(Author’s note: Sorry this one is late. I was on vacation, but it’s nice to be back with you good people.)
As Barry and Iris leave their local movie theater, they begin to talk about Iris’s new favorite obsession “The Red Streak,” a fun topic for Barry. As Iris talks to Eddie on the phone, they’re supposed to spend the night together, which is the exactly the kind of juicy drama the CW is built for, Barry gets a call that there’s a “bad man with a gun” on Waid Avenue (a shout out to comic scribe Mark Waid, shameless plug for my interview with him from a few months ago) and in the blink of an eye Barry finds the suspect, pulls him from his car, cuffs him, and puts him in the back of the pursuing police cruiser. As Iris wraps up her phone call, Barry returns to where he was previously standing.
Meanwhile, inside a nearby fancy restaurant, because nothing says organized crime like a fancy restaurant, the Darbinyan crime family are having a meeting which is rudely interruped by a new metahuman, Kyle Nimbus. Nimbus appears to be able to control a form of poison gas and kills the entire group.
The next day at CCPD, the beat cops are taking credit for Barry’s handiwork the night before, but both Barry and Joe are taking it in stride. Joe and Barry go up to his lab where Joe reveals that he had the evidence brought up from Barry’s mother’s murder and that they’re going to comb through it to find out everything they can. The pair are called to the fancy restaurant where they come to the conclusion that it was some form of gas attack from inside the restaurant, but Barry quickly realizes it’s some form of metahuman that carried it out.
Over at STAR labs, Wells, Cisco, and Caitlin, are all ecstatic at the prospect of another metahuman, but Joe is more concerned with catching these people, which brings up the question of what you do with the ones that don’t get killed in action. Wells suggests using the Particle Accelerator as a prison for the metahumans, until a point that they can deactivate them and remove their powers.
We flashback to the night of the accident and we meet Ronnie Raymond (played by Robbie Amell, cousin to Oliver Queen himself Stephen Amell), Caitlin’s fiance who we already know is doomed. As Wells prepares to turn on the accelerator, he says “I feel like I’ve waited centuries for this,” which is awfully suspect given what we’ve seen him do the past two episodes, and after the machine is turned on, just like the night of Nora’s murder, Wells’ champagne begins to float out of his glass. Then the alarms go off. Back in the present, Wells tells Caitlin he needs her help inside the accelerator, but noticing that she’s quite distraught Barry asks for her help tracking the metahuman.
Barry and Caitlin head to CCPD to learn more about the toxic gas that killed the Darbinyans. Meanwhile, Joe watches a video of Henry Allen’s interrogation as Eddie shows up to surprise Iris – it’s a very CW-ey moment of awkwardness as we aren’t sure if Joe is aware or not. At STAR Labs, Cisco and Wells go down to the accelerator, prompting another flashback revealing Ronnie’s heroic deed as he sacrificed himself to fix the accelerator.
Back at the station, Barry attempts to talk to Caitlin about Ronnie. She’s apprehensive at first but opens up about their relationship, even dropping the line “he said we were like fire and ice,” a cute nod to the characters. They learn from the report on the victim’s lungs that a second set of DNA was found, though there aren’t any matches in the database. Over at the local mall a woman is attacked by Nimbus in an elevator, and when Barry and Caitlin hear the call in over the radio he’s ready to leap to action and ignores Caitlin’s protests, echoing the last time Caitlin saw Ronnie.
Barry runs to the mall and quickly looks at the crime scene, moving so fast that no one in the crowd sees him. He spots remnants of “The Mist,” as Cisco will come to call him, and follows him into a back hallway. Confronting Nimbus wasn’t the best idea as he quickly makes his way inside Barry’s lungs, poisoning him. As Cisco and Wells wait for a reply from Barry, he runs all the way back to STAR labs where they stick a pretty substantial needle in him to extract some living tissue from the toxic gas. After coming to, Barry leaves to talk to Joe, informing him that the metahuman doesn’t control the gas, he is the gas. They have another heart to heart where Barry confesses to considering breaking his Dad out of prison. Joe drops some truth bombs on him and caps it off with “Putting on that suit does not make everybody safe.” Iris goes to CCPD to talk to Eddie, which he interprets as her wanting to break up with her, but she plants one on him in the middle of the station for all to see, because Joe won’t find out about that.
At STAR Labs, Barry sees Caitlin and recognizes how upset she is, and he accompanies her into the Particle Accelerator. We flashback once again to that night and see Caitlin’s final moment with Ronnie, who managed to work the accelerator so that the explosion would go up rather than out, which combined with the storm seen in the pilot episode resulted in all of these metahumans. Caitlin’s sadness isn’t limited to her fiance being gone but because of the lives that he saved that night and how no one knows about it, cementing a theme of the TV series. Barry replies that he knows about it and that Ronnie was a hero.
Cisco and Wells identify the toxic gas as the kind used in State executions, which leads Barry to believe that perhaps this metahuman was scheduled for execution the nigh the accelerator exploded, and he was right. They learn that not only was Kyle Nimbus, a former hitman, killed by the state that night, but he has one more target: Joe West. Barry calls Eddie to find Joe, who tells him he went to see his father. Before leaving, Caitlin gives Barry an antidote to the toxin, but she only has one.
Over at Iron Heights, Joe goes to visit Henry Allen and The Mist is following behind him. Joe apologizes to Henry, who isn’t exactly happy to see him, and reveals that now he believes him and he’s reopening Nora’s murder case. About that time, The Mist makes his way inside, killing the nearby guard and materializing in front of Joe as Henry watches in amazement. Nimbus attacks Joe, sending him convulsing to the ground, and exits as Barry enters. Barry injects the antidote into Joe and looks up to see his Father staring at him. He quickly obscures his face before exiting after The Mist. Outside, Barry and The Mist start to fight, and the STAR Labs crew tell Barry to keep him going as eventually he won’t be able to transform anymore. As Nimbus solidifies, Barry knocks him out cold.
Joe wakes up in the hospital to Barry in the room, who jokingly says “Rescuing you is exhausting.” As Iris and Eddie show up, Barry, realizing the nasty awkwardness that is about to take place, takes off. Iris and Eddie are there to reveal to Joe that they’re dating, but he already knows, he is a detective after all. Back at STAR Labs, Nimbus is placed inside his prison cell, which they all seem to be pretty certain is impenetrable. Cisco and Caitlin have a heart to heart about Ronnie’s death and decide to let off some steam.
Barry goes to see his father, who reminds him of the story of when Barry first learned to walk. It took time, but once he took his first step, he started running. As the episode closes we see Cisco and Caitlin having fun out on the town, Iris running a “Red Streak” centric blog, and Dr. Wells staring at The Flash suit all alone at STAR Labs. He flashes back to the night of the accident and as things are really hitting the fan, he runs off to his secret room from the pilot episode and watches surveillance footage of Barry getting his powers. The mystery continues.
