The Flash continued its pace and delivered another solid episode that built on the previous week’s revelation that Eobard Thawne was still alive. It went a good way to establish the growing rivalry between Barry and the Reverse-Flash as we learned more about the latter in this episode and why he had come to despise The Flash so much. It was an interesting episode that also featured an exit for Patty’s character without seeing her killed (like so many other DC characters’ love interests that I mentioned in last week’s recap) as she moved to a different city.

It’s always going to be high whenever the Reverse-Flash shows up, especially given that the character has harmed so many people’s lives and affected virtually every single member of the team during his fifteen year spell in the Earth 1 timeline as Harrison Wells. It was an interesting epilogue of sorts for the disaster caused in the first season, allowing the heroes to finally get their victory over Eobard, with Matt Letscher getting a turn in the episode where previously it had mostly been the Tom Cavanagh show. It’s clear that Cavanagh is better than Letscher, but that doesn’t mean that Letscher is a poor actor; far from it. His powerful handling of the character was pretty effective in getting across the portrayal of the character. It’s also interesting to note that the character of the Reverse-Flash is being portrayed a bit like River Song in Doctor Who; when River first meets The Doctor she knows everything about him and he knows nothing about her, but the longer they keep bumping into each other the more information is revealed. Obviously, there are a lot of differences between the four characters, but it’s a fairly easy comparison to make and you wonder if or when Barry meets Reverse-Flash for the last time, will that be the first time he finds out about The Flash?

The Reverse-Flash Returns also went some way to fleshing out Cisco’s transformation into Vibe this week as he donned the glasses and got a chance to finally triumph against Reverse-Flash and live to brag about it. Carlos Valdes put in a good performance and as a result, this was a very strong episode for the character, who also seems to be forming some kind of connection with Wells as the two worked together for most of the episode pretty strongly.

The episode also dealt with the resolution of the Patty and Barry romance that had been teased last week with the final farewell on the train leading to an effective moment, even if it did leave several plot holes concerning the people who were also on the train with Patty and Barry. It echoed Thawne’s warning that he’s never going to be happy, and Barry’s going to start to wonder now if he may be right, as secret identities are always problematic for love interests.

It’s also worth briefly mentioning the Iris and Wally scenes, which were just as good as the Joe and Wally scenes last week. They’re understandably not getting as much to do as the main plot and that’s good, but it looks like Wally is slowly starting to warm up to the idea of both Iris & Joe and the West family. Their story was relegated to as much of a bit-part as Jay’s storyline this week as he and Caitlin tried to find the Jay in their own Earth, but instead found Hunter Zolomon, who, well, offers a further mystery on what’s going to happen with the Zoom storyline going forward. I get the feeling that this is a long-term plan, so I won’t spoil the connection between the two characters here just in case anyone who’s reading this isn’t aware who Hunter Zolomon is, but for those who do, it’s certainly an interesting twist for sure.

What did you think of this week’s episode of The Flash? Let me know in the comments below and check out episode twelve next Tuesday at 8pm on the CW!