The Flash - S1E3 - Things You Can’t Outrun
Previously on The Flash, ‘Fastest Man Alive’
Movie Date & Green Mist
Iris and Barry are just finishing up a movie date when Barry gets a call about a crime in process, which he stops while Iris takes a call from Eddie.
A crime family has a meeting in a restaurant when the building fills with green mist and all the men die. My money’s on the sketchy waiter who locked them in before the meeting started.
Joe and Barry are interrupted from looking over the files in Barry’s mother’s death when Eddie tells them about the mass murder at the restaurant. Barry quickly realizes it was a poison gas from the inside, and it didn’t attack all the men at once. Someone must’ve been manipulating the gas. Sounds like a case for S.T.A.R. Labs.
As the team geeks out over the possibility of a meta-human who can connect with gas on a molecular level, Joe points out they’ll eventually need a prison able to contain such criminals. Cisco suggests the particle accelerator.
Nine Months Ago
At the mention of the accelerator, Caitlin flashes back to the night it exploded, and how she and Ronnie were planning their honeymoon just moments before. Barry recognizes the tortured look on her face and says he needs her help identifying the gas so she doesn’t have to go down to the accelerator with Wells.
Science Stuff
Joe is at home, going over the initial interrogation of Barry’s father. His prints were on the murder weapon, a knife, but he claims it was to stabilize the wound. Eddie drops by to see Iris, but upon seeing Joe, he pretends that’s why he’s there. Joe says they can go over the restaurant crime scene again and waits for Eddie in the car. Eddie warns Iris her keeping their relationship a secret is killing them.
Cisco does go to the accelerator with Wells and remembers locking Ronnie in when the young engineer goes inside to deal with the issue. At Barry’s lab, Caitlin learns there were no traces of gas in the victims, but there was additional DNA in their lungs. Hmmm. Barry wonders if the metahuman they seek is turning himself into gas.
Meanwhile, the waiter approaches a woman in a mall elevator, turns to smoke, and kills her. When the call comes into the police station, Barry rushes off to help despite Caitlin’s warning that they don’t know enough about what they’re dealing with.
Barry arrives at the mall, finds the woman dead, and chases after the Mist Man. He confronts him in a back hallway and the man turns to mist and enters Barry’s mouth and nose. He rushes to the Labs where Caitlin withdraws a sample of the gas from Barry’s lungs for analysis. Cisco dubs their villain, The Mist.
Grudges
Joe tells Barry the latest victim was a judge so they’ll spend time going through all of her old cases for suspects. Barry’s guilt over not saving the judge leads him to admit to Joe he thinks about using his new power to break his father out of jail. But then what? Joe tells him sometimes you will fail, and sometimes you just have to live with the guilt when you’re unable to do anything about it.
Iris visits Eddie at work and tells him he was right about what he said earlier. She kisses him in the lobby of the police station because that’s appropriate. Caitlin and Barry bond over the loss of their loved ones. He offers to go into the particle accelerator with her where she remembers her last conversation with Ronnie, who rigged it so the explosion went up and not outward, saving many lives while losing his own.
Putting it All Together
The particular sedative found in the gas sample reveals the metahuman they’re looking for was most likely being put to death in prison during the explosion. They find out his name is Kyle Nimbus. The murdered judge was the judge who sentenced him. The lead detective who caught Nimbus was Joe, and he’s currently singing into the prison to visit Barry’s father. And Nimbus is right outside.
Just as Joe is telling Henry Allen he believes him and will be reopening Nora’s case, Nimbus attacks the guard and then Joe. Barry arrives and uses the antidote Caitlin made on Joe, which means he has to keep running from Nimbus until he can no longer remain in mist form. Once he tires him out, Barry knocks him unconscious.
While he recuperates in the hospital, Joe reveals to Iris and Eddie he knew they were dating all along. He doesn’t like it, but he wants Iris happy. Caitlin has come to terms with what happened with Ronnie and brushes aside Cisco’s apology. Barry visits his dad and hears, not for the first time, the story of his first steps… to his mother. And someone started cutting onions!
