The Story
So Ronnie and Stein survive the blast, absorb the radiation, and successfully separate. They all go back to STAR Labs to do some testing before being cleared with nothing more than an unusually high temperature. But General Eiling is still hunting them, determined to discover the secret of Firestorm for his own purposes. Meanwhile, it turns out that Ronnie and Stein are still deeply connected and can feel each other’s sensations and experience each other’s feelings. This becomes clear first when Stein inherits Ronnie’s obsession with pizza, but more obviously when Stein feels Ronnie’s panic when the army swoops in on Ronnie and Caitlin’s date to capture him.
Wells visits Eiling to let him know that he doesn’t have the answer to Firestorm. Eiling reminds him that the answer is within in grasp and all he has to do is deliver Ronnie and Stein to him. Wells arranges to have Stein taken, but then uses Ronnie to rescue him. Barry dashes into the secret base with Ronnie and saves Stein from Eiling’s bullet. Barry gets blasted with some sort of chemical that keeps him busy trying to neutralize. This leaves Ronnie and Stein defenseless, so they decide to merge again, consciously accepting one another and finally able to functionally co-exist. They take out the attacking troops and knock out Eiling. Barry and Firestorm go back to STAR Labs where Ronnie and Stein are able to separate on their own. They decide to go traveling to work with other scientists on the Firestorm project and to stay one step ahead of Eiling.
A speedster infiltrates the secret base and kidnaps Eiling, bringing him to a familiar sewer. The speedster is revealed to be Dr. Wells, the first time we actually see him in the yellow suit. Wells admits to being a meta-human and tells Eiling that he protects his own. Grodd emerges from the shadows and violently drags Eiling away down a darkened tunnel.
The Man in Yellow
Joe tells Barry that they found his blood at the scene of his mother’s murder, implying that Barry traveled through time. What Barry has a hard time with is that he tried to save his mother and seems destined to fail. Barry decides to study the photos found by Cisco in order to know what to avoid when he eventually goes back in time. Knowing he failed in the past will help him know how to succeed when the time comes. He is determined to change the past.
Meanwhile, it looks as if Wells gets found out in the next episode, so we might finally know what he’s up to. Is he the same Man in Yellow who killed Nora Allen? What is this timeline he’s trying to keep, and if he protects his own, why is he secretly antagonizing Barry? Is it really all an elaborate and misguided training strategy to make Barry the best hero he can be? And how will Grodd fit into the end product?
Iris
Iris’s co-worker tries to get her to investigate STAR labs because of her connections. While at first she scoffs at the idea, her co-worker keeps bringing up suspicious material to taunt her with – including the fact that Caitlin had recently been at Jitters coffee shop when it was raided and never mentioned it to Iris. Ronnie is passed off as Caitlin’s cousin from Coast City when Iris is introduced to him, but Caitlin later forgets where her “cousin” is from and tells Iris a different city when she’s tested later. Iris recognizes Ronnie from the “burning man” photo and agrees to investigate STAR Labs with her co-worker. This obviously has the potential to reveal some major secrets being kept from Iris by the people she loves most, so I sense some tense scenes and near misses in the near future.
