Katie Yu/The CWThat was just breathtaking.
We cried, we laughed, we cheered, we gasped, and had nearly every possible positive reaction we could have to tonight's episode of The Flash, which explored Barry's lingering feelings of guilt over the death of his mother (and many others), and his sense of not truly deserving the speedster powers by introducing him to the speed force itself. Long story short, as we've always known, Barry Allen is quintessentially The Flash, whether he has powers or not.
So where did Barry go at the end of last week's episode?
The answer's not quite as simple as "another universe," like we thought it would be. Instead, Barry was treated to some strange purgatory where the speed force itself took on the form of the people Barry is closest to—Joe, Iris, his dad, and even his dead mother.
They told him that in order to get his powers back and get back to help his friends, he had to catch a thing that was speeding around fake Central City. He didn't quite get it, and had essentially convinced himself that the powers were just a fluke that he didn't really deserve to have. The speed force disagreed, explaining that he was not The Flash because he had his powers, but he had the powers because he was The Flash.
Meanwhile, the gang back at Star Labs was dealing with a whole bunch of crap in the aftermath of the recreated particle accelerator explosion. Jesse was in the same kind of coma Barry was in back at the start of the series, so Henry jumped into action to take care of her.
Wells and Cisco were hard at work trying to get Barry back, and they almost succeeded when they did some sort of sciencey thing that allowed Cisco to vibe into the speed force. Barry, however, refused to come with him in order to get his powers back, and Cisco was soon distracted by the appearance of a metahuman zombie!
Greg Finley, whose iZombie character Drake died in the season two finale, returned as zombie Girder. His main goal was still to hit on Iris (and destroy Jason Mewes' mom's car), and we guess he was terrifying, but we were less worried and more delighted by Finley playing a zombie again, and by Cisco referring to him as iZombie.
Back in speed force land, Barry was still resisting the idea that he deserved to be The Flash, until the speed force appeared as his mother. It was almost as if it were actually his mother as she/it/they read Barry a story from his childhood about a very special dinosaur whose mother loved him very much, which he already had memorized. Barry was crying, fake Nora was crying, and we were crying oh so hard.
It was all a big damn mess of tears that didn't stop as Barry discovered that the speedy thing he was supposed to catch was actually himself, and then he was the Flash again, and Iris pulled him out of the speed force purgatory just in time to put Girder/Tony/Drake/Greg Finley/iZombie down for good, and to wake Jesse up with help from the speed force.
After Henry promised he was staying in Central City for good, Barry and Iris visited Nora's grave for the first time. Barry laid the dinosaur book by the tombstone, and as Iris lamented how neither of them ever had anyone who was "just right" for them, Barry told her she was wrong.
"I wasted so much time being angry about what I had lost when I had so much. My dad, Joe, you," he said. "The truth is, Iris, I don't know what this is between us or where we go from here. All I know is you're everything to me, and you always have been, and the sound of your voice will always bring me home."
Yes hello 911? Our hearts seem to have melted out of our bodies...
We barely had time to recover from that little speech before Zoom was giving Caitlin a choice. She could either stay with him and stay safe, or go back to her friends and probably also end up dead. Cue his own little speech to a huge crowd of metas preparing to take over the world...
So that's not good, but Barry and Iris are! And so is Kevin Smith's directing! Happy thoughts, you know?
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.