Poor Wally…

Finally….The Flash is back.

Yes, I know we’ve already had two episodes but this is the first one that gave us the quality I’ve come to expect from this show. The fact that the episode’s focus is on Wally and Jesse – with Caitlin’s impeding transformation creeping up in the background – and Barry’s on the back burner may be the key to that, and that’s very telling.

The meat of the episode is that Harry and Jesse are back, and not a moment too soon, IMO. If for no other reason than Harrison’s unending snark at Barry’s expense. Harry spends practically the entire episode – when not freaking out on a massive level about Jesse being a speedster – yelling at Barry for messing with the timeline. Between that and Julian’s utter disdain for Barry and extreme competence (despite his lack of people skills) it was nice to see Barry called out for his shite and not have it immediately hand waved when he did something heroic.

Meanwhile Wally is having a small existential crisis about the fact that his brother and his crush both have super-powers from that tiny particle accelerator explosion that he also was directly exposed to. This leads to all kinds of shenanigans on Wally’s part, in which he gives everyone heart failure, and Barry loses his shite in the way he only does when his little brother is in danger. Seriously, the most endearing thing about Barry right now is how overprotective of Wally he is. It’s friggin’ adorable. It doesn’t help that this week’s villain, Magenta a sweet girl who has DID (that is not helped by her being moved from one terrible foster care situation to another), had no powers…until Alchemy got his hands on her. As we learned last week, folks who have powers in the alternate timeline will have them in the new timeline, sooner or later. Apparently Alchemy is going around like a demonic fairy god…father? (It’s hard to tell what’s going on under that get-up) and somehow speeding up the process.

• So am I the only one who noticed that Julian seems to be all about The Flash even though he loathes Barry? That’s going to be interesting…
• Harry’s utter and complete exasperation with Barry’s bullshite gives me life.
• Cisco’s real superpower is pumping out these uniforms with the quickness.
• Magenta’s powers are pretty badass and if she didn’t go all, ‘No kill like overkill’ I wouldn’t even mind that she was trying to take out her abusive foster dad.
• If everyone could stop saying Barry’s name when he’s in uniform or calling him The Flash outside of it, that would be just great.

Overall this episode was a return to form that lays the groundwork for the rest of the season, gets the gang back together and made me a firm Jesse and Wally shipper. Also, Tom Felton is really hot. #JustSayin