The Darkness and the Light
Barry brings Earth Two Harrison Wells to STAR Labs, which everyone finds very difficult and surprising. No one fully trusts Wells, mostly because he looks exactly like a man who betrayed everyone. Wells claims that he can help defeat Zoom and Barry cautiously accepts. A new breacher called Dr. Light has come through to challenge Barry, but Jay claims that she’s a simple thief and not a killer. When Barry tries to talk things out with her, he is taken by surprise that Dr. Light is Earth Two’s Linda Walker. In her retreat, she temporarily blinds Barry with her starlight, making his date with Patty slightly awkward. Meanwhile, Jay and Caitlin keep an eye on Linda in case Dr. Light attacks her. Unfortunately, Jay and Caitlin are taken by surprise as Dr. Light ambushes them and attempts to kill Linda at Central City Picture News. She ends up accidentally killing her editor before Iris shoots off her helmet, causing her retreat. Wells outs Cisco’s secret abilities and makes him use the helmet to locate Dr. Light. Barry incapacitates her with Wells’s help. Barry agrees with Wells that they need to take a stand against Zoom, but Jay is cautious and distrustful of Wells’s motives. He leaves, not willing to help lead his friends to what he believes will be their death. It turns out that Wells’s daughter is being held captive by Zoom on Earth Two, leading one to wonder whether Wells is working with Zoom under duress, or if he’s pretending to work with Zoom and secretly using Earth One to defeat him.
Harrison Wells
We learn from Earth Two flashbacks that Wells benefitted financially from the STAR Labs explosion while never taking responsibility for it. Jay was at odds with Wells, finding him two-faced and cowardly. His desire to help Earth One defeat Zoom is a mystery until it is revealed that Zoom is holding Wells’s daughter captive, which makes him extremely unpredictable. Meanwhile, everyone is having a hard time having Wells around, constantly reminded of the man who took so many loved ones’ lives. Earth Two Wells doesn’t appear to be evil as much as unethical and arrogant, or as Cisco says, “Our Dr. Wells may have been evil, but you’re just a dick.” Wells and Jay compete for Barry’s trust, Wells claiming that he has a faith in Barry that Jay doesn’t share. Wells’s fearless determination is appealing to the STAR Labs team, who are weary of hiding in the shadows and applying damage control against attacks. Jay, however, is much more cautious, knowing Zoom’s power and his own limitations. Wells’s philosophy wins out, but when Barry asks Jay to stay and help, Jay bows out.
Meanwhile, Earth Two Harrison Wells, who has an extremely well known counter part on Earth One who is widely known to have died, seems to feel like he can just walk around in the open and stalk Barry and his friends outside Jitters Cafe. Either his arrogance doesn’t extend to his celebrity factor, or he is arrogant enough not to care if someone recognizes him.
Barry and Patty
They finally have a date, and its pretty classy and they’re pretty cute. Barry, of course, had been blinded earlier by Dr. Light. Rather than canceling, Barry has Cisco verbally guide him through the date with the use of a radio and video glasses. Patty picks up on Barry’s blindness pretty quickly, but only mentions it later. Barry tells her that he had his eyes dilated earlier but that he didn’t want to cancel. She thinks its adorable. As they leave the restaurant they hold hands and then kiss goodnight. They go in for another kiss, but both are interrupted by the call to the crime scene at Central City Picture News. Grant Gustin and Shantel VanSanten have fantastic chemistry and I just love seeing their characters interact. Their connection seems so genuine and they have such fun together, really conveying the first fluttering excitement of attraction and budding love. Plus, their date was so normal. Barry had the chance to just be a regular guy for once and its always nice to see his personal and home life being lived amidst the demands of a superhero.
Cisco
Earth Two’s Harrison Wells really is a dick, and rather than allow Cisco to reveal his powers to his friends in his own time in his own way, he callously outs him in front of everyone. As always, Barry and Caitlin are supportive and forgiving, and Cisco in turn is ashamed of not having told them. He was simply afraid that having powers bestowed on him by Wells might make him evil, or might make his friends distrust him. Cisco uses his powers to find Dr. Light and contain her at STAR Labs. Over coffee they come up with the perfect meta-human name for him: Vibe.
Cisco also meets a young woman working as a barista at Jitters and completely fails at asking her out. At the end of the episode she reconsiders, telling him that he simply caught her off-guard at a time when she is adjusting to a new town. She introduces herself as Kendra Saunders – otherwise known in the DC Universe as Hawkgirl – and they set up a date for the following week. And, although you might have missed her, Kendra (Ciara Renee) made a brief appearance at the end of season one as one among the crowd gathered below the singularity.
Jay and Caitlin
As the pair continue to bond, circumstances keep drawing them apart. Their stakeout of Linda’s workplace functioned more as a date as the two compared notes and differences between their two worlds. There is a moment where the two almost kiss, but are interrupted by Dr. Light’s assault. In the end, of course, Jay refuses to be part of what he sees as a fool’s errand that could lead to the death of his new friends. Caitlin asks him not to go, but his conscience won’t let him stay. Everyone kind of knows how Caitlin feels about Jay and Barry later asks if she’s okay. She simply says that she was getting used to having Jay as part of the team, and Barry reassures her that heroes have a way of showing up just when they’re needed most.
