There are Easter Eggs aplenty in our The Flash recap for Welcome to Earth-2!
Before the school field trip to Earth-2 can begin, Barry has to close all of the breaches, which he does handily. He also has to have a family dinner where Iris makes sure that he’s not running off to an alternate Earth because he’s trying to escape their own. As Barry, Cisco, and Harry prepare to enter the final breach Jay explains that they need not get emotionally attached and to remember things are different over there. Barry instructs them to close the breach if they’re not back within 48 hours because then that means Zoom has them. Just when it’s time to jump, Jay tells them not to get distracted by anything they see along the way. They jump through, sparks fly, and a piece of the speed canon falls off. The closure of the other breaches seemingly filled the final one with an exuberance of energy and destabilized it. They’ll have to fix that.
I’m gonna use a whole paragraph to talk about five seconds of footage now. As Barry, Cisco, and Harry travel to Earth-2 we see a lot of things. On a grand scale, we see the entire DC multiverse. We also see some specific flashes from these other Earths. We see a hooded figure with a bow and arrow, who could be Oliver Queen’s biracial son Connor Hawke (who we will see on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow). We see John Wesley Shipp as The Flash from the original series in the 1990s, and we also see Melissa Benoist as Supergirl, confirming not only that the various DC shows take place on other Earths but that when Barry makes his way to Supergirl in March, he’s still traveling the multiverse. There are also three more very important flashes on screen: Gorilla Grodd; old west gunslinger Jonah Hex (who will appear on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow), and the ring for the Legion of Superheroes, heroes from the 30th century.
They made it! Barry and Cisco take selfies galore as they wander through Earth-2 and are surprised to find a nice and friendly version of Henry Hewitt (the villain Tokamak from earlier this season) working at STAR Labs. Things have gotten worse since Harry left Earth-2 as the news informs us that Mayor Snart (Leonard or Lisa?) has issued a curfew. Cisco tries to vibe but gets nothing as his glasses are tuned to the wrong frequency for this Earth. Just then, a dorky Earth-2 Barry Allen appears on TV giving Earth-1 Barry an idea. He runs across town, grabs his doppelganger, and brings him back. Just as he begins to geek out over Dr. Harrison Wells, Barry knocks out his match and decides to take his place. He goes to CCPD as himself and sees some interesting things. Captain Singh is a criminal in this world, Floyd Lawton is a cop (and a terrible marksman), and the Detective West on the force is… Iris. Iris pulls him aside and plants a kiss on him, revealing they’re married on this Earth. Her metahuman alert app goes wild revealing Barry is a metahuman, but she brushes it off.
Across town, the doppelgangers of Caitlin Snow and Ronnie Raymond (Killer Frost and Deathstorm) hassle from bank robbers and take their cash, then head off to find “the breacher.” Killer Frost reveals the interesting line that she loves to kill people from other Earths. Back at the West-Allen home, Iris tells Barry his mother called, so after a beat he picks up the phone and calls her back (we also see the speed dial on his phone features some interesting names like Eddie, Bruce, Hal, and Diana; presumably Thawne, Wayne, Jordan, and Prince, respectively). He can barely contain himself when he hears her voice, and as she thanks him for the tickets to Atlantis. Harry, meanwhile, is growing impatiant as they wait on Barry, and Cisco is preoccupied with finding the Earth-2 version of himself.
Later, Barry and Iris go to the Earth-2 version of the Jitters coffee bar, Jitterbugs, a jazz club, where none other than Joe West is a crooner. Joe is also very grumpy and does not like Barry very much at all. Back on Earth-1, Jay and Caitlin work on the speed canon but things are slow moving. Joe enters and reveals they have a new problem, a metahuman, whom Jay recognizes as Adam Fells, aka Geomancer. Without Barry, they can’t stop him though, but Joe suggests that Jay take the Velocity-6, but he vehemently refuses, revealing to Caitlin later that the Velocity-6 is what’s killing him because when he originally got his speed it wasn’t enough for him.
Joe continues his singing but then everyone’s metahuman detection apps go crazy as Killer Frost and Deathstorm enter, looking for someone from another world. Iris draws her weapon but Barry tries to talk everyone down and calls Killer Frost by her real name. This only makes her mad and sees her try to kill him. Push comes to shove and Deathstorm hits Joe with a blast of radiation, forcing Barry to take this battle outside. The villains try their best to take him down, but Barry bests them, with some help from the helmet off a statue of Jay. Things aren’t looking good for Joe though. Barry goes back to STAR and Wells is at a loss for words since Zoom will find out soon enough they’re there and will then kill his daughter. He also tells Barry he’s become too attached to these people who aren’t his family, but Barry pouts and yells that they are before leaving.
On Earth-1, Wally goes to see Joe at CCPD but an earthquake from Geomancer shakes the precinct. He takes off before Wally can even really say why he’s there. Back on Earth-2, Joe wakes up long enough to say his fond goodbyes to Iris and Barry. It’s nice to see that unceremonious deaths also happen on alternate earths too. That night at CCPD, Iris prepares to go after the metas, and Barry brings Cisco along and reveals he has a device that can neutralize Killer Frost’s powers. He tries to convince Iris to let him come with her, which she refuses but eventually agrees to take Cisco. Geomancer disrupts traffic on Earth-1 and gets in a standoff with police, but then Jay Garrick shows off to stop him, now charged up with Caitlin’s new formula, the Velocity-7. As he goes to finish off the villain though, it wears down. When Geomancer prepares to exceute him, Joe remembers he has a gun and opens fire on the metahuman, who scampers away.
Iris, Cisco, and Floyd Lawton arrive at a warehouse on Earth-2 where they find Deathstorm and Killer Frost. Cisco asks if Dr. Martin Stein is still in there and Ronnie reveals he hasn’t let him out in years, and that he doesn’t talk that much anymore. We then learn that these two goons don’t work for Zoom, they work for someone lurking in the shadows, Cisco’s Earth-2 doppelganger, who calls himself Reverb. He asks Cisco why he thinks Zoom is running things and that together they could be gods, they are in fact very powerful. Cisco of course has no idea what he means, until Barry runs in to intervene and he sees his Earth-2 self fire off sound waves and injure his friend.
Deathstorm and Reverb continue to whale on him as Killer Frost protests, but then the unexpected happens and Zoom appears. He not only kills Deathstorm in an instant but does the same to Reverb. They disobeyed him you see and hurt a speedster. He picks up Barry and runs away. On Earth-1, Caitlin patches up Jay and reveals she’s working on a Velocity-8 formula, which hopefully won’t wear off as quickly, but that they need to fix the breach for Barry and company to return. Meanwhile, in a dingy hideout, Barry wakes up in a glass box. He sees someone in a metal mask beating on a similar case across from him and then Harry’s daughter, Jesse, behind bars. Barry tells her he’s there with her dad and they’re going to get her out, but then Zoom returns and tells him in so many words “nope, you’re going to die here.”
You can watch a preview for next week’s episode, titled “Escape From Earth-2,” using the player below.
