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The Flash Season 1, Episode 14 Recap: Fallout

By Nick Tylwalk

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Despite the best efforts of The Flash and Caitlin Snow, Firestorm blowed up real good at the end of last week’s episode.

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Happily, he’s not dead. In fact, they may have even succeeded in separating Firestorm back into Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein. But with General Eiling out to harness the power of the nuclear man for his own ends, they might not be able to stay that way. All that plus discussions of time travel and more hints of Grodd await in “Fallout,” so let’s get to it!

Not-So-Fast Recap: We resume right where we left off last week, with the Flash and Caitlin worried about the radiation from the Firestorm blast. To their surprise, Harrison Wells and Cisco Ramon report no radiation. Thus, they go back to the blast site and find not just Ronnie, but Martin too. It worked!

Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, there’s a happy reunion for all involved. Stein is a little prickly, but Wells tells the professor that Barry Allen will take him home to see his wife. Elsewhere, General Eiling and his men do some investigating of their own, and for some reason, the General knows right away that Firestorm has split into two beings. Interesting.

Cisco walks in on some long overdue PDA between Caitlin and Ronnie. Both Ronnie and Martin are running a bit hot, though the professor doesn’t seem too concerned about it. They start bickering, and it’s clear they are happy to be apart after spending some time in each other’s heads. At the Stein house, Martin finally softens up a bit and thanks Barry for saving him and getting him home.

Joe West wants some of Barry’s time next, and they stop at the old Allen home. Though Barry says he hasn’t been back to the house since he was a kid, Joe shows him Cisco’s crazy hologram images, and there’s little doubt: one of the speedsters that was there the night of Nora Allen’s murder was him … er, the Flash.

Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, the discussion quickly turns to the possibility of time travel. Joe is having a hard time keeping up with Harrison and Barry, so Cisco puts it in movie terms — Back to the Future, The Terminator, etc. Wells says he doesn’t know for sure (your future room says you do, though!), so Cisco suggests there is another person Barry can consult …

We need to check in on Iris West, just because. At the newspaper office, her unwilling mentor hints that maybe the accelerator accident is worth looking into again, because maybe it wasn’t an accident.

Barry returns to the Stein house, where the professor’s wife reports he’s a bit different. For instance, he used to hate pizza, and now he’s craving it. Maybe he fused with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle instead? Just kidding, as we saw Ronnie ask Caitlin for pizza earlier. After Barry rushes out to get a large pie, they talk time travel, and the tl;dr version is that Stein very much thinks Barry could eventually run fast enough to punch a hole in the space-time barrier and get back to the night of his mon’s death. He seems excited about this prospect, but Barry is bummed, because it means his destiny is to fail to save his mom’s life.

More catching up is going on between Caitlin and Ronnie, but the first signs of a bump in the road emerge. For one, Ronnie wants to leave Central City, reasoning that it’s too dangerous to stay. But Caitlin resists, saying that since Barry became the Flash, she found a purpose helping people. Further discussion will have to wait, as the red dots of laser sights mean they are under attack. It’s the military, and Stein gets scared too. He’s obviously still linked to Ronnie, and he sends Barry to help as the Flash. The Scarlet Speedster easily takes out all of Eiling’s men, but the General has some kind of anti-Flash grenade that sticks out hero full of metal darts — he says they are attracted to kinetic energy. It looks bad, but the S.T.A.R. Labs crew shows up and manages to rescue the Flash and Ronnie. Two super heroes bailed out by normal folks!

As the crew gets the metal out of Barry, Stein shows up. Their mental link is weirding everyone out, but it can no longer be denied. They all decide that they need someone to keep Ronnie and Martin safe, so Barry and Caitlin take Ronnie to the West house. Problem: it’s Tuesday, so Iris drops by to cook dinner. Hilarity ensues as they all lie about who Ronnie is. Cousin Sam my butt.

Wells goes to visit Eiling, claiming he doesn’t know how Firestorm works. But the General isn’t easily dissuaded, and he leans on the doctor to help him get both men under his control.

A depressed Barry has a talk with Joe about the findings from the Allen house. Joe wonders if he’s just burdened Barry even more, though he does finally admit that Wells wasn’t the killer, which makes Barry happy. Oh, don’t be so sure about that.

Wells and Stein have a drink, but as Admiral Ackbar would say, it’s a trap. The drink is drugged, and Eiling and his men are waiting to pick up an unconscious Stein. Ronnie feels dizzy at the same time.

Iris gets some interesting information from Mason about the military assault on Jitters. Thinking it’s funny that Caitlin didn’t mention being there, Iris goes to check her old Flash blog, and finds the pictures of the “Burning Man” look awfully familiar.

Though he omits his part in it, Wells tells the rest of the team that Eiling has taken Stein. How can they find him? Everyone looks at Ronnie. Unfortunately, Ronnie is still new to the whole psychic link thing. But when Stein wakes up in Eiling’s tender care and starts getting tortured, Ronnie feels the pain. Incidentally, Eiling says the last time he did that to someone, it was a gorilla. Ronnie gets an idea, cutting the word “where” into his own arm. Stein sees it show up on his arm and starts tapping out Morse code. It’s the number 27, and Barry notes that military bases often go by numbers. They locate an old mothballed base 300 miles away by that number, and Ronnie insists he needs to go with Barry. Cisco gives him the quantum splicer, figuring it might help.

When they arrive at the base, Ronnie feels like he’s being pulled to Stein. Wells says something about the Firestorm matrix trying to merge them back together and warns that if they fuse again, they might remain that way. Flash saves Stein just as Eiling is about to shoot him, but outside, the troops use a phosphorous shell on him. The only way to extinguish it is to run fast enough to generate a vacuum, so Flash speeds around in a circle.

That leaves Ronnie and Martin facing a bunch of armed soldiers, so they agree the only course of action is to become Firestorm again. That ends up working, and his powers easily take out all the troops. Alas, Eiling has an ion grenade (where does he get those wonderful toys?) that incapacitates Firestorm.

He pulls a pistol out and thanks Raymond and Stein for their service to the country, but Flash remarks that even though it was a lot of running, he zips back to knock out Eiling.

Back at S.T.A.R. Labs, we find out that Firestorm can split back into his component parts. Hooray! Caitlin knows Ronnie will have to go, and she’s alright with it. At the Stein house, they mention that Martin has a colleague in Pittsburgh that might be able to help them control the Firestorm powers. Ronnie promises he’ll be back, and Stein tells Barry that as a conclusion to their earlier conversation, he believes Barry will get a second chance. After they merge again, Firestorm says, “We love you” to both the women before flying off.

At Jitters, Caitlin tells Cisco she isn’t heartbroken even though she just got Ronnie back to lose him again. Iris stops by to say hi, catching Caitlin in a lie about where her “Cousin Sam” was from. That makes her determined enough to go back and tell Mason she’s going to help him get to the bottom of whatever is going on at S.T.A.R. Labs.

Barry has Joe meet him at the Allen house again, where he tells his surrogate dad that the images are a blueprint for what not to do when he goes back in time. He really seems to think he can save his mom.

And now, for the final scene that never disappoints. Eiling is snatched away by the Reverse-Flash, who unmasks to reveal that he is Wells. Harrison says that metahumans take care of their own, including an old friend of theirs. As Eiling invokes God, Reverse-Flash corrects him: not God, Grodd. The gorilla shows up in the flesh, projecting himself into Eiling’s mind in what’s likely to be his last moments on Earth. Damn!

Favorite moment: Usually this space is reserved for one of Cisco’s cracks, but holy crap, we saw Grodd. That wins this week.

Final thought: It’s going to be quite the bummer if Barry is wrong about having a second chance to save his mom. We still don’t know with 100 percent certainty how time travel works in this series, but it looks like we’re going to find out before the season is over. It was pretty effective how they managed to take Firestorm off the board as well so the team doesn’t have him as a crutch going forward, though it stinks that the reason he left was Eiling, who’s now probably dead. Ah well.

Next: Previously, on The Flash ... our recap of The Nuclear Man

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