In just its debut season, The Flash has managed to not only build its characters into fully realized ideas, but has done so with amazing storytelling, fun, and classic comic book leaps of logic that leave us yearning for more.

“Fallout” picked up literally right where last week’s “The Nuclear Man” left off, with Barry (holding Caitlin) running from a nuclear explosion, and my God, did that look pretty. And looking back, when the Flash running from a mushroom cloud isn’t the highlight of your episode, you know we’re in for a ride.

It’s usually not fair to compare TV budget special effects with a feature film’s special effects budget, but, guys, seriously, that mushroom cloud looked damn good. It’s superficial, I know, but just like how the pilot episode really captured the Flash’s movement running around a tornado, spectacle is a big part of a comic book TV show, and somehow, the CW is just kicking the teeth out of other comic book shows on the broadcast networks like FOX, ABC, and NBC.

Within the fallout of the not-so-nuclear-explosion, we’re finally introduced, in the current time, to a separated Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein. And right off the bat, Ronnie’s glad to be back, while Stein, back in his older, less Robbie Amell-ified body, is less than grateful. As Stein acknowledges later, he can be difficult, so I was glad that his initial prickliness towards the group didn’t become an unnecessary source of conflict.

We’re also treated to the reunion at STAR Labs, and with as much as Ronnie’s sacrifice the night of the explosion has become the backbone of mythology for this show, Robbie Amell and Carlos Valdes really bring home the friendship and relief at seeing each other again, so much so that it wasn’t until we were halfway through the hug that I realized I was smiling for these guys. And it was then that it dawned on me another accomplishment for The Flash in just its first season. It continues to be a show about family in ways that other shows can only pay lip service to. No matter how much Agents of SHIELD wants to tell me it’s all about family, I’ve never felt that connection. The same goes for The Walking Dead. I don’t care about those people as a cohesive unit. Arrow is better about it, but in its third season, it’s really only just now getting to a place where the show isn’t anchored by Oliver Queen. But on The Flash, between Barry Allen and Joe West, or Cisco, or Caitlin, or even Harrison Wells, I like these characters as a group, and want only good things for them (granted, that usually means that disaster is right around the corner).

Last week, Joe and Cisco discovered the “photographs” of Nora Allen’s crime scene, and this week, Barry finally got to see them, and while his mind went straight to the depressing angle (“I’m destined to fail”), it was sort of the smart take. And while he’s found a new sense of determination to save her by the end of the episode, depending on how the show wishes to portray that, the outcomes are somewhat less than ideal.

Also, watching Joe explain the crime scene to Barry in just the way everyone else talked about, “I have no idea how Cisco got it to work,” I got chills watching Barry Allen see the photographs and experience the murder of his mother from a frightening new angle. It also reminded me (1) how much I enjoy Joe West’s character, and (2) it really is great to have a parental adult figure in on everything going on in a comic book show. So many times, they’re relegated to knowing nothing or just knowing aspects, but Joe West not only knows everything about Barry, he’s progressing the story forward and informing Barry on things he didn’t already know. Which just means when they inevitably kill the character off, that’s gonna be a bad one.

Any time Clancy Brown gets to stop by on anything, it’s a treat to watch, but especially as a comic book bad guy (this is the voice of Lex Luthor, after all), he shines like the very best of bastard villains. Wasting no time in attempting to recapture/recreate Firestorm, he attacks Ronnie and Caitlin. Fortunately, Flash is there just in time to deliver some awesome slow-mo punches to the surrounding soldiers, only to fall victim to some sort of porcupine grenade that, let me get this right, has “metal fragments that are attracted to kinetic energy.”

Watching Barry have those metal shards pulled from his body was pretty painful, but they seemed to get past it pretty quickly. Plot progression, though, guys, there was a lot going on in this episode.

During the meeting between Wells and Eiling, the general revealed to the doctor that he knew who the Flash was, and specifically cited (with accompanying flashback) why it’s a good idea for superheroes to never ever take off their stupid masks. C’mon. And just like the last time these two men came to a disagreement, Eiling is playing a dangerous game on a level he’s not even aware of (but by the end of the episode, he’s very aware). The result of the discussion is Wells turning over Professor Stein to the military, but I’m not entirely sure of what his motive for that was, or maybe that’s the point. Was he hoping to draw Ronnie into it, as eventually happened, or did he just want to see what happened? Taking what the show has told us, Wells has intimate knowledge of the future, so he has to know who Firestorm becomes. Is he just trying to keep one more hero off the board? I don’t know. I’m very awful at theorizing on topics like this. I’m more of an “in the moment” viewer who is then pleasantly surprised by what he sees.

Which then brings us to the highlight of the episode, maybe even of the series. The rescue of Stein and the subsequent refusion of Ronnie and the professor, fully accepting the change, into a perfected Firestorm, complete with glowing white eyes and voiceover from the other personality. I’ll just get this out of the way: those shining white eyes looked bad. Like, bad Photoshop bad. It’s cool they tried, and maybe later they can nail it, but it took me out of the episode whenever I looked at them.

That said, the rest of it? Holy f***ing hell, that was exactly the sort of realization of a superpowered comic book character fans love to see. And to properly describe it, you can only talk like a kid coming out of a movie. “And then the was flying up in the air and shooting fireballs everywhere, and then SHOOOO AND ZZHOOOOO and more fireballs and he was flying and it was AWESOME.”

I wish I could be more articulate about it, but it was just awesome to watch. The day won, the Flash and Firestorm ran into the foreground, past the viewer, and they were gone. Two superheroes teaming up, fighting bad guys, and winning. There’s no murky moral relativism going on here, no gray area. It probably won’t always be like that, and that’s not to say there’s not a place for that in these shows, but this was a dream team.

The “post-credits” scene was another huge one. Because the internet loves to debate things until it’s literally in front of their face, we finally got to see Harrison Wells, super speed, and the Reverse Flash costume all at the same time, and Wells unmasked in front of Eiling. While not a big, revealing moment, given that the show has already basically told us as much, it’s a big onscreen moment, and those are always welcome. And then we’re treated to the reason for Eiling’s kidnapping. He’s been given up as a sacrifice to Gorilla Grodd, full body, telepathically speaking, in the flesh. What a time to be alive, guys. Let the other shows have their “grounded” versions of their characters. The Flash has the Nuclear Man and Gorilla Grodd.

Damn, that last line would’ve been a really good place for that mic drop gif if I hadn’t already used it.

Quick Thoughts:

– Cisco explaining the metahuman prison and their experiences in regards to the poison gas guy, “Dude, that was, like, Week 3.” Love that perspective.

– Coast City got another (if not a first) shout out.

– So Mrs. Stein gets to just know that Barry is the Flash? I mean, that’s the easiest, least complicated way of going about it, but I just figured they, you know, lie to her.

– More Iris stuff. She’ll get to the bottom of that story, because that’s what real reporters do. For danishes. And for reasons.

– Dousing the Flash with that chemical before the big Firestorm fight was a clever way of dealing with the fastest man alive so that the new duo could be properly showcased.

@kent_graham