The gang visits Earth-2, and while Barry makes everything worse, candidates for Zoom are narrowed down.
It’s hard to know where to start with this one, so I’ll just get right into the Earth-2 stuff. Fair warning, there’s a whole lot of crazy, and by this show’s standards, that’s saying something.
Barry, Cisco and Wells head into Earth-2 through a speed cannon, after Barry closed all the breaches in Central City, where they see images of Supergirl, Connor Hawke and the Flash as played by John Wesley Shipp.
It’s comforting to know that John Wesley Shipp’s Flash and all of its super-dated special effects still exists in an alternate universe.
Barry and Cisco are busy being amazed by all the yellow in Earth-2 when Barry spots his doppelganger speaking on behalf of the CCPD, which means we can safely say he isn’t Zoom at this point.
Our Barry kidnaps boring Barry, who doesn’t care that he just travelled at the speed of sound because Harrison Wells is there and he loves Harrison Wells. Maybe too much.
Barry ultimately knocks him out in an effort to steal his identity. And he’s really, really terrible at it.
Somehow though, nobody notices that Barry isn’t his usual self (not even Iris, who is not only a detective on Earth-2, but his god damn wife).
Nobody except Earth-2 Caitlin, because she can sense(?) a ‘breacher’. It’s revealed that Caitlin, who kills people now and goes only by Killer Frost, and Ronnie, who’s back as Deathstorm, are hunting breachers for Zoom.
Danielle Panabaker, by the way, steals the episode as Killer Frost. She doesn’t get a whole lot to do as regular old Caitlin Snow, but she doesn’t hold back as a psycho metahuman, and everything she tries just straight up works.
Following a pit stop at their home, where Barry talks to his mother on the phone and Iris doesn’t even question why he’s crying (like, a lot), the two of them head out to Jitter’s, which is now a jazz club, and Joe is a singer there. Really.
Barry’s delight at seeing his pretty much dad singing is quashed by Joe’s disdain for his Earth-2 son-in-law. We don’t get to see much of it however, as Killer Frost and Deathstorm crash the party, having tracked Barry to Jitter’s.
Barry tries to appeal to Killer Frost by calling her Caitlin, but for some reason she hates that name, and she and Deathstorm start blasting people.
Iris pulls her gun on two people with superpowers because that always works, but Joe is on hand to save her from Deathstorm’s fireball. Barry is able to speed Frost and Deathstorm from the club, but it’s too late for Joe.
Joe dies in the hospital, after telling Iris that every song he sang was for her, and she and her partner (Earth-2 Floyd Lawton!) prepare to launch an assault on Frost and Deathstorm.
It turns out Earth-2 Deadshot is hilariously awful with a gun, and so Iris reluctantly takes Barry’s advice to take his ‘good friend’ Cisco, who may have a weapon to neutralise Frost, along with them.
Iris, Lawton and Cisco find Frost and Deathstorm at an abandoned warehouse (obviously), where they reveal that they don’t work for Zoom. Rather, they work for someone who works for Zoom. And out of the shadows steps Reverb, Cisco’s evil counterpart.
Reverb attempts to bring Cisco over to the dark side, after revealing that there is more to their power than Cisco ever knew about. The two of them trade a season’s worth of pop culture references, before Cisco eventually comes to his senses and calls for Barry.
Iris neutralises Killer Frost with Cisco’s special gun, while Barry fights, and is heavily beaten by, Deathstorm and Reverb, who ignore Caitlin’s reminder that Zoom wants Barry unharmed.
Enter Zoom, who kills Deathstorm and Reverb without a second thought, while Caitlin’s plea is just enough to keep her alive. Zoom takes Barry to the prison full of people he has kidnapped, with a promise that it will be the last place Barry will ever see.
So basically, Barry getting involved with Earth-2 Iris left Joe dead, himself kidnapped, and Wells with next to no chance of getting his daughter back. Barry is just the worst this season.
Back on Earth-1, Jay tells Caitlin that Zoom never took his speed. He did it himself by way of too much Velocity-6, and that’s what’s killing him.
When villain of the week Geomancer wants a fight with the Flash, Jay takes Velocity-7 and gives him one. It’s pretty brief, but we get a glimpse at what Jay Garrick’s Flash can do before the Velocity-7 wears off. Joe is able to intervene and Geomancer escapes.
So who is Zoom? If it’s not Earth-2 Barry, Joe or Cisco, that leaves two candidates for me. I’ve thought from the start that it was Earth-2 Eddie, and I stand by that, but the odds shortened on Henry Allen this week.
We saw John Wesley Shipp in the wormhole as the Flash, which shows how different things can be on alternate Earths, while Barry’s mum never mentioned his father by name during their phone call. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
We might well find out next episode, in ‘Escape From Earth-2’. For all the insanity of this episode, it was only the first of a two-parter, and one that’s going to be hard to top.
One thing that would definitely do it would be a glimpse at Mayor Snart. Yep, that’s a thing. I love Earth-2.
The Flash returns to The CW next Tuesday.
