The Flash Recap: Ape Shift — Plus, a New Reveal About 'Evil Iris'
This week on The Flash, Barry and Grodd grew closer than you ever thought possible, while we gleaned new details about both Eva and the “Evil” Iris. Also, who/what is haunting Nash?
Having been unable to relocate his parents’ post-Crisis graves, following an odd run-in with (a flying!) Pied Piper and after nearly getting mowed down by a train on tracks that weren’t there before, Barry tasks Gideon with calculating all of the changes to the world — and the tally is 3.725 trillion. Later, Barry goes to try out an updated mobile, earpiece version of Gideon but an aggressive upgrade that Chester P. Runk gave the tech earlier causes Barry it to not only KO Barry, but allows for comatose Grodd over at ARGUS to hijack his mind. Or something.
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It takes Barry a scene or two to figure this out, as he “awakens” inside a STAR Labs cage, where both Harrison Wells and Caitlin regard him like a test subject. But soon, Grodd is explaining the mindscape sitch through Wells and Caitlin. Grodd then explains that to rob him of his mind, his greatest gift, after his last capture was not punishment but cruelty. Grodd is sorry now, for all he did in the past (of which Barry and flashbacks remind him!), and so he arranges for Barry to be released from the cage, to leave the mindscape. Barry, though, runs into Solovar at the exit door, and he gets pummeled.
Meanwhile at STAR Labs, Caitlin, Kamilla and Chester realize what has transpired. What’s more, Caitlin determines that the neuroinhibiter Grodd is wearing at ARGUS cannot handle both his and Barry’s mind. As a result, the mindscape starts to crumble, and if it does, both Barry and Grodd will die for real. Realizing that their only way out is to fight Solovar together, Barry syncs up their brainwaves, creating a speedster superintelligent gorilla. Said beast takes a few licks from Solovar, but eventually emerges triumphant, after delivering a supersonic punch. The Scarlet Groddster then leaps into the breach, just as new tech whipped together by Chester, with Barry’s encouragement, enables the two minds to be unsynched to the millisecond.
Grodd, we learn, was then outfitted with tracker by Lyla, and allowed to return to the relocated Gorilla City to live in peace with his own kind. Barry meanwhile thanks Chester for his help, after apologizing for lashing out at him earlier. Chester then surprises Barry with news that he hacked myriad cemetary databases and found Henry and Nora’s resting place. Touched, Barry invites Chester to run comms as he dashes out for Round 2 against Pied Piper.
Elsewhere this week:
* When Iris realized that Eva had completed the design of her machine before the whole mirror thing happened, she urged her to build it, to free them, Eva did so, but was hesitant to try it out. With Iris’ encouragement, she did, though it only let he through the mirror as far as her arms — and even they got singed pretty badly. But as Iris went to get more bandages, we realized that Eva was faking her woe-is-me anguish, as she walked to the mirror and checked in on Evil Iris, who was flailing her own singed arms. “What did you do to us?!” “I bought us time,” said Eva.
* Evil Iris, by the way, spent a fraction of the episode duping Joe — after uncharacteristically blowing up at him earlier — so that she could copy his files on Joseph Carver onto a flash drive.
* Allegra was helping Nash out with a project when she spotted his Polaroid of him with her doppelg?nger. Having already assessed him as being “weird,” Allegra was further freaked out by this discovery — in part because she thought he was someone who believed in her, when in actuality he saw her as someone else. Confronted later by Caitlin, Nash suggested that the doppelg?nger is “not my daughter, exactly,” but an “ex-employee” who “made a bad call.” At episode’s end, Nash is confronted by a porkpie hat-wearing Wells (was that Sherloque?) that he saw before, whose eyes glowed red as he started vibing, warning, “He… is… coming!”
What did you think of the episode “Grodd Friended Me,” Chester’s addition to the team (remind me, is there a paycheck involved? From what funds?), and the Eva/Evil Iris connection?
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