Firestorm finally manages to split into their separate identities, but Team Flash's joy is short-lived when the resulting explosion brings General Eiling looking into metahuman business.
Tropes:
- Asshole Victim: It's really hard to feel any sympathy for Eiling. At all.
- Brick Joke:
- In "The Nuclear Man", Caitlin gets unnerved when Professor Stein calls her "Cait". In this episode, the Running Gag of Stein calling Ronnie by his real name gets started.
- Also in the previous episode Stein in Ronnie's body jokes that in a different body his tastes have probably changed. Now after separating Stein likes Ronnie's favorite food despite hating it before.
- Broken Masquerade: Well more like cracking, but Iris (with a little prodding from another reporter) is slowly beginning to realize that her friends at S.T.A.R. Labs are hiding something.
- But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Invoked: When Caitlin says the odds of Stein and Ronnie's brain waves being perfectly in sync are essentially impossible, Barry remarks, "Impossible's just another Tuesday for us." A bit of Leaning on the Fourth Wall here: the show airs on Tuesday night.
- But Now I Must Go: Both Ronnie and Martin leaves for Pittsburgh at the end of the episode to hide from the army and to look for help to control their powers.
- Call-Back:
- While catching up with Ronnie at a coffee shop, Caitlin reenacts the boomerang incident back at Star labs and imitates Cisco quote "My bad. This one is on me."
- Eiling mentions to Wells he knows that the Flash is Barry Allen when he removed his mask to tend to Souci after Eiling shot her.
- Grodd's still living at the sewers, and Wells knows it.
- Chekhov's Gun: Ronnie's love for pizza gets a punchline when it is revealed Prof. Stein learned to like the food as well. It's also one of the first signs that Ronnie and Stein aren't as separate as they think.
- Civvie Spandex: Firestorm's attire is basically Ronnie's casual clothes. It's also black.
- Clothing Damage: Ronnie and Martin to a lesser extent had their clothes broken after their bodies are separated.
- Continuity Nod:
- Caitlin tells Ronnie about the time Cisco threw a boomerang in STAR Labs.
- Cisco references The Mist. He even leaned on the fourth wall by saying, "Dude, that was like week three!"
- Eiling notes that he last used the cattle prod he tortures Stein with on Grodd.
- Wells tells Barry to run as he did in the very first episode.
- Contrived Coincidence: Joe, Cisco and Barry come to the conclusion that time travel is involved in the Allen murder. It just so happens that the resident expert on the subject just owes them a huge debt: Martin Stein.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: To get a message to Martin Stein, Ronnie cuts a message into his arm.
- Crazy-Prepared: Eiling has multiple weapons specifically made to take out metahumans. Justified in that he's been studying superpowers for a while and is an Army general with access to advanced weapons research.
- Death by Secret Identity: Eiling gets snatched up by Gorilla Grodd seconds after learning Wells is the Reverse-Flash. Wells actually invokes this trope since Eiling found out about Barry's identity (among other reasons).
- Didn't Think This Through: It turns out that Barry unmasking himself to comfort Bette in her last moments (after Eiling shot her), without moving a bit out of range first, was a pretty stupid move on his part since it gave the General knowledge of his Secret Identity and thus the ability to blackmail Wells.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Whenever Dr. Stein calls Ronnie "Ronald", Ronnie insists to only call him by his nickname.
- The Dog Bites Back: After being coerced by Eiling to hand over Stein to save Bary, Wells decides enough is enough and leaves him to the mercy of Grodd.
- Easily Forgiven: After Joe told Barry that his adult self was present the night his mom was murdered, the scene switches to them asking Wells about time travel. While Barry casually mentioned Joe and Cisco's findings, it's not clear if Joe suspecting Wells was also mentioned off-screen. Nonetheless, Wells doesn't seem alerted and offended by Joe.
- Everyone Knows Morse: Stein knows Morse Code, and uses it to communicate his location back to Ronnie and Team Flash.
- Failure Hero: Barry feels this way after realizing that he still couldn't save his mom even with Super-Speed. He even almost invoke the trope by name.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Ronnie and Prof. Stein, both literally and figuratively.
- Fusion Dance: Unlike the first time, Ronnie and Prof. Stein are more willingly and in-sync this time around.
- Human Pin Cushion: Eiling's Kryptonite Ring for the Flash is a grenade that launches hundreds of "fragments" that pierce the Flash's body.
- Innocent Innuendo:Professor Stein: I'm still inside Ronald.
Cisco: [smirk] There has to be better way to phrase that. - Laser-Guided Karma: The Reverse-Flash leaves Eiling at the mercy of Grodd, whom Eiling had done who-knows-what to years earlier.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- Cisco says their encounter with The Mist happened in "week three."
- Barry comments that impossible things are "just another Tuesday" for the S.T.A.R. Labs crew. In the following scene, Iris also says that it's Tuesday.
- When Iris briefly meets Ronnie, she comments that he looks familiar. Series-wise she is referring to the picture of Firestorm that she had seen on the internet. But another interpretation can be the resemblance that Robbie Amell, who portrays Ronnie, has to actor Stephen Amell
, who are real life cousins. Iris has also met Oliver briefly.
- My Greatest Second Chance: Barry invokes this in his resolve by saying that since he now knows he failed/will fail, it gives him an advantage to prepare for it.
- Mythology Gag:
- Ronnie and Martin head off to Pittsburgh, the home of the original Firestorm in the comics.
- In making up stories about where her "cousin" is from, Caitlin references Midway (aka Midway City, home of the Silver Age Hawkman and Hawkgirl), and Coast City (the California home of Green Lantern Hal Jordan).
- The quantum splicer's design looks exactly like Firestorm's Chest Insignia.
- All the conversations regarding Barry travelling back in time creating a time paradox and his own desire to save his mom all alludes to the Flashpoint storyline.
- "Dear God!" "Not God...Grodd." Sound familiar, superhero fans?
- Muggles Do It Better: The military now has special weaponry to deal with both The Flash and Firestorm.
- Noodle Incident: Cisco mentions having to become a Moment Killer for Ronnie and Caitlin "again".
- Not So Above It All: Dr Wells does a brief Doc Brown impression when Cisco mentions Back to the Future, and then calls it a tremendous movie. Joe's reaction is priceless.
- Not What It Looks Like: When Ronnie begins cutting himself to send Stein a message, everyone except Barry think he is committing suicide to escape the pain.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Wells gives a subdued version of the expression when Eiling reveals he knows Barry is the Flash.
- Cisco and Caitlin give each other one when they realize Iris picked up on Caitlin's mistake in saying where her "cousin" was from.
- Eiling's reaction when he realizes whose tender mercies he's been left to.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: It's hard to argue that Wells wasn't justified in dealing with Eiling the way he did.
- Power Perversion Potential: After separating, Ronnie can feel exactly what Prof. Stein can feel and vice versa. Now imagine if both or one of them are in an intimate time with their respective lady loves...
- Put on a Bus: Ronnie/Prof. Stein heads to Pennsylvania to figure out their condition.
- Psychic Link: Exploited. As a result of their Sharing a Body, Dr. Stein and Ronnie are telepathically connected. As a result, Stein is able to convey messages through Ronnie and vice versa.
- Psychotic Smirk: Wells gives one after handing Stein over to Eiling, signaling was he did was All According to Plan
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Ronnie tries to convince Caitlin to move to a different city and live a normal life. Then the coffee shop they are in gets attacked by the army.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Barry tells Joe that thanks to the information Joe and Cisco uncovered, he has an advantage that when he will travel back in time he has more information so he can plan ahead so as not to lose the fight with the Reverse-Flash and fully intends to save his mother.
- Shout-Out: The episode is basically a love letter to films that have time-travel themes/plots.
- Cisco uses The Terminator and Back to the Future as shorthand to explain the concepts of Stable Time Loop and Set Right What Once Went Wrong to Joe. Wells in response makes a reference to Doc Brown from the latter.
- Cisco comments on how Caitlin and Ronnie's relationship is comparable to "10 seasons of Rachel and Ross squished together in one year."
- Ronnie wounding himself to send Prof. Stein a message looks similar to a scene in Looper where the character Seth gradually gets mutilated to send his future self who has gone rogue (It's a Long Story) a warning.
- Wells actually does say "Run, Barry, run!" Also a Call-Back to the first episode.
- Eiling mentioning that he last "torture-shocked" a gorilla evokes the infamous scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, though his Oh, Crap! reaction when he hears said gorilla talk only happens in The Stinger.
- Iris' co-worker compares scientific language to Dothraki.
- Slipping a Mickey: Wells gives Dr. Stein drugged alcohol so the military can take him..
- Stable Time Loop: Discussed, Cisco brings up the Causal Theory, if someone goes back to the past to change an event, they end up causing said event. Barry briefly has a Heroic BSoD at the thought he might be responsible for his mom's death.
- The Stinger: Wells, in full Reverse-Flash mode, abducts General Eiling and delivers him to Grodd's sewer lair.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Eiling tries to murder Firestorm after the information about the Firestorm Matrix is extracted, twice. Luckily, both times Barry saves him.
