'The Flash': Could "Enter Flashtime" Be Part of The Thinker's Endgame?

Tonight's episode of The Flash was centered on the speedsters, but even though The Thinker wasn't there as Barry, Jesse, and Jay tried to stop a nuclear blast doesn't mean this latest challenge isn't part of the mastermind's plan.

Spoilers for tonight's episode of The Flash, "Enter Flashtime", below.

Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) faced one of his biggest challenges tonight. He, Cisco Ramon/Vibe (Carlos Valdes,) Jesse Quick (Violett Beane) and Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) showed up to help Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) deal with a situation where armed assailants are trying to get to something in a shipping container in a warehouse. That thing in the container turns out to be a nuclear weapon, and before The Flash can stop her, the woman in charge of the assailants hits the detonator. Because of Barry's speed, the blast doesn't happen immediately. Instead, Barry must keep moving to prevent the inevitable explosion, and, thus, save everyone he loves and the rest of Central City.

Over the course of the episode Barry, along with Jesse and Jay, enter Flashtime -- the space where speedsters are moving at a speed so fast that everything has frozen around them -- to try to figure out what to do to save Central City. An early suggestion is that they chuck the bomb into the Speed Force, and while that is dismissed as a bad idea, the Speed Force ends up being what saves the day. Iris suggests that if Barry enters the Speed Force and takes the quark sphere Cisco and Caitlin used to get Barry out in the first place, he might be able to use it to stop the nuke. The plan works. Barry opens the Speed Force, goes for the sphere, comes back out the other side and the day is saved. However, just because the nuke was stopped doesn't mean that another threat wasn't just made worse. If you recall, it was the opening of the Speed Force when Barry came out of it during the season premiere that brought the dark matter wave which created The Thinker's bus metas. It's possible that this latest opening of the Speed Force may have unleashed another wave of dark matter.

More dark matter, more metas. But how would that connect to The Thinker/Clifford DeVoe? First and foremost, we know that DeVoe has been steps ahead of Team Flash for a while, but tonight we definitively found out that he's been planning things for the past three years and while DeVoe doesn't appear to have the ability to predict the future, his incredible brain power does let him figure out an accurate chain of events that functions the same way. That means DeVoe likely knew another opening of the Speed Force was a possibility and as we've see DeVoe collecting the bus metas then killing them and absorbing their powers (and sometimes taking their bodies whole cloth) a second opening of the Speed Force could mean more metas. More metas, more powers.

Even if DeVoe didn't plan for this nuclear situation -- and it doesn't seem like he did given the terrorist group that would have taken credit for the blast had it been successful -- he likely foresaw it. However, it is also possible that even if new metas were created as a result, they might not have been part of DeVoe's original plan. As we saw last week, The Thinker appears to be slipping a bit. Becky Sharpe/Hazard's (Sugar Lyn Beard) body wasn't able to deal with all of the powers DeVoe channeled into it, something he didn't see coming. If extra metas were created by tonight's adventures with the Speed Force, DeVoe may not have originally planned to take those metas on. If he did take them now, it could have disastrous results.

Of course, it's also possible that metas aren't even part of DeVoe's plan regarding to "Enter Flashtime." After all, we saw all of the Arrowverse's speedsters completely exhausted by their race to save Central City. Maybe all The Thinker really needed was for Barry to need to rest for the villain's next big move.

Do you have an idea about The Thinker's endgame? Sound off in comments below!

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.