Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Tuesday night’s episode of The Flash.
Still reeling from their adventures in Earth-2, Barry and Team Flash have little time to recover before they’re confronted with a new (but kind of old) metahuman threat: King Shark.
In a crossover episode with Arrow featuring Diggle and Lyla, Barry fights off King Shark — the mutated man-shark who briefly attacked Patty and Barry at the beginning of the season before being shot unceremoniously by a newly-arrived Harry. King Shark makes a big splash in his return to Central City, tearing through the A.R.G.U.S. soldiers trying to recapture him, as well as the poor West family house. But he’s not the only one wreaking havoc on Barry’s life — he’s doing a fine job of it himself (with the help of a bitter Wally). That’s right, angsty Barry is back, guys.
A whale of a tale
Directly after Zoom impaled Jay’s body and dragged it back through the breach, Caitlin is unable to process the tragic event that just happened. She breaks down sobbing, and Barry orders Harry to open up the breach, but they’re all closed permanently. Later, as Caitlin rests, Harry tells Barry and Cisco they shouldn’t mention her and Ronnie’s doppelgangers on Earth-2 so as to not influence their current lives.
A gloomy mood falls around Team Flash, as Harry and a resentful Jessie move into a spare room in S.T.A.R. Labs, Barry runs away from his feelings, Caitlin shuts down her feelings, and Cisco becomes more paranoid about the alternative lives of their evil doppelgangers becoming a reality.
Over at A.R.G.U.S, Diggle and Lyla are appraising it after Amanda Waller has left, but Lyla’s brief term as head of the agency is thrown for a loop when King Shark escapes from their aquarium and heads to Central City after Barry. She and Diggle quickly find Barry at S.T.A.R. Labs, where they brief him on A.R.G.U.S.’s activities regarding metahumans, and its capture and research into using King Shark as a weapon. Harry gives some backstory about Shay Lamden, the marine biologist who turned into King Shark, but can offer no more information other than what he used to follow King Shark to this Earth.
Caitlin and Cisco find the Shay Lamden on this Earth was killed in the particle accelerator explosion, but his wife is alive and studying sharks at Nautilus. They meet up with Dr. Lamden at Nautilus and request to see her findings on sharks, but Cisco is frightened by Caitlin’s brusque manner with Lamden, and Caitlin becomes suspicious of his new paranoid attitude towards her.
Giving the cold shoulder
Barry broods as the West family bonds over board games. After some awkwardness between Wally and Barry kills the mood, Joe and Iris encourage Barry to give Wally a chance, and he concedes, later agreeing to help Wally with his engineering project in addition to trying to catch the psychotic man-shark.
Freaking out about Caitlin’s cold change in attitude, Cisco lets slip about her Earth-2 doppelganger. She drills him and he spills about her alternate identity as Killer Frost. Caitlin explains that she’s not letting her emotions in or she would completely shut down, and with that, she rallies them to get them back to work. Over on the other side of the lab, Harry is struggling on creating an algorithm to track King Shark, but getting frustrated when Jessie spitballs some science ideas with him. She implores him to let her help since they’ll both be stuck on this Earth for some time, and he gives in.
Barry combs the docks for King Shark and finds nothing. As he asks Diggle about Felicityand despondently comments on their situation, Diggle notices that Barry is starting to take on Oliver’s glum view of the world. But as they confide in each other, King Shark emerges and bites off the heads of two A.R.G.U.S. soldiers before he disappears once again.
It could be greased lightning!
Wally shows Barry his college application project on turbine supercars but Barry gets a bit too blunt with his assessment and their bonding time is off to a rocky start. Impatient, Barry takes over the project, and Wally, bitter about Barry’s “perfect son” status, starts to leave in a huff. However, Wally interrupted by King Shark wrecking the West house and looking for the Flash and his “scent.”
Joe and Iris come downstairs and Joe shoots at King Shark while the others escape. Barry faces King Shark as the Flash, telling Shark that the breaches are all closed and his chances to get home are gone. They tussle for a bit, but King Shark leaves for the water, and A.R.G.U.S. arrives just in time to see King Shark flee the scene.
Wally is stunned by Joe and Iris’ blase reaction to King Shark attacking the house, but not too stunned to taunt Barry for disappearing. Wally calls him a coward and leaves, but Barry, angst-ridden as he is today, accepts Wally’s insults. Fed up with Barry’s attitude, Joe asks Barry to spill and Barry confesses about his Earth-2 adventures and his guilt over Joe-2’s death and the continued reign of terror of Zoom.
As Team Flash brainstorms at S.T.A.R. Labs about how to defeat King Shark, Caitlin digs out the concept of sharks’ “passive electrolocation” tracking from Dr. Lamden’s research. She theorizes that they reverse that process to find King Shark, spurring Harry and Jessie to go off to create the tracking algorithm, Diggle and Lyla to assemble A.R.G.U.S. for the mission, and Cisco to create a fake Flash to lure King Shark out. Flash, Diggle, Lyla and Caitlin lie in wait for King Shark’s attack. After several hours, King Shark finally takes the bait, but he disappears and jumps out of the water to attack the group directly. A.R.G.U.S.’s guns prove to be useless, so Barry runs out onto the water and King Shark gives chase. Building up speed, Barry runs in a circle around him, electrifying the water and zapping King Shark into unconsciousness.
The weight of the world
A.R.G.U.S. takes King Shark into custody, with Lyla deciding that under her leadership, the agency will move toward a better mission: to research King Shark and cure him. Caitlin suggests they talk to Dr. Lamden on that front. Diggle pulls Barry aside and gives him soldier’s advice on handling his guilt — by using it to guide him rather than letting it weigh him down.
At the coffee shop, Joe is happily reading up on Wally’s supercar project. Wally is pleased with Joe’s praise but still bitter about Barry, so Joe tells him about Barry’s tragic past, and that he praises Barry so because Barry has come so far. Joe assures Wally that Barry is “my son just like you are,” and further proves that he is the father of the year.
Caitlin pranks Cisco by impersonating Killer Frost, but reassures him, telling Cisco that she won’t ever become evil. They go up to the lab hub, where Barry is reverse interventioning the group, confessing to them about his guilt from Ronnie, his mom and Jay’s death, and finally rallying them to defeat Zoom together.
Back at Zoom’s lair in Earth-2, Zoom carries in Jay’s limp body while the man in the iron mask cowers in fear. Zoom unmasks and reveals himself to be…Jay.
Flash Faves
- “Power down the grid.” A.R.G.U.S. soldiers have obviously never seen a Jurassic Parkmovie.
- Fun facts: King Shark is mostly a Superboy villain and has been a member of the Suicide Squad.
- “We’re going to need a bigger Flash.”
- Zoom theories:
- He is Hunter Zolomon from Earth-1.
- The dead Jay is a time remnant from when the Flash was good, and Zoom was his eventual future.
- Clones.
- Evil twins.
- Someone is using that identity-changing technology that Eobard Thawne used to become Harrison Wells that we saw one time in the whole series and never appeared again. Presumably the original identity of the man in the iron mask.
- Earth-3 Jay?
"The Flash" recap: "We"re gonna need a bigger Flash"
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