Recap: The Flash Episode 11, The Sound and the Fury

(Author’s note: Remember last week when I said this would be late again? I was right, but next week the recaps will be back on schedule!)

Barry runs about town, putting a stop to the Royal Flush Gang (as previously seen in Arrow season one!) and muses about everyone having a hero in the world. He returns to STAR Labs in a celebratory mood and is coerced into taking a photo with the crew by Cisco. Even Dr. Wells says, “Maybe in the future people will want to know about this” – he’d know wouldn’t he. Barry heads back home to find Iris is there, despite having moved out last week, which is convenient because a representative from Central City Picture News called and offered her a job.

On the other side of town, Harrison Wells enters his home and promptly exits his wheelchair and begins walking around. Classical opera music plays on the speakers and he receives a mysterious phone call with the person on the other line saying “I know what you did.” He retrieves his gun from a safe and the large portions of glass in the roof shatter. Luckily Wells is the Reverse-Flash and can run out of the way. The next morning, Joe and Barry arrive to investigate, which Wells has written off as a prank. “Some people don’t think I suffered enough,” he says.

We flashback to two years ago with Wells playing chess with one Hartley Rathaway. Cisco enters, ready for his first day of work, but Rathaway isn’t the most polite person and isn’t convinced of Cisco’s abilities. Wells tells him he “has a feeling” about Cisco, the same way he felt about him. Gosh, I wonder what he knows. Barry reassembles the broken glass and deduces there is no point of impact, while Joe and Eddie are growing more suspicious of Dr. Wells. Wells reveals to Barry and co. that Hartley is the one responsible and Barry promises not to let any of them get hurt by him. Back to two years ago, Hartley tries to stump Cisco but it doesn’t work, we also see Caitlin and Cisco’s first meeting with a further tease of Ronnie Raymond.

Iris arrives at CCPN for her first day where she meets the super grumpy Mason Bridge and tries her best to pitch an empowering story, only to be told to write something about The Flash. Over at CCPD Barry explains sound vibration and sonic technology to Joe who reveals he’s suspicious about Wells, something that Barry doesn’t seem to understand. Eddie enters and reveals that Rathaway Industries is under attack by its lost son. Barry runs to action and after a brief tussle with Hartley, removes his gauntlets but not before he can offer a villainous tease that he knows Harrison Wells’ secret.

Barry brings Rathaway back to STAR Labs where they prepare to put him in one of the containment pods, an idea that Rathaway is itnrigued by and thinks was Wells idea (it was Cisco’s). Cisco detects a metal object in Hartley’s head that needs to be removed, but he reveals they’re special hearing aids that he’s needed ever since the particle accelerator explosion. Wells comes down to talk to Hartley, who reveals he tracked the Flash to this location after all of this previous sightings. He even looks up at the security camera to address Barry and say Wells will turn on him and he won’t see it coming. If you only knew buddy. Wells decides to come clean to the group about “his secret,” which in this case is that Rathaway told him there was a chance the particle accelerator would fail and explode and he put people’s lives in danger in favor of scientific breakthrough.

Iris returns to CCPN where she’s given another “Flash” assignment. She tries to play nice with the grump Mason Bridge, who scoffs at the idea of her actually wanting to be a journalist since she’s just a blogger. She heads off to Jitters to have a “complain date” with Barry where she reveals the entire theme of the episode, “It’s nice to have someone believe in you.” Back at STAR, Cisco is playing with Pied Piper’s sound gauntlets where he learns he had them on their absolute lowest setting, in true 2010s villain fashion they realize it’s because he wanted to get caught. Hartley breaks out of his cell via his hearing aids, which are in fact tiny bombs. Dr. Wells runs out of his chair, but his powers appear to be draining. I’s too late, Hartley has been reunited with his gauntlets and has stolen some of STAR Labs’ secrets. Wells calls Barry, who runs into action, just before Iris can ask him about his bad day, but he’s too late and Hartley is gone. Quick flashback to when Dr. Wells fires Rathaway from STAR and threatens to have him blacklisted if he speaks a word of what he knows to the world.

Having realized what he’s been holding in is wrong and he needs to regain at least some trust, Dr. Wells calls a press conference at CCPD where he reveals he knew the particle accelerator would fail. “I failed this city” he says, hey there “Arrow” reference! Hartley watches it play out on TV as he peruses through STAR’s secrets too. Wells decides to take questions with grumpy Mason asking if he plans on rebuilding the particle accelerator, but Wells instead asks Iris if she has a question. She could ask anything but she decides to back up her colleague and re-ask his question. The answer is “Of course not,” but thank goodness that’s finally out there.

Wells arrives at STAR Labs, where Cisco is in full “Gotta catch ’em all” mode. He and Wells have a nice talk about why he hired him to STAR before he reveals that he never had a favorite employee, especially not Hartley over Cisco. Speaking of the devil, Hartley hacks into the building’s speakers and reveals he wants another throw down with The Flash, even going so far as to give him his Scarlet Knight nickname in a non-hammy way! Hartley stands at a toll booth on a nearby dam and begins throwing cars off the edge. Barry arrives just in time to pull the woman from the falling vehicle before it explodes at the bottom. He does this a few more times just before Barry disarms him in the same capacity, but it was a trap. It would seem Hartley has figured out Barry’s own vibrational frequency which begins to rip him apart from the inside. Wells surprisingly jumps into hero mode himself and hacks a satellite to overload the nearby car radios and dissipate Hartley’s signal. Hartley runs to his precious gauntlets as they overheat and then explode in his hands.

Back at Star, Hartley is once again put in a cell, and Dr. Wells confides in Barry that it is difficult for him to admit when he’s wrong. He’s ready to restore his trust and faith from his friends and the city in him, heh. Barry gives him a copy of the photo they took at the start of the episode. He returns to the CCPD where he and Joe talk about all the father figures Barry has ever had, but none of them can compete with Joe. Eddie shows up revealing he searched Wells’ house and found nothing. Cisco goes down to talk to Hartley again where he reveals not only is he going to walk out of the cell again, he’s going to make Cisco do it himself (a nice tease for his Pied Piper powers!) but he also teases he knows what happened to Ronnie Raymond on that night. Meanwhile, in Dr. Wells hidey-hole room he charges himself up with the Tacheon device. GIDEON drops some big sciencey words, such as Speed Force Absoprtion (!!) but Dr. Wells laments that the Tacheon device was just supposed to be a temporary fix for his failing powers. “The real end game is almost here,” he says. Dun dun duuuuun.

You can check out a new promo for episode 12 of “The  Flash” in the player below. Titled “Crazy For You,” the episode is officially described as follows:

Caitlin decides that she and Barry need to move on from Ronnie (guest star Robbie Amell) and Iris and find new loves so she takes him for a night out at the local karaoke bar. Caitlin doesn’t have any luck making a love connection but Barry meets Linda Park (guest star Malese Jow), a sports reporter for the Central City Picture News, and asks her out on a date. When Barry tells Iris he has a date, Iris is surprised by her reaction. Meanwhile, Cisco considers Hartley’s (guest star Andy Mientus) dangerous offer and the team searches for Shawna (guest star Britne Oldford), a meta-human with teleportation powers, who just busted her boyfriend Clay (guest star Micah Parker) out of Iron Heights. When Henry (guest star John Wesley Shipps) snoops around in an attempt to help Joe and Barry solve the crime, he ends up in the infirmary after getting roughed up by inmates.”

Directed by Rob Hardy and written by Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing, “Crazy For You” is set to air February 3. “The Flash” airs Tuesdays at 8 P.M. EST.