The Flash S:02 E:10

Episode Title: Potential Energy
Original Airdate: 1-19-16

And we’re back into the swing of things with this first week full of CW DC shows starting off with the return of the Flash, followed by Arrow’s return today and the premier of Legends of Tomorrow, well tomorrow. This was an episode that as usual had a great mix of humor and gravitas where many characters learned a lot about each other except for the one secret that this episode was essentially built all around. Not only that, but it also ends with the return of yet another character from season one, but in a very different form.

Similar to the last episode about having secrets, this episode is about having those secrets be revealed. Of course, the main focus of the episode is that Barry wants to reveal his big secret to Patty. And much to my surprise, Patty didn’t exactly have some villainous ulterior motive. Instead, her big secret was that she has decided to leave the show to become a CSI now that the killer of her father has been brought to justice. Not only that, but she left just before Barry finally got the words out to tell her that he was the Flash. I just knew that there was going to be something to end this relationship for a couple reasons. One is that we all know that Barry ultimately ends up with Iris, and two is that a superhero in this kind of show just can’t be happy in a relationship for very long before something comes along to drag them back down again. But as far as ways to go, this was not a bad one.

There was also the fallout from Wally’s introduction to the West family, and pretty quickly it became clear that he wasn’t going to fit in right away. I liked the little hint of what he was in for when another kid called him taillights. I caught the reference right away and figured he was into street racing. He has this entire life that’s been a secret to Joe and it’s not until the very end of the episode that the ice finally starts to crack a little bit between them. There’s also a little bit of Jay Garrick’s secret that he’s been keeping from Caitlin as their relationship finally starts to heat up a little bit. Turns out that because of the loss of his speed, he has been slowly dying. And the only thing that can cure him is the return of his speed from Zoom.

As far as the villain of the week, this time around it’s the Turtle. But unlike King Shark he doesn’t look anything like a turtle, instead he has the ability to steal the kinetic energy of all of those around him so he can steal things with the old adage “slow and steady wins the race” even though they never actually referenced that in the show. His story was fairly interesting, though his defeat was a little bit unsatisfying. Barry is able to just power through his inertia waves by running really hard. I guess? And as things end, we get hints of yet a couple more surprising villains. Harry ends up doing one rather villainous act as he apparently removes the source of the Turtle’s power in a rather lethal manner, while the Reverse Flash pops in from the future, quite possibly for the first time from his perspective. Which means that in next week’s episode, we will quite possibly get to see the death of Barry’s mother from yet another perspective as the events that have already happened take place yet again. Sounds like a very intriguing episode to me.