LAST WEEK ON THE FLASH: Barry and his friends discover Dr. Wells secret room. There was some other stuff that happened, but this is important okay?!
THIS WEEK ON THE FLASH: Back in the secret room, Gideon answers Barry’s questions with surprising ease about who Dr. Wells really is (Eobard Thawne), where he comes from (the future), why he’s here (because he’s stuck/to kill Barry), and even reveals that Barry is Gideon’s creator. Holy awesome! Everything is out on the table now which is kind of incredible.
The team narrowly skirts by Eobard/notWells/what do I call this guy now? in the lab and regroups at Barry’s place.
Barry decides that the best course of action is to get Eobard/Wells to confess to killing his mother. They come to this conclusion because of Cisco’s dream that wasn’t actually a dream from the other timeline, where Eobard admits to killing Barry’s mom before he kills Cisco. The team figures they can recreate the circumstances around that event, record the confession, and put Eobard away and free Barry’s father.
While this is certainly a good plan, it fails in the most miserable possible way. The team adjusts the containment field in the lab to protect Cisco from Eobard/Wells, so that Cisco won’t be killed by Eobard/Wells this time. Eobard/Wells gets sort of part of the way through his confession before going on the offensive and threatening Cisco’s life, as the strategy with the containment-field-turned-shield fails and Joe shoots Eobard/Wells to protect Cisco. Barry is wrecked, but even more so upon discovering that Eobard/Wells…is actually Hannibal Bates the shape-shifting metahuman from last week’s episode, oh snap!
The real Eobard phones Barry & Co, and reveals in true menacing villain style that he’s had the entire crew (and Iris!) under surveillance in the lab and at their homes this whole time and he’s 297 steps ahead of them. Knowing that in the future, Barry will marry Iris, Eobard makes threats against her but Barry shows up in the nick of time to protect Iris and Eobard decides to kidnap Eddie instead. Sucks!
When Eobard tells Eddie who he is, Eddie obviously picks up on the fact that they have the same last name and Eobard alludes to the fact that they are in fact related. I’m not really sure how this is going to tie into things and how directly they are related, but it’s interesting, I guess.
There are some flashbacks in this episode (which we totally don’t get enough of with Arrow………) where Barry is in the hospital after the accident and Wells persuades Joe to allow him to take Barry to S.T.A.R. Labs.
This show is just perfect for me. The episodes are consistently good, even if the villain of the week types are a little weak, and we’re getting some fantastic season-end escalation here.