Episode Title: Welcome to Earth 2
Original Airdate: 2-9-16
We finally get to see Earth 2 in all its glory and it ended up being a wish fulfillment episode in the worst and best way possible. Like the best episodes, Earth 2 brought along some of the best laughs along with some really gut wrenching moments and ended on quite a bit of a cliffhanger as well as giving us some surprising information about Jay Garrick that paints his character in a whole different light.
There is so much to talk about in Earth 2, they have been teasing Killer Frost for ages and we finally get to see her in all her glory, as well as in a bit of a twisted relationship with Deathstorm where he has fully suppressed the Professor Stein half of his fusion. Not only that, but the big surprise was seeing Cisco’s evil doppleganger who seems to also have a bit of a knack for coming up with metahuman names, only instead of going with Vibe, he went with Reverb. He also has a much greater grasp on his powers which means that in the near future, Cisco may eventually become a force to be reckoned with even if they did quickly kill off Reverb before he could explain or show the extent of his powers aside from a weird shockwave blast.
Earth 2 itself is a weird art deco futuristic setting where everything feels like it’s in the 20’s and yet technology has advanced quite a bit further than in our own world. Barry takes over Earth 2’s Barry and finds out that life is pretty near perfect for him over here. He’s married to Iris, both of his parents are still alive and he has contact with them. Unfortunately that does put a bit of a damper on my first guess as to the identity of Zoom where I initially thought that Zoom might be Henry Allen. I suppose it is still possible if Barry’s dad in Earth 2 isn’t actually Henry Allen, but someone else entirely. It was interesting to see that Barry and Iris’s phone had speed dials for “Eddie”, “Bruce”, “Hal”, and “Diana” which means that Eddie Thawne is still a family friend and his circle of friends include the other, likely non-powered, dopplegangers of the Justice League. It was fun to see this version of Joe West be a lounge singer and resentful towards Barry for allowing his daughter to become a detective, putting her life on the line. But instead it’s Joe that ends up biting it in honestly a rather awkward death scene.
And before I wrap things up here, there’s also plenty going on in Earth 1 while Barry and Cisco are away. Jay Garrick finally drops a big bomb on Caitlin that it wasn’t exactly Zoom who stole his speed and made him sick. Instead, it was a side effect of the Velocity 6 that he had been using to make himself go faster. And now he and Caitlin are working on Velocitys 7, 8, and however many it will take to get him better for good. It seems like everyone from Earth 2 has a little bit of a secret that they’re not always willing to tell right away. He does get his chance to show off a little bit of his speed tricks facing off against random metahuman Geomancer, but mostly they’re just trying to re-stabilize the final anomaly so that Barry and Cisco can eventually get back home with only 1 day left.
Channel: Superhero 