The Flash season 1, episode 2, “Fastest Man Alive” aired last night and Barry is definitely still getting used to all these changes.
Cisco’d
There’s a fire downtown and Barry is on his way there as the Flash. He manages to get everyone out alive but Caitlin does not approve of Cisco and Barry working together and risking Barry’s life. She thinks they need to focus on metahumans and not just ordinary citizens. Doctor Wells shows up and agrees, Barry should restrain himself. But will he? Nahhh.
After a robbery at an event Barry attends Caitlin yells at him for lying to them about feeling fatigued, and they want to figure out what’s happening to him. They put him on a special treadmill that can go as fast as he can and discover it’s his glucose levels. Caitlin wants to change his diet because Barry needs to eat more if he’s going to keep running around like he is.
West shows up at the science lab and gets into an argument about how Barry is just a kid, but Barry disagrees. Barry wants to help people, especially people at risk from metahumans, so West needs to stop trying to keep him from doing it.
Barry shows back up at the lab, where West reveals Black worked for Stagg but Stagg ended up stealing all of Black’s research, called it his own, and then fired Black. This is when Barry realizes that he probably needs to restrain himself, and West reminds him that they’re just starting out. But Barry thinks this entire thing is a mistake and quits.
Caitlin manages to replicate Black using some of his blood from his fight with Barry and they learn that if they can manage to sedate the real Black then all the replicates will also fall. How will they know which is the real one? Black is like Barry: He gets fatigued with all the amount of work he does replicating himself, so all Barry has to do is find the one who’s the slowest.
Multiplex
At the beginning of the episode there’s a robbery at a store and it looks like it was done by a bunch of perps all wearing the same clothes, but Barry finds out that it might actually be one person.
Barry goes to his lab to run a few tests and he’s experiencing some major physical fatigue but won’t admit it. Iris shows up and takes Barry to an event at Star Labs that they’ve been planning to go to for a while and the guy who robbed the store earlier shows up and goes to rob them.
Barry tries to stop them but his fatigue gets in the way and he passes out instead. When Iris wakes him up West and his partner Eddie are there. West goes to talk to him and tells him to stop chasing criminals, but he doesn’t listen.
As predicted, the criminal is a man who can clone himself: Danton Black. They find out he’s after the same man that was at the event Barry and Iris went to, so Thawne and West go to warn him. While there, Black shows up and attacks, and West actually sees him clone himself. Barry arrives as the Flash and gets West out of there and tries to fight Black himself, but Black keeps replicating and ends up kicking his ass.
West tries to get Stagg to let the police station protect him but Stagg declines. Wells shows up to talk to West, and West asks him if he knew about Barry but Wells says no. Wells never wanted to be part of a secret fighting team, and tells West that Barry quit and that West needs to not doubt Barry because if he does then Barry will doubt himself, and that will lead to Barry failing. Good point, doctor.
Black makes another move on Stagg at this company, but Barry is prepared this time and manages take him out.
Wells shows up to visit Stagg, and Stagg tells him he wants to harness Barry’s power. But West won’t have that at all: He ends up killing him.
Father/Son Dynamics
Several flashbacks in the episode show Barry wanting to leave and visit his dad but West not allowing it. Barry runs away a lot, and ultimately manages to visit his dad despite West’s instructions not to.
In a conversation with his dad, Barry learns that it was him that asked West not to let Barry visit him. He says that Barry can’t help him, so he needs to be a good boy.
At the end of the episode, West promises Barry that he will help him find out who really killed his mother. Barry then realizes that after all the years of saying West isn’t his dad, he did all the things a dad does for a son, and they bond over pizza with random toppings.
An Obsession Begins
The entire time through-out the events of the day Iris knows that something is up with Barry, and wants him to tell her what’s going on but he avoids it. However Barry does try to tell her about how he feels a couple of times, but as usual it doesn’t pan out.
When helping Iris with one of her projects, she reveals she wants his help doing research on the “red streak” going around the city. She admits that Barry might be right about the night his mom died. She even sets up alerts on her phone to know when the red streak is doing its thing.
