Barry uses his superspeed to make a movie date with Iris. Afterward,
she shows Iris some photos about the Streak that she’s had sent to her.
Eddie calls and Iris tells Barry that she’s staying over with him after
they’re done getting something to eat. As Iris steps away to talk to her
boyfriend, Cisco calls to tell Barry that a criminal is on the loose.
Barry races to where the car chase is occurring, grabs the criminals,
and tosses him in the back of the pursuing police car. Once he’s done,
he gets back to Iris as she finishes her call and says that he’d like to
get something to eat.
At a nearby Italian restaurant, mobster
Araz Darbinyan and his son Raffi are organizing a sit-down meeting of
their men. They have the restaurant windows replace with bulletproof
glass and lock all the doors. As they sit down to talk, a man posing as a
waiter, seals the front door and then transforms into mist. He sweeps
through the room, killing first Araz and then the others.
The
next day, Barry arrives at the station and Joe, having heard about his
capturing the criminal, takes him to the lab. However, he brings out a
box of evidence on Nora Allen’s murder and tells Barry that they’re
going to clear Henry’s name. As they get started, Eddie comes in and
tells Joe that they have a multiple homicide on their hands. At the
restaurant, Barry analyzes the crime scene and tells Joe that all of the
criminals were killed by poison gas. However, the detectives have
spoken to the local witnesses and none of them reported seeing anyone
pumping gas in. Barry suggests that someone was controlling the gas and
Joe talks to him privately, sending Eddie outside to canvass the area.
Joe figures that Barry is right and says that they’ll need backup.
Barry and Joe go to S.T.A.R. Labs and tell the scientists about their
theory. Joe points out that they need a way to contain any metahuman
that they capture, and Cisco points out that they have one place to do
so. Caitlin immediately insists that it was cordoned off after the
explosion and should stay that way. However, Harrison agrees with Cisco
and tells Barry and Joe that they can use the particle accelerator ring.
-----
Nine months ago, Harrison gives his speech to the audience and then
goes to the control room with Caitlin to turn the particle accelerator
on. While Cisco checks the weather and warns that a storm is brewing,
Caitlin meets with her fiancé, engineer Ronnie Raymond. He’s planning
their honeymoon to Tahiti and Caitlin is happy to agree. Harrison
switches the accelerator on and opens a bottle of champagne, but the
liquid surges upward out of the bottle and hangs suspended, and then
drops to the floor as the accelerator goes out of control.
-----
Barry, realizing that Caitlin is upset, asks her to come to his lab at
the station and help analyze the gas residue. When they get there,
Captain Singh demands a report on the Orloff case and Caitlin stalls the
captain while Barry gets there and assembles the report at superspeed.
Joe goes home to watch a recording of his interview with Henry after
Nora’s murder. In it Henry explains that he tried to stabilize Nora’s
wound, putting his fingerprints on the knife. Iris comes home and Joe
merely says that he’s reviewing an old case. Eddie comes in without
knocking and Joe wonders why he’s there. His partner says that he came
to get Joe, claiming that he wanted to canvass the restaurant area
again. Joe goes out to get the car started and Eddie hangs behind to
tell Iris that he wants Joe to know that they’re dating. When Iris tries
to put him off, Eddie warns her that she’s the one killing their
relationship, not Joe.
Harrison and Cisco go to the particle accelerator ring and determine that they can use it to restrain metahuman powers.
-----
Cisco and Ronnie go to shut down the accelerator manually, since
they’re the ones in charge of designing it. When they get to the ring,
Ronnie tells Cisco to stay outside while he goes in to handle it. The
engineer tells Cisco to give him two minutes and then seal the door,
because otherwise the blast will escape and kill everyone... including
Caitlin. Cisco agrees and when the two minutes expire, has no choice but
to seal Ronnie in the ring.
-----
As Cisco remembers
what happened the night of the explosion, Harrison says that it must be
hard reliving what happened. Cisco dismisses it and they go to work
converting the ring.
At the lab, Barry asks Caitlin what Ronnie
was like. She explains that Ronnie designed the accelerator and she met
him during the project, and that they were initially like fire and ice.
However, Ronnie soon learned how to make her laugh and they fell in
love. Caitlin blames herself for Ronnie’s death, since he was only in
the lab that night because of her. The computer alerts them that the
test results are done, and the scientists realize that there were two
sets of DNA inside of one victim’s lungs.
The killer, Karl Nimbus goes to the mall and follows Judge Theresa Howard.
Barry and Caitlin realize that the killer became gas and suffocated his victims.
Karl get in the elevator with the judge, and she turns and sees her
face. Shocked, Howard says that she thought he was dead. Karl transforms
into gas and floods her lungs.
Barry and Caitlin hear a police
report about a gas cloud at the mall and Barry insists on going.
Following Harrison and Cisco’s directions, Flash gets there and spots
Karl in a service corridor. He confronts the man, who says that Howard
deserved to die and that he has one more name on his list. Flash swings
at him but Karl turns into mist again and can’t be touched. He then
turns solid long enough to hit the speedster and then enters his lungs.
Flash manages to escape and runs back to S.T.A.R. Labs, gasping for
breath. Caitlin arrives and Harrison orders her to get a sample from
Barry’s lung. Since Barry’s metabolism will burn through any anesthetic
they give him, Caitlin has no choice but to jab the syringe directly
into Barry’s lung.
When Barry wakes up, Caitlin angrily says
that he’d be dead if he didn’t heal so fast. Cisco dubs their new
metahuman “The Mist,” and the scientists begin analyzing the sample.
Barry returns to the station and tells Joe about their opponent. As Joe
goes to get Howard’s case file, Barry blames himself for not saving the
judge because he wasn’t fast enough. He tells Joe that he couldn’t save
Nora when he was boy, and wonders if he should break Henry out now that
he can do something for his father. Joe points out that Henry will
become a wanted fugitive and that Barry will just have to accept that no
one, no matter how fast, can save everyone, and Barry will just have to
live with that.
The next day, Eddie is calling witnesses at
the mall when Iris comes in, interested to hear if anyone saw the
Streak. She then talks to Eddie in the middle of the station, explaining
that she didn’t want to tell Joe about their relationship because then
that would make it real, and she stood the chance of losing him. Eddie
assures Iris that he wants their relationship to be real, and Iris
kisses him.
Barry finds Caitlin outside of the accelerator and
apologies for scaring her. She explains that Ronnie said much the same
thing Barry did, before Ronnie went into the accelerator ring to his
death. Barry admits that he has never gotten over the pain of losing
Nora, and they go into the ring together.
-----
Caitlin runs to the ring and Cisco says that he can’t open the door.
Ronnie calls and tells Caitlin that he’s trying to redirect the
explosion upward, saving central City. Cisco goes to check the
parameters and Caitlin insists that Ronnie find another way out. He says
that he can’t and that if they open the doors then she’ll die. An
energy blast shoots down the ring, enveloping Ronnie.
-----
Caitlin says that no one will know that Ronnie saved the city, and that
she would rather have a husband than a dead hero. Barry hugs her and
Cisco calls them up to the lab. The gas is hydrogen cyanide, mixed with a
sedative, and Barry realizes that it’s the same mixture given to
prisoners on death row. They check the records and discover that Karl
was executed at the same time that the explosion occurred. Karl was a
hitman for the Darbinyan crime family but they turned him in, and Howard
was the one who sentenced him. Barry remembers that Karl said he was
after one more name, and they confirm that Joe was the arresting
officer.
That night, Joe drives to Iron Heights to see Henry. He’s unaware that Karl is outside, flowing through the security fence.
Barry talks to Eddie at the station and confirms that Joe is at Iron
Heights. Caitlin reverse-engineers an antidote to the gas and gives
Barry the syringe.
Joe meets with Henry and assures him that
Barry is okay. Henry wonders why he’s there after so many years have
passed, and Joe says that he knows that Henry didn’t kill Nora.
Flash runs to Iron Heights and tells Cisco that he’s familiar with the
prison layout because of all the times as a boy when he planned Henry’s
escape.
Joe promises Henry that he’ll get him out of prison,
and Henry assures him that it’s okay because Joe never stopped believing
Barry. Karl seeps into the room and kills the prison guard, and then
takes solid form again. Joe recognizes him and the hitman poisons him.
Henry can only watch as Joe collapses, and Flash runs in and administers
the antidote, blurring his features so that his father doesn’t
recognize him despite the mask. Joe recovers and tells Flash to get
Karl.
Outside, Flash finds Mist walking away and tries to stop
him. He’s still unable to touch the villain, and Caitlin and Harrison
tell him that Mist can’t maintain his unstable gas form for long without
exhausting himself. Flash speeds ahead of him, luring the killer into
following him in gaseous form. Finally too fatigued to transform, Karl
gasps for breath and Flash knocks him out.
Later, Barry visits
Joe at the hospital and admits that he was right about leaving Henry
where he was. Iris and Eddie arrive to see Joe, and Joe tells them that
he already deduced that they’re a couple. Eddie makes a hasty exit and
Joe warns his daughter that her dating his partner is complicated.
However, the main thing is if Iris likes Eddie, and she assures Joe that
she does.
At S.T.A.R. Labs, the scientists imprison Karl in an
electromagnetically-charged cell to keep him from escaping. As they go,
Caitlin tells Cisco that she’s not upset about coming back to the site
of her fiancé’s death, because remembering how Ronnie saved the city has
made her love him more.
Barry goes to the prison to see his
father and assures him that Joe will be okay. He talks about missing
Nora, and Henry tells his son that Nora always had faith that Barry
would walk when he had something to run to. And the first time Barry
walked, he ran... into his mother’s arms.
Later, Flash runs across the city helping people.
Caitlin and Cisco go out for ice cream.
Iris reads news articles about the streak.
Harrison contemplates Barry’s Flash suit.
-----
Cisco informs Harrison that Ronnie successfully vented the explosion.
The elder scientist goes to his hidden chamber and watches on a hidden
camera as Barry goes to his lab, seconds before he’s hit by the
lightning. Harrison smiles in satisfaction and says that he’ll see Barry
soon.
Written by Gadfly on Jun 23, 2019