The Flash Recap With Spoilers: Flash Back

The episode opens with Barry, beating himself up for being duped by Jay but committed to the idea of cracking the code to increase his speed.

When Cisco comes in to bring him some resources, he vibes on the helmet and sees Zoom choking a girl.
Caitlin comes in and brings Barry evidence that he’s running at the same speed as Zoom and the Reverse-Flash, but that their feet are spending less time on the ground.

At dinner, Joe and Barry beat themselves up over not seeing Jay’s betrayal coming. When Joe excuses himself, she tells Barry that she and Scott — her editor — had a date. She keeps thinking about Eddie, though, and it’s hard for her to date somebody. Barry tells her that he knows for a fact Eddie would want her to be happy, and when she starts to object, he tells her not to close herself off, or she’ll miss out on something great.

Wally enters, just as Joe is bringing food in from the oven. Wally is working on a project trying to increase speed in an engineering class, and he’s been reading journals of the great engineers. Barry gets a realization from this, and excuses himself quickly.

At S.T.A.R. Labs, Barry tells Cisco and Caitlin that he wants to travel back in time to last year and ask Thawne/Wells for help.

Wells-2 comes in, saying that it’s a bad plan. He’s angry because he still hasn’t found Jesse. He’s convinced that Thawne will know that Barry is faking, and that he could damage time. He tells him that he promises Barry that if he goes back and screws up time, he’ll be stuck in an alternate future. Barry isn’t swayed, saying anything is better than a future where Zoom is in charge.

The team decides that traveling back to when Rathaway was in town and Team Flash were all mad at Wells. They figure anything “off” about his actions in the past will be attributed to everyone being angry with Wells.

As he travels back through time, The Flash sees some kind of strange figure, which he dodges and ends up traveling back a little bit too far.

After interfering with Season 1 Flash’s fight with the Pied Piper, he knocks his younger self out, trades chest plates with him and quickly disarms Piper. Before Piper’s EMP bomb (the one in his earpiece) can be used, Barry tells Team Flash to check him for potential weapons.

When Wells comes to talk to him, he asks for help with his speed equation. Wells is visibly distrustful, but offers to help.

Eddie comes to Joe at the police department, and the pair share an awkward moment about Iris moving in with Eddie. Joe pulls Eddie aside and asks Eddie to go to Wells’s house and search everything for evidence that he’s up to n good.

In Barry’s crime lab, a cop is dropping off evidence when a ghostly figure pops out of a map of the city, and attacks him. A signal goes off at S.T.A.R.. Labs, and Wells tells Barry to go to CCPD to help out with whatever’s going on.

At the police department, officers are shooting at the “ghost,” which vanishes through a wall and out of the building, when The Flash arrives and just misses it.

At the police department, Barry tells Eddie and Joe that he doesn’t know what the thing that just left the police department could be. Barry is acting strangely around Eddie, and Joe catches him and questions it. Barry evades the question, sending Joe out of the lab.

When Barry arrives at S.T.A.R., he tells the team that he’s seen the “demeanor” before, when he was running to take Hartley down. Wells asks Barry to come with him, and when Barry turns around, Wells sucker punches him. Barry wakes up chained to the wheelchair in the time vault, and Wells asks him who he really is.

Barry tries to play dumb, but Wells isn’t hearing it. He knows what the “ghost” is — a time wraith — and he first thought it had found him, but he knows it’s actually after Barry. When he moves at super-speed, and Barry doesn’t respond, he tells Barry that he knows he’s from the future, where he knows who he is. He knows Barry is from the future, and Barry proves it by trying to phase through the handcuffs. Barry even calls him Thawne, and when Thawne asks him why he’s there, he says that he wants to go faster and Thawne is the only one who can teach him.

Thane doesn’t believe it, saying that he’d only come back if something went wrong. That Barry is still alive in the future, he knows, means that he hasn’t beaten Barry, and that his plan fails. Before Thawne can kill him, Barry convinces him that the’s traveled back to stop the singularity from destroying Central City. Thawne, though, says that he doesn’t need a future version of Barry for his plan to succeed. Barry tells Wells that if anything happens to him, there’s a letter on the younger Barry’s body that will tell him how to beat Thawne and keep him from getting home. He tells him that he has to help Barry get faster.

In the pipeline, Hartley is upset that they’ve got terrible music on in his cell. Cisco demands to know more about the gauntlets, turning off the music so he can hear.

In the cortex, Caitlin is starting to hear sounds, and sees the time wraith.

Running from the Wraith, Caitlin and Cisco lock themselves in Piper’s cell and call for help from Wells and Barry.

Piper takes the gauntlets from Cisco and uses them to scare the wraith away before Wells and Barry can come.

Caitlin has figured out that the Wraith is after Barry. Wells sends Caitlin and Cisco off to fix the gauntlets, and tells Barry to figure out how to stop the time wraith.

Back at the crime lab, Barry is looking for some sign of the Wraith. He almost tells Joe why it’s after him, but Eddie walks in. Joe leaves, and Barry convinces Eddie to record a message for Iris “for her birthday.”

Back at S.T.A.R., the team is trying to figure out what’s going on with the wraith when Season One Barry finally wakes up and returns, looking for the “other Flash.” Our Barry shows up to explain himself.

When Cisco starts to freak out, “our” Barry explains that he’s from the future. They try to figure out how to stop the wraith, and Wells takes our Barry to the Time Vault. He gives Barry a thumb drive with equations for tachyon enhancements, similar to the harness the Reverse-Flash uses and that Barry was wearing in the Supergirl crossover.

Before trading emblems with the other Flash and heading back home, our Barry tells Cisco that Hartley knows how to find Ronnie Raymond. Barry heads into the particle accelerator and runs toward the future, the wraith on his tail the whole time. It starts to slow our Barry down, when the Barry from the past interferes, knocking the wraith off course for long enough for the future Barry to get home.

In the future, a gun Cisco created to stop the time wraith doesn’t work, and it attacks Flash, but Hartley arrives with the gauntlets and blasts it away, asking Barry how his trip was.

Barry tells the team, including Hartley, that his experience was “interesting.”

He excuses himself, saying he’s going to dinner with his parents. Barry takes out the thumb drive and they bring it to the time vault and put it in the Gideon computer.

After the fact, Barry approaches Wells, who’s still upset he can’t find Jesse. Barry tries to console him, telling him that he was just doing what he thought he had to in order to protect his daughter. Wells says he never wanted kids, until he had Jesse, and then that’s all he wanted, and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again.

Barry tells him he has to trust that in the long run, he’s made the right choices.

Back at the West House, Iris is flipping through a book of photos, with a lot of Eddie in it. Barry sits down across from her encourages her to move forward. He shows her the video Eddie made when he traveled back in time, fibbing to her and telling her that he created a birthday video montage. In the message, he tells her that one of the things he loves about her is her strength and independence — that she wants him but doesn’t need him. He tells her that he wants her to be happy for the rest of her life, and nobody wants that more for her than he does.

At the lab, Barry picks up Jay’s helmet and says, “I’m coming for you.”