Enter Zoom Plot Summary:
After recent events, Barry (Grant Gustin) decides it’s time to confront Zoom and comes up with a dangerous plan. Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) sides with Jay (guest star Teddy Sears) and deems it too dangerous for Barry to engage with the speed demon. However, Iris (Candice Patton) shows her support and brings forth a surprising ally. We see what Earth-2 Harrison Wells’ (Tom Cavanagh) life was like before coming through the breech. JJ Makaro directed the episode written by Gabrielle Stanton & Brooke Eikmeier.
This week saw the incredible introduction of the Big Bad of Season 2. I don’t think anybody cares about the other small developments of this week. Let’s get it all out of our system. Barry and Patty are still dating. Linda got Iron Man gloves and can’t act. Jay is still gone. Joe is kind of a dick to Patty. That’s everything you need to know leading up to the introduction. (If you want a more thorough tearing apart of everyone’s plans this week, check out my power rankings.) Now that that’s done, let’s get to the good stuff.
Zoom.
What a monster. Flash really has a knack for setting up great season long villains. Everything about him is great. The look is tremendous. The voice is terrifying. (I never saw the Candyman but if you want an idea of how much he scares people, check out this interview Tony Todd did in 2011.) His speed effect is distinct. I absolutely loved the bit where he caught the cop’s bullets at super speed. It was perfect.
The big question is, who is Zoom? And while it is way too early to tell who that is now, there are some things this episode revealed about Zoom that should point to Zoom’s identity and we’re going to go through them one by one to see what we can learn more about the character.
1 He looks a lot like Earth-1 Flash
This is a big one. All logic up until this point would dictate that Zoom originates from Earth-2. He seems to be the archenemy of Jay Garrick, the Earth-2 Flash. However, if that were the case, wouldn’t his costume follow the Earth-2 Tomorrowlandy aesthetic? Instead, like Reverse Flash, he pretty much looks like another version of Barry Allen’s Flash. That means that Zoom must have started on or at least seen Earth-1 at some point, which leads me to my next point.
2 He knows about S.T.A.R. Labs
Sure, during his victory lap Zoom took Flash to CCPN and the police station but he also dragged Barry back to S.T.A.R. Labs to kill him in front of his friends. That means a lot. Until this point, it didn’t seem like Zoom had a whole lot of information about Barry but now he seems to know almost everything. He even made it into the command center. It was theorized by the group that Zoom may be able to see through the breaches and the breach under S.T.A.R. Labs could have given him some knowledge of the inner workings of home base. He just seemed more comfortable there than he should have been. Think about it think way. If a new villain showed up at Bruce Wayne’s doorstep, he probably figured out Batman’s identity. If he showed up in the Batcave, he’s been there before.
3 He caught Barry’s lightning
This is to be expected. Barry’s new ace in the hole was Jay’s trick, the SF2 Sonic Boom, and if failed spectacularly. One of the first things Jay told us about Zoom was that he was way faster than Jay but Jay also acknowledged that Barry was also faster than Jay. Since we are only six episodes deep, no viewers expected Barry would be able to defeat Zoom but Barry and the team weren’t sure if Barry may be faster than Zoom. It seems pretty clear that Zoom is much faster than Barry and has also seen all of Jay’s tricks before, meaning the Earth-2 speedster may not be much help.
4 He wants to humiliate Barry
Don’t know what this was all about. Up until this week Zoom’s motives seemed very clear. He wanted to kill Barry to steal his speed, like he stole Jays. What he was planning to do with that speed was unknown but defaming the Scarlet Speedster didn’t seem like it would be on Zoom’s to-do list. This is another sign that points to Zoom being from Earth-1. Why bother going through the trouble of terrorizing the citizens of a reality you don’t plan on staying in?
5 “Heroes die”
A lot of fans were pointing to this line from the NYCC footage and the meeting happened this episode. Barry confronts Zoom and asks him if he wants to be a hero and Zoom responds “Heroes die.” That points to Zoom having either experienced a death in someone close to him or even possibly dying himself. A lot of fans have speculated that Zoom may be a new take on Cobalt Blue who many fans had speculated would be the alter ego of Eddie Thawne. In the end of Season One, Eddie gave the ultimate sacrifice to stop Eobard and even went so far as to use the word hero when describing his death. That could be some clever foreshadowing or maybe just a purposeful misdirect.
Either way, this was a decent episode with a great third act. And what’s that on the horizon? A certain psychic gorilla. Bring on the Grodd!
Rating: 7/10
Matthew Nando Kelly is an incredibly cool and handsome staff writer for Pop-Break who was allowed to write his own bio. Besides weekly Flash recaps, he focuses on film, television, music, and video games. Matthew also has a podcast called Mad Bracket Status where he discusses pop culture related brackets with fellow Pop-Break writer DJ Chapman. He has an unshakable love for U2, cats, and the New Orleans Saints. His twitter handle is @NationofNando. Did we mention how handsome he was?
