As the Flash, Barry Allen checks in on a West family dinner. They’re getting along fine, and we even learn Wally wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up because flying in a rocket is as fast as a human can go. He’s all about that speed, see? Iris gets on his case about how he’s still drag racing, then takes Joe West to task for acting more like Wally’s friend than his dad.
Harry Wells is recording another journal entry, and he’s discovered a way to use the late Turtle’s brain to make a device that he can put in Flash’s suit to “collect” his speed. He has to shift gears when Barry arrives, newly single and with nothing else to do on a Thursday night except help Harry figure out how to close the portals between worlds. Wells reluctantly lets him assist.
Looking quite foxy, Iris stops by to watch Wally race. This probably won’t end well, and she does get a little preachy again.
That dude from the tar is still alive. Or back alive, as the case may be. He materializes out of a puddle of tar and tells one of the men who dropped him into the tar what it was like to be drowned in tar. “Not fun,”
Barry and Joe investigate the ensuing murder the next day, where Joe notes that it looks like the victim’s body has been dipped in a volcano. Before he leaves to take a sample back to his lab, Barry notes that when Joe was his father, he was pretty strict, but strict isn’t always a bad thing when it comes from love. Tonight’s morale, I see you.
Wells has his device ready, and he manages to avoid Barry and Cisco to plant it inside the Flash uniform.
With the resources at her day job, Iris has been studying up on how dangerous the underground racing scene really is. She confronts her dad, wondering why he won’t put his foot down with Wally, and Joe admits that he doesn’t want to chase his son away so soon after finding him.
Back to S.T.A.R. Labs we go, and Barry’s innocent musings about how the first Wells was a mentor to him sets Harry off. He yells that he never asked for a mentee or a son and demands that Barry let him work alone. An attack of conscience, maybe.
It’s all good, as Cisco and Caitlin have news for Barry anyway. There were definitely metahuman cells in the oil sample, and the cause of death was suffocation, not burns. Barry and Cisco both realize the meta must a walking … Tar Pit! Cisco’s new app alerts them to a metahuman crime in progress, and the Flash rushes to the scene — while Harry checks the readings from his secret gizmo.
Tar Pit has his other attacker, Clay, cornered, and Flash asks his science buddies for ideas. Cisco says lowering the villain’s temperature might work, so Barry goads him into throwing a fireball that smashes a fire hydrant, spraying the area with water. That makes Tar Pit melt back into a puddle, while Wells looks at his vial of collected speed and says that Jesse will be coming home soon.
The S.T.A.R. Labs crew compares notes on how to find Tar Pit and figure out the connections with his victims. Cisco catches up with Barry and asks if he’s okay, because he was running about 100 mph slower than normal. Barry shrugs it off, saying fast is fast. So much foreshadowing tonight.
Iris decides to take matters into her own hands and confront the guy in charge of the drag races. He’s not about to give up such a lucrative gig, even threatening her to prove his point. She won’t back down, revealing that she’s recording the conversation and her colleagues will get the audio if anything happens to her. Stalemate.
Wally finds her to ask what she was thinking, but Iris merely lays all her emotional cards on the table, stating that Francine must have raised him to be a good kid, so having Joe and Iris care about him can’t be a new experience. He simply replies that if she shows up at the races again, he can’t protect her.
A similarly heated conversation is going on between Harry and Barry, with the former insisting to the latter that he can’t be part of the team because someone will make him choose between his daughter and the rest of them. Barry has more faith in him than that, as well as an idea on how to close the portals that he got from the work of the first Wells.
Alas, in the short term, Harry was right. He meets with Zoom and gives him the vial of Barry’s speed. Zoom wants more, and when Wells tries to renegotiate their deal, the villain says he’ll torture Jesse if he doesn’t get the rest of the Flash’s speed.
Didn’t I say the plots would converge at some point? Turns out the man in charge of the drag races was the third man in the Tar Pit origin story. Iris knows where to find him, though she tells Joe he won’t be happy about it. Meanwhile, Barry and Harry test their device and finds that it works as intended, closing a portal. One down, 51 to go, and Harry feels even worse at Barry’s obvious pleasure that they are one step closer to getting Jesse back,
The Wests arrive at the next round of races, but Tar Pit is there too. Iris calls Barry and he arrives on scene just as Tar Pit attacks the racers. He saves an astonished Wally, but one of the cars splinters into shrapnel, and Barry isn’t fast enough to catch a piece that hits Iris in the shoulder.
Happily, Iris is going to be okay. Wally stops by the hospital with flowers, allowing Joe to finally have the talk they needed to have. He says that family members stick together and worry about each other, and that’s not going to stop. It makes an impact, as Wally says he will stay with his sister.
Cisco has special grenades for Barry that will freeze Tar Pit. That doesn’t ease Barry’s mind, as he reveals that he does feel slower. How much? Two percent, according to Caitlin. They ponder how that could have happened, and Wells dodges the question when he’s asked for ideas. But he does have a heart, visibly agonized when Barry says he needs all his speed and can’t bear to lose anyone else. Finally, he comes clean, showing the others the device and admitting that he stole some of Barry’s speed and gave it to Zoom. Joe happens upon the conversation at that very moment, and he punches Harry before throwing him in the Pipeline, saying if he didn’t, he was going to kill Wells.
Oh yeah, Tar Pit. Using one of the people he’s after as bait, our heroes manage to freeze him with Cisco’s grenade. Case closed, I guess.
Still locked in the Pipeline, Wells notes that he warned Barry that he would choose his daughter when push came to shove. He makes another proposal: send him back to Earth-2, close all the breaches and let him worry about Zoom. It’s his battle to save Jesse.
Iris’ injury seems to have brought her closer together with Wally, so that’s an interesting silver lining. Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Caitlin says that what Harry did could have permanently stolen Barry’s speed if left undiscovered. Despite that, Barry notes that all of them have done things for their own family members that might not have been the smartest decisions in the moment. He gives a good speech about how he can’t just give up on Jesse or Earth-2, though he ends it by saying that if they’re going to help Wells, it has to be a group decision.
We find out which way it went soon enough. As Wells is let out of his cell, he says it must be goodbye. Flanked by the others, Barry says it isn’t, because Harry is part of the team whether he likes it or not. They’re going to Earth-2.
**OMG Moment of the Week: The special effects people deserve some serious props for their work this week, especially for the scene with Tar Pit trying to destroy the racers. Cool visuals of the Flash using his powers too, combined with the look on Barry’s face when he realize he’s not going to catch the glass headed for Iris.
**Comic Book TV Show Reference of the Week: Two Arrow references, one when a radio report mentioned the mayoral campaign of Oliver Queen. The other was even better: When Cisco asked who was the best hacker ever, Barry and Caitlin replied in unison, “Felicity Smoak.” She is that.
**#SnowJay Alert Level: Condition Green. No Jay Garrick this week, and Caitlin wasn’t even in very much of this episode.
**Final Thought: Let’s be honest, Tar Pit was the lamest villain of the season and perhaps the entire series so far. He was basically there as a plot device and to set up the scene where Iris got hurt, which could have happened any number of ways. So that wasn’t cool, but the bits with the West family and Harry saved this one from being a total loss. On to Earth-2 we go!