A Review of "The Flash: Earth-2"

I'll offer a brief spoiler warning for "The Flash."

In the current season of "The Flash," they've been exploring the multiverse, specifically Earth-2. They ventured there to rescue Harry's (Harrison Well-2) daughter, Jessie. Zoom has been holding her hostage for several episodes and this was the motivation for many of Harry's actions during his time in the show.

Though their time in Earth-2 initially seemed to involve some rather comical fiascos, but the situation quickly became serious.

As this is a parallel universe, everyone has an identical doppleganger, though not everything is the same. For example, Barry-2 isn't the Flash or a speedster at all, for that matter. And some alliances are often very much changed in this universe. Caitlin, Cisco, and Ronnie's alternate selves are very different from their Earth-1 identities. Cisco, known on Earth-1 as Vibe, is called Reverb in Earth-2. Caitlin-2 is another meta-human, known as Killer Frost. Ronnie's Earth-2 counterpart is called Deathstorm. All three of them work for Zoom.

Deathstorm and Reverb were killed by Zoom in the previous episode. They'd been told not to hurt a speedster. Barry had been outmatched by them when he'd gone to help Deadshot-2, Iris-2, and Cisco, who'd been looking for Killer Frost and Deathstorm. Killer Frost and Deathstorm had killed Iris-2's father and that's why she'd gone looking for them. Zoom let Killer Frost live, as she tried to get them to follow Zoom's instructions and leave Barry unhurt. Barry ends up being captured by Zoom.

I've seen him christened "The Man in the Iron Mask" by many people, as we have yet to find out his identity. He is masked the entire episode. While it seems that he can see out of the mask and can hear, he's unable to speak. He's in a glass cage, similar to Barry's. As he's unable to speak, he communicates by tapping on the glass. However, we find that he isn't using Morse code, but, according to Barry, he's using a tap code utilized by POWs. It took some time for Barry to realize this, but they're able to decipher one word that our masked man taps out. He taps the letters J-A-Y.

Jay Garrick is a character we've known for several episodes now. He's the Flash on Earth-2 and is currently on Earth-1. Barry tells the masked man where Jay is and that he's fine. The masked man becomes visibly distressed, as his message was clearly misunderstood. Barry and Jessie try to encourage him to say more to explain, but Zoom reappears and orders the masked man not to say any more.

Meanwhile, Harry and Cisco have teamed up with Barry-2 and Iris-2. Barry-2 tracked down Killer Frost, using an algorithm he created, and they went to convince her to take them to Zoom's lair. Cisco played on her love for Ronnie-2 and the fact that Zoom had killed him. It took some convincing, but she eventually agreed to take them to Zoom's lair and even helped them get inside. They are in the process of rescuing Barry and Jessie when Zoom shows up once again.

Killer Frost, however, does something rather surprising. She subdues Zoom temporarily with her ice and is holding him off while the others get away. Barry almost refuses to leave, as they haven't been able to rescue the masked man, but they convince him to go. However, he promised to come back for him. Cisco thanks Caitlin-2 for saving them and they escape. They barely make it back through the breach back into Earth-1. After Barry, Cisco, Harry, and Jessie are through, they're about to close the breach for good. Jay throws a device into the breach to close it, but is standing very close to it for several moments afterward. Zoom reaches an arm through the breach just before it closes. The arm phases through Jay's chest and Jay is dragged back to Earth-2. The breach closes seconds later.

And that's where the episode leaves us.

But back to what, in my opinion, was the most interesting part of the episode. Our mysterious masked man.

Now, there's not much that we know about him. We can't see his face, so we have very little to go on to guess his identity. However, at one point during the episode, we do see a bit of blonde hair from under the mask. If he's a character we've already met, this narrows it down considerably. It's a possibility that Eddie Thawne is the man behind the mask. Now, this means it could be Eddie-2 or our Eddie from Earth-1 somehow back from the dead. There isn't much to go on to support this, aside from the hair color, but I still see this as a possibility.

Most of that is just speculation. However, there is one thing in particular that we can deduce from what we've seen of him. It's that he most likely is (or was) a speedster. He's kept in a glass cage, identical to the one Barry was inside. Also, if he was't a speedster or useful to Zoom like Harry was, we don't know of another motive Zoom would have for keeping him locked up.

The most recent episode covered very little of events on Earth-2. All we got was a short bit at the end when we see Zoom carrying Jay's seemingly lifeless body into his lair. The masked man stares on in silent horror. In a surprising turn of events, Zoom then takes off his mask to reveal a face identical to Jay Garrick's. And that's where they leave off. We'll have to wait until at least next Tuesday for further developments. Personally, Tuesday can't come soon enough!