In fact, the thing that seemed the most off about Barry coping with his lack of powers was Cisco—or rather, Cisco’s lack of presence in the episode. Given that (at the moment) he’s the only meta-human on the team, it felt very strange that no one even suggested he try to step up to the superhero plate when Barry was out of commission. Of course, Cisco has been reluctant to use his powers in more pro- active ways in the past, but only last week he made a promise to start being more open to exploring his powers; it seemed like a pretty big continuity gaff to make at this point in the season.
Caitlin, meanwhile, was still stuck on Earth-2, and while she made frustratingly little progress made on the man in the mask front, we did get to see her bump heads with her evil doppelganger Killer Frost. It’s always fun to see how characters on the show handle meeting other versions of themselves, and it said a lot that meeting her homicidal twin seemed to make Caitlin feel eager to prove herself instead of shocked or horrified. Like with Reverb, you can’t help but feel that there was still a lot of potential left to be mined from Killer Frost, especially given that the man she used to work for is in love with her doppelganger. But if nothing else, hopefully not having the Earth-2 version of the character to fall back on means we’ll be seeing an Earth-1 Killer Frost make an appearance sooner rather than later. The brief allusions made to Caitlin’s tumultuous family history seem to indicate she’s got some skeletons in the closet we haven’t seen yet, which may end up leading her on a darker path.
But while the Snow family still remains shrouded in mystery, the Wells family pulled into the spotlight again after Harry finally managed to locate Jesse. I wasn’t expecting Jesse to make a reappearance so soon after her very final-sounding split for her father, but I was happy to be proven wrong. Jesse plays of the other characters wonderfully, and Team Flash is definitely stronger for her presence. But even though Jesse was willing to help the team rescue her father, it’s clear she still has some mixed feelings about their relationship. It would have been easy to have Jesse get swept up in the moment and totally forget her problems with her father after nearly seeing him killed, but the show took the time to show that Jesse some new ground rules in place even before she agreed to move back in. The two had to really try and find a middle ground, which felt like much more realistic and satisfying end to their feud.
And high-off of his rescue and reconciliation with his daughter Wells seemingly found the answer to Barry’s speed problem, making another particle accelerator. From an in-universe perspective this seems like a very extreme solution to a problem that’s only existed for a few days, and I hope they at least try to come up with a reason jumping to such drastic measures so quickly. But as a fan, the possibility of seeing a second particle accelerator explosion makes me giddy thinking of how this will effect Barry’s speed going forward, since we saw recently that he still can’t quite harness his powers in the way we’ve seen character like the Reverse-Flash do. And of course, when you add in the fact that nearby the new accelerator are Wally, Caitlin, and Jesse, three people who, per the comics, are likely to get superpowers of their own in the future, the possibilities truly start to seem endless.
Written by Kaitlin Roberts, THE FLASH Beat Writer -- Click here to read Kaitlin's posts
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