The Story
A man enters a bank and turns his glowing red eyes on everyone he comes across. This turns everyone on each other, allowing him to take anything he wants from the vault without being bothered. Barry shows up just in time to stop a man from being killed. Joe and a team follow up a lead and run into the man himself, causing one of the cops to turn on the others. Barry shows up to save everyone, and then Oliver Queen shows up to help out. Oliver is in town to have STAR Labs analyze a boomerang for him, so in the meantime Barry and Oliver team up to stop the meta-human. Meanwhile, Eddie wants to start a task force to find and arrest the Flash and Barry’s friends distrust Arrow and want to know his secret identity. While Oliver spends some time training Barry, Barry uses his own secret identity to flirt with Iris. When Oliver finds out the name of their meta-human, Barry recklessly goes after him and becomes infected with the anger. At first nothing happens, but slowly Barry becomes erratic and full of rage. Barry, as the Flash, attacks Eddie in the street in view of Iris. Oliver, as Arrow, tries to restrain Barry while the others find a way to neutralize the anger toxin. Despite Oliver having no powers whatsoever, he is incredibly skilled and the fight ends in a draw when Joe and Wells speed up in van and flash some powerful lights into Barry’s eyes, curing his rage. Barry and Oliver team up again and take down the meta-human. Eddie finally gets permission for his taskforce and Iris asks the Flash never to contact her again. During all this, Wells discovers that Arrow is Oliver Queen, revealing his secret to the whole team and eventually coming to an understanding of trust between them. Ronnie Raymond is also seen, alive but not so well, being harassed by some guys underneath a dark overpass. He demonstrates his awesome Firestorm abilities.
Flash vs. Arrow
While Barry and Oliver are clearly very pleased to see each other, Oliver resists the idea of teaming up. Barry is very enthusiastic about it, until they actually do team up and Oliver insists on training Barry, telling him that all his power means nothing without the skills to use it. Barry becomes somewhat annoyed by this, which leads to an outburst of rage when he gets whammied by the meta-human. But Oliver is right, because even with Barry’s superpowers, they are pretty evenly matched in their fight. Barry admits in the end that he needs to train and become more skilled. And for all the tough love Oliver offers to Barry, the toughest in the end is the advice to let Iris go – because guys like them don’t get the girl. Then Oliver awkwardly runs into a mystery woman from his past. The fact that she’s talking on the phone with what seems to be her child could imply that Oliver is the father.
Barry/Flash and Iris
Iris is clearly charmed and amazed by the Flash and Barry has been using that fact to do some wooing. He seems to think that his only chance to be with Iris is through the Flash and uses that relationship to its full advantage when meeting with her secretly. While there’s a lot of flirting happening, Iris seems mainly to believe in the Flash as symbol of hope, but that does not necessarily make for a love story. Obviously Barry hopes he can leverage that admiration in his favor and manipulate a breakup between Iris and Eddie. Of course, Iris and Eddie’s relationship isn’t as simple as all that, so that even when Eddie wants to arrest the Flash and Iris thinks he’s a hero, they don’t immediately break up over it. In the end, of course, Barry’s jealousy comes out in full force when he’s infected with rage and basically ruins his relationship between Flash and Iris. Oliver says that Barry will never be with Iris, which is entirely possible as far as this adaptation goes. I would just like to remind everyone that the comics say otherwise.
Firestorm
Even if you’re not familiar with the comics, I think we all knew that the presumed dead Ronnie Raymond was going to make a reappearance as a meta-human, and very likely a villainous one. So here he is, basically hanging out in the gutter, and clearly having some mental issues. While he’s being mildly threatened by a couple street thugs, his reaction of turning to flame and presumably burning up the thugs does seem a little extreme. It seems pretty likely that we’ll be seeing more of him very soon.
BATMAN!
It was quick, but Dr. Wells mentioned Batman as a comparison to Arrow in the vein of “methods we do not approve of”. So even though we know that this is an adaptation of a DC comics series, closely tied to another adaptation of a DC comics series, it still seemed slightly startling to have someone mention Batman as a thing that exists in this universe. And it seems like a bid deal to suddenly have that connection. The name is out there, now it just might be within the realm of possibility to have a Bruce Wayne/Batman guest role on either The Flash or Arrow. The Flash would make the most sense, but imagine suddenly having Batman as a character in the mix. Is CW aiming for another DC adaptation perhaps?
