After last week’s fun filler episode, The Flash is back on track with laying down important groundwork in the multi-threaded story of Barry Allen and friends, while still showcasing the lightheartedness that makes the show a joy to watch.
The episode opens with Barry in pursuit of the Royal Flush Gang (DC’s go-to filler villains…they were in Arrow, too) on motorcycles, but the three split up and Caitlin and Cisco are too busy giving conflicting opinions to help Barry strategize. Wells steps in and guides Barry into apprehending all three villains, both stunning and pleasing Barry with his cool head under pressure.
Barry returns to his home with Joe, when Iris finds out that she was left a job offer from the Central City Picture News on her voicemail, as the news agency “liked her blog.” She’s excited, and I’m left bitter, wishing that the real world worked like that.
We then cut to Professor Wells’ home, where he can walk with impunity (ahh, the bachelor life), when he receives a threatening phone call, telling him that “it’s time to pay the piper.” The skylights in Wells’ home explode inward and rain down on him. The CCPD show up, where Wells seems oddly dismissive of the threat. Somewhere else in Central City, an insurance adjuster is crying because he hates his career path.
Flashing back two years ago, we meet this week’s villain playing a game of chess against Wells (a theme that will run through the rest of the episode) when Cisco enters wearing a blazer and a “Keep Calm and Han Shot First” shirt to his first day at S.T.A.R. Labs. Wells’ opponent, Hartley Rathaway, belittles Cisco for his choice of attire and perceived lack of professionalism, setting the tone for Hartley and his near sociopathic level of superiority.
Returning to the present, Barry uses his super-speed to reassemble the shattered glass, where he determines that there was no point of impact; the glass wasn’t shattered by a rock or a bullet. Wells reveals that the perpetrator was none other than Hartley, who worked under Wells years prior. Wells reveals that, while Hartley was in line to inherit Rathaway Industries from his parents, his coming out as gay led to his being disowned by them. “Old money, old values,” Caitlin explained. It’s really impressive on the part of the writers on this show that they can handle homosexuality in such an off-the-cuff fashion, establishing that Hartley is gay without reducing him to a flamboyant stereotype or making his homosexuality an overly defining character trait. He’s just gay, just like how Barry’s just straight. Wells explains that he and Hartley parted ways “about a year ago,” over a difference of opinion.
Iris starts her first day at CCPN, where she tries to propose a human interest piece about a shelter for battered women. Her editor brushes it off, asking her if she has any new pieces she can write up on The Flash, all but revealing why they wanted Iris in the first place.
Joe walks in on Barry at the station conducting experiments on sonic frequencies, explaining that the right frequency can destroy its intended target, and hypothesizing that Hartley must have used sonic frequencies to attack Wells’ house. ddie runs in and tells Joe and Barry that Rathaway Industries is under attack.
Lo and behold, Hartley (wearing the worst-fitting hoodie ever) is using a pair of sonic gauntlets to shatter the windows on his parents’ office building. Flash shows up and the pair scuffle, ultimately leading to Hartley being disarmed and taken into S.T.A.R. Labs. Once at the lab, Hartley muses that he was thinking of calling himself “The Pied Piper,” much to Cisco’s chagrin, as he “assigns the code names around here.” Once thrown into his cell, Hartley reveals that he determined the Flash worked with S.T.A.R. Labs by using a “hexagonal algorithm” to extrapolate where he returned to after stopping crimes. He then warns Barry that Wells will turn on him, leading to Wells confessing that Hartley had warned him that the particle accelerator could explode, a warning that Wells chose to ignore. Caitlin is furious, as her fiancée Ronnie was “killed” (not really) in the accelerator explosion.
Iris gets even more bad news at CCPN when her editor all but tells her they only wanted her for Flash coverage. She turns to her coworker, Mason Bridge, for support, but he quickly shoots her and her abilities down. “My mother writes a blog,” he dismisses, leading to Iris seeking comfort from Barry. The two talk, and Barry explains that sometimes the people you look up to aren’t who you want them to be (parallels to Wells!), giving Iris a small comfort.
Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Cisco is working on Hartley’s gauntlets when he discovers that they had been used on their “lowest setting,” meaning that Hartley wanted to get caught and brought back to the lab. Cisco sees that Hartley escaped from his cell and warns Dr. Wells. Wells tries to tap into his super-speed, but quickly collapses in the hallway. Rathaway pulls his cochlear implants out of his ears, revealing that they’re actually small explosives, which he uses to blow the hatch on the metahuman prison, catching Cisco in the blast. He then proceeds to cold-cock Caitlin, grab his gauntlets, and download data off of the S.T.A.R. Labs servers. Wells phones Barry, and Barry arrives back at S.T.A.R. Labs where a calm Wells explains that Hartley escaped. Wells then reveals that he’s going to hold a press conference to regain his team’s trust.
At the press conference, Wells confesses that he knew that the accelerator had potential to explode, but he went ahead with the experiment anyways. When Mason asks if the accelerator will ever be rebuilt, Wells ignores him until Iris steps up and demands an answer. Wells assures them that the accelerator will not be rebuilt, as it’s too high-risk.
Back at the lab, Hartley once again taunts Wells, demanding that the Flash meet him for a battle, but refuses to reveal his location. Cisco scans for seismic activity related to Hartley’s gauntlets, and they track Hartley to the Central City Dam, where Hartley is flinging cars – and their passengers – over the edge of the dam. Barry saves the drivers at turns his attention to Hartley, who reveals that his gauntlets had been set to the frequency of Barry’s molecules, sending out a frequency that intercepts Barry’s in-ear radio and starts to kill him. So that’s what he was downloading!
Wells quickly steps in (rolls in?) and uses a satellite to commandeer the satellite radio in all of the cars on the dam, emitting their own frequency that destroys Hartley’s gauntlets and saves the Flash from a brain-liquefying death.
After a sweet emotional exchange between Barry and Joe, Eddie enters and reveals that both he and Joe are going to investigate Dr. Wells further. Cisco and Hartley converse at the lab, where Hartley explains that Cisco will release him from his cell, as he knows what happened to Ronnie Raymond. Finally, we see Dr. Wells in his secret chamber, trying to use the tachyon device to access the “speed force,” deepening the mystery of the Reverse Flash…
This episode was fantastic, laying down more groundwork for the subplots of the show that last week’s episode left dangling while introducing a surprising new villain The Flash’s comic book rogue’s gallery has had its share of lame ducks, and the Pied Piper is no different. However, the show’s writers transformed him into a genuine threat, capable of great acts of evil as well as a brilliant mind to make him even more frightening. Also, the way they handled the character’s homosexuality was impressive. Aside from one snide remark to Barry about “being handcuffed by a man in head-to-toe red leather,” he’s simply portrayed as a human being, albeit an evil one. Even more shockingly, Iris is starting to come into her own as a stronger character, as opposed to a wishy-washy damsel in distress. Sure, the soft science still comes across as a little silly sometimes (exploding hearing aids? Satellite radio being able to emit special frequencies?), but the episode was a near-perfect slice of colorful, comic-booky fun.