replace Joe to Barry. It warms my heart almost as much as the reveal, right after Barry leaves Joe, that Joe is having Thawne investigate Wells. Have I mentioned that I love Joe? He’s so smart.
Cisco pays Rathaway a visit in his special cell, taking a moment to gloat, but it’s Rathaway who has his moment: he knows about what’s happened to Ronnie and he claims to know how to fix it. This clearly weighs on Cisco.
And then we get our stinger: Wells is in his secret room wearing that weird tachyon device. He’s talking with his AI because he’s having issues controlling and hanging on to the superspeed. Gideon, the AI tells him that the tachyon is reaching it’s max which means he may not have it much longer, but Wells is okay with that. He reveals that it’s only temporary and that the real endgame is almost here. What!?!
I can’t. I can’t. Know what else I can’t? Next week it looks like Barry has a lady. Uh…I’m not sure how I feel about this but I guess we’ll find out next week!
The Hudsucker 
Leave A Reply [Invalid Emails Will Be Marked As Spam]