For anyone who’s not a speedster or pulled into Flashtime, most of this episode of The Flash takes place in a very short period of time, as Barry tries to save Central City when a nuclear bomb is detonated. He can’t do it alone, can he?
“Enter Flashtime” also presents the good and the bad of an apology cube. On the one hand, it gets Jesse to Earth-1, so she’s there to try to help Barry and, more importantly, fix her relationship with her father. On the other hand, it would probably help if Harry actually includes an apology in the apology cube.
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They Just Have to … Keep … Running…
Eight minutes and 49 seconds before Barry tells Iris he can’t save them this time, he can’t do something else: reach one of Cisco’s breaches before it closes. That means he won’t be able to catch up to DeVoe before he escapes into his pocket dimension and that breach closes. Barry wants to keep trying, but Cisco wants a break and Iris wants to actually spend time with her husband since they haven’t had any quality time since their (short) honeymoon.
Thanks to Cisco’s algorithm that maps every time DeVoe goes in and out of his lair, they know he’s been doing it for three years. He’s been planning for a long time.
But they’re going to have to put their DeVoe woes on hold for a minute because a woman activates a nuclear bomb that ARGUS was transporting (with an escort from the CCPD). Barry and Jesse enter Flashtime to slow down time. (They’re running so fast that everyone and everything else appears to be frozen.) The core has gone critical, and once they stop running, it’s over. They have to figure out a way to stop it, but pretty much every idea they come up with doesn’t or won’t work.
Jesse suggests they run it to the badlands, but if they run that long, it’ll speed up the reaction and they’ll never make it out of the city before it explodes.
While Jesse runs to Earth-3 to retrieve Jay for his help, Barry brings Cisco into Flashtime with him. Cisco tries to breach it to the dead Earth, but when he can’t, he thinks it’s because he’s all breached out from earlier. That’s not it, they soon realize. He’s moving too fast and doesn’t have the time he needs to form a breach. And since he’s not a speedster, he can’t handle moving that fast for too long, so Barry has to let him go.
Off Cisco’s suggestion, Barry goes to see Harry, whose immediate concern is for his daughter. Harry then suggests throwing it into the speed force. However, once Jesse returns with Jay, Jay immediately shoots down that idea. If he does that, they may lose the speed force forever. Every speedster across space and time would lose access to their speed immediately and, since it’s an essential element of the multiverse, they can’t know what the consequences of such an action would be.
Jay has two other proposals to theoretically restore stability: off-set the loss of mass with nuclear fusion or cool it down. That’s where Killer Frost comes in, but her ice blasts don’t do the job and she begins burning up. Before Barry lets her go out of Flashtime, she tells him not to let Caitlin die.
Jesse then proposes that they operate as the fusion machine. If they each throw a lightning bolt at the bomb at the same time, they could offset the bomb’s energy with theirs, right? Barry has faith that it’ll work, but Jay can’t throw a bolt because he’s not used to running for so long. Barry tells him to rest, and Jay stops running.
All in a Day’s Few Seconds’ Work
Jesse suggests that they run back in time, but Barry knows they can’t because they risk altering the timeline and changing everything. The reaction’s combustion reaches its final stage, a sign that they’re slowing down and, like Jay, will have to stop soon. Barry tells Jesse to use the last of her speed to return to her Earth. Her dad wants her safe and loves her more than anything. She does run — to her father. That’s when she stops running.
Barry moves to bring Joe into Flashtime with him but instead just tells him, “I’m sorry,” before returning to S.T.A.R. Labs and trying to come up with a way to save the city. He can’t, but when he goes to see Iris one last time to tell her he tried, he tells her she’s his “lightning rod,” and that causes a light bulb to go off in her head.
Barry told her about trying to use lightning, and she realizes that the speed force can generate the energy they need. He just needs to grab the quark sphere they threw into the force to trick it into thinking he’s in there and have the lightning storm that follows chase him to the bomb. That’s exactly what he does, running into and out of the speed force and to the bomb, and Central City is saved.
The woman behind the attempt to destroy the city had to have been tipped off about the ARGUS drop, but was it DeVoe’s work? If so, why?
Before Jay leaves for his Earth, he informs the team that he’s planning to give up the hero game and perhaps train someone to take over. There will be another Flash on his Earth, he says, when he’s done training “her.” Who’s “her” exactly? When Barry asks if they’re good with the speed force, the only answer Jay has is that they’ll find out soon enough if they’re not.
In good news, Barry and Iris sort of get a date night, if curling up in sweatpants with power bars can be considered one. Plus, Barry has realized that he’s fast enough to catch DeVoe. He just needs to know when he’s coming out of the pocket dimension sooner.
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Sometimes, You Just Need to Listen
Jesse doesn’t think Harry’s dealt with her mother’s death, but he insists that’s not true. She argues that he’s been miserable ever since and thinks that talking about it will help, just like it helped her. “You’ll never understand,” he says.
But even so, Jesse chooses to return to his side rather than escape to Earth-2 when it comes time for her to stop running. She just wants him to be happy again, she admits, though he can’t hear her.
In the end, Harry comes up with a way for Jesse to understand where he’s coming from, to get why he can’t just move on from losing the woman he loved, by having her listen to his thoughts and memories of her mother using a tweaked dampener like the one he made for Cecile.
Who is She?!
Just as Caitlin’s talking to Harry about the fact that she remembers what Killer Frost did and that her cold side was worried about her, the mystery woman introduced at Barry and Iris’ wedding spills her drink on their table. She’s nervous because she’s meeting some people for the first time, she explains. And as they leave, Caitlin tells her that she hopes the meeting goes well. “It did,” the woman, now serious, says.
What did you think of this episode’s concept? Who do you think that mystery young woman is? Oh, and most important, do you think anyone on Team Flash knows that Wally is traveling through time or do they just think he’s not in Central City? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
The Flash season 4 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW. Want more news? Like our Facebook page.
(Image courtesy of The CW)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
If it’s on TV — especially if it’s a procedural or superhero show — chances are Meredith watches it. She has a love for all things fiction, starting from a young age with ER and The X-Files on the small screen and the Nancy Drew books. Arrow kicked off the Arrowverse and her true passion for all things heroes. She’s enjoyed getting into the minds of serial killers since Criminal Minds, so it should be no surprise that her latest obsession is Prodigal Son.
