Spoilers ahead for “Honey, I Shrunk Team Flash,” tonight’s episode of The Flash.
While Barry Allen would not give up his secret identity in court to avoid a wrongful conviction, the superhero known as The Flash inadvertently revealed his true identity in tonight’s episode in order to help a wrongfully-convicted friend.
Videos by ComicBook.com
After having befriended Big Sir last episode, Barry this week learned that the man had been wrongly convicted of the crime that put him in jail — the murder of a security guard during a botched robbery fifteen years ago.
Barry contacted Team Flash, who set to work trying to find exonerating evidence. What they found, instead, was the likely identity of the perpetrator — but despite their best efforts, they were unable to secure a confession, without which it would be functionally impossible to reverse a verdict on a years-old case where all the forensic evidence was long gone.
With no road to giving his friend a fresh start, Barry times out what he needs to do: once the rotating security camera turns away from him, Barry uses his super-speed to vibrare through the bars, grab Big Sir, and deposit him to a small, mountain community in China where he had said he would go if he ever got out of jail.
[Start Gallery Call-to-Action Key=7165]His good deed done in seconds, he returned to his cot before the camera’s rotation could complete, and seemingly got away with it.
Later, though, Warden Wolfe revealed that he had installed a second, hidden camera directed specifically at Barry’s cell — something inspired, for whatever reason, by Barry’s interest in helping his friend’s case.
The camera, of course, caught Barry’s super-speed antics and Wolf now knows that Barry is The Flash.
That Barry could have left at any time, and did not, does not seem to faze him; rather, he immediately takes action to contain the “threat” of a metahuman convict in Iron Heights.
The episode ends with Wolfe drugging Barry and then having him dragged into a power-dampening cell not unlike the ones Cisco has at STAR Labs. He calls Amunet Black and offers Barry up as a potential new recruit for her underground metahuman fight club.
The Flash airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.