Despite being caught at the end of last week’s episode, we see Dr. Light talking smack to Barry and blasting him full charge. She stands over his body and says “Zoom wins,” before ripping off his emblem. We flashback to 72 hours earlier, where Dr. Light tells Barry about Zoom’s plans, which inspire Barry in a way to catch Zoom, using her help and luring him out. He relays the plan to Caitlin, who isn’t crazy about it, but Harry might have a way to help having been developing a serum on Earth-2 to slow down Zoom. Provided Cisco can come up with a way to fire the serum, they can launch it as Zoom enters the breach, sneak attack style. As Barry exits, Joe pulls Caitlyn and Cisco aside, once again expressing distrust with old Harry here, telling Cisco to try and “vibe” him. While they whisper about Harry, he has a flashback to Earth-2 where he and his daughter Jesse butt heads over what Jay Garrick said, regarding him creating the metahumans. Harry dodges the question and simply puts it, sometimes in science if you don’t have a key you just kick down the door.
At CCPD, Patty is anxious to keep working on the Dr. Light case, having gone over some potential extrapolations of her powers, including hard light and invisibility, but Joe lets her know it’s been closed, a surprise to Patty naturally. Barry arrives and Patty reveals her awkward exchange, which wasn’t about the two of them sharing a kiss but makes her decide to tell Joe anyway. Meanwhile at CCPN, Linda is still worried about the metahuman that looks like her and wants Iris to talk to Barry for help. Back at STAR Labs, Cisco is set to bring Dr. Light some food when he discovers just her clothes sitting on the floor. He opens the door and an invisible Dr. Light rushes out, and escapes, having fried the wires of the lab from the inside of her cell via her powers. Harry is naturally upset about her escape, but Joe is kind of okay with it, because maybe it means they wouldn’t do something stupid. Joe tries to convince Barry to slow his roll with taking on Zoom, but Barry can’t sit by while he kills innocent people just to get to him.
Harry works in a lab and Cisco clumsily tries to vibe him, but Harry quickly figures it out, despite Cisco not seeing anything. We flashback to Earth-2 again where a news report confirms that The Arrow in Earth-2 was Robert Queen, Oliver’s father, while Oliver himself died in the sinking of the Queen’s Gambit. The report stops for a special bulletin, a metahuman attack at Central City College. Earth-2 Wells calls Jesse to make sure she’s okay, when he sees her broken cell phone on the screen ringing – she was being targeted specifically. At CCPD, Patty tries to subtly confront Joe by admitting to her and Barry’s budding relationship, but Joe still won’t offer anything up to her. Barry returns home to find Iris and Linda baking, she’s quite worried about her doppelganger. While Barry and Iris talk, she drops the gem, “I don’t know what she’d do if she had her powers,” which gives Barry the brightest Dr. Light idea: Dress up Linda as Dr. Light. Iris brings Linda to STAR Labs later where Barry, as The Flash, approaches her and asks for her help.
Apparently in his spare time Cisco makes cardboard cutouts of his friends, so they set up a target course for Linda to practice her faux-Dr. Light gauntlets on. After a rocky start, she seems to get the hang of it, only slightly. Barry is still behind his own plan, though the rest of the team isn’t convinced. Joe tries to talk sense into him, telling him it’s like he’s chasing the Reverse Flash all over again. He needs to think about what he’s doing by putting people in danger like this. Taking Joe’s words to heart he goes back home, where Linda is still hiding and unmasks himself to her. Later, Cisco is a little more subtle with his next vibe attempt, despite Harry yelling at him more than once now, and manages to get a finger on Harry’s hand, producing a vibe of Jesse in captivity in Zoom’s lair.
The night before the big plan, Patty confronts Joe about searching for Dr. Light and he tells her to give him a few days, he’s working on something. She agrees and when Barry arrives, asks him to dinner, but he can’t because he’s helping Joe, clearly raising Patty’s suspicions. At the docks, things are all set and Barry and Linda begin their clearly-staged bout. We finally get to the point of what we saw at the top of the episode, and after Linda throws the emblem into the breach, nothing happens. They wait an hour, still nothing, and then the team clearly gives up and goes back home. Harry especially takes it hard. Barry tells Joe he was right about him chasing it, he’s felt incomplete since he didn’t save his mom and now its time he put what makes him happy at the forefront. What makes him happy of course is Patty, so he goes to CCPD and plants one on her like the smooth dude he is.
That night, Linda and Iris have a beer at CCPN and drink to the part of their lives they can’t tell anyone about. Linda leaves but as soon as she exits, none other than Zoom appears and takes her. Cisco installs a new emblem on Barry’s suit while Harry pours over the surveillance footage from the docks when all the alarms go off and Iris calls Barry. Zoom took Linda, and he’s on the roof of STAR Labs. Barry runs topside where the demonic speedster tosses Linda off. Using his tornado arm powers, whatever he calls them, he catches Linda and faces Zoom. Barry runs in circles to build up momentum to throw lightning at the nightmare, but Zoom is able to catch it and toss it back. The two start their run-fighting and then a new one, fall-fighting, after running up into the air. It seems to work at first until Zoom beats the snot out of Barry and sticks him with two of Harry’s speed dampening serums.
Zoom then takes Barry on a tour of the city, showing off his beaten body to CCPN, The CCPD, and the crew at STAR Labs. “He is nothing,” Zoom growls to them. While delivering his bad guy monologue, though, Cisco shoots him with the serum. However, he still manages to get away. With Barry in a hospital bed at STAR, Joe confronts Harry, blaming him for everything that happened. It’s not until Cisco mentions his vibe and that Jesse is alive on Earth-2 that Harry cops to the fact that he’s been trying to stop Zoom and simply can’t. He thought he could do it with Barry’s help, but he was wrong. Later, Barry wakes up where Cisco and Caitlyn tell him that Linda is fine, and that Zoom got away. That’s all well and good though, but Barry can’t feel his legs anymore.
Gather round kids, it’s wacky theory time. So who is Zoom? Someone that has intimate knowledge of Barry’s life clearly, but in terms of narrative it has to be someone that will give the audience a gut punch. Zoom can’t just be a guy, or a presence, that he was once a human on Earth-2 matters. I think it’s going to turn out that Zoom is Earth-2 Henry Allen, and to add to it, he hates Wells because Earth-2 Barry died from whatever experiments he ran. It gives a nice mirror effect to Earth prime Barry, that both he’s dead on another Earth and that his father is evil, but also has an interesting meta-awareness of actor John Wesley Shipp’s previous experience as a speedster in the ’90s. Plus I think they planted this seed when they revealed that Oliver Queen’s dad became the Arrow on Earth-2 and Oliver died in his place. What if Earth-2 is where all the dads have the powers? We may not find out for a while, but sound off with your own theories below!
