Team Flash must deal with a seemingly invincible meta who is making the entire city experience their worst fears.
Tropes:
- Continuity Nod:
- Mirror Monarch attacking Frost during the climactic battle of the prior arc is stated to be the reason why she split from Caitlin, her injuries being so extensive that her meta healing formed a second body to work overtime.
- Joe believes Iris's suspicions about Kramer are due to being manipulated by Eva for months without her knowing.
- Barry laments that he managed to revive the Speed Force after its death was indirectly caused by Crisis, only for it to almost die again.
- Cisco attempts to re-fuse Caitlin and Frost back together using the Firestorm matrix, which was last used during Crisis on Earth-X.
- Cecile amplifies her meta abilities with Thinker's chair to combat Psych.
- While confronting Psych for the first time, Barry sarcastically deduces that Psych was tormenting the Crows Security agents with a "Godzilla rip-off" illusion. After all, this isn't the first time such a scenario happened with the same creature.
- Cisco tells Cecile that Martian Manhunter from Supergirl (2015) could take a few lessons from her.
- Darker and Edgier: The whole episode has an extremely dark and fearful atmosphere to it, which befits the villain.
- Easter Egg: A Crows Secruity team is attacked by Psych.
- Foreshadowing: When the team is hit by Psych's powers, Frost's nightmare is about being arrested for the crimes she committed when she was a villain. Near the end, we learn this is exactly what Kramer is planning on doing.
- In the same vein, the nightmare has Frost suspecting that “Mark” ratted her out, setting up a new character in the next few episodes.
- Gut Feeling: Iris suspects something is off about Kramer, further fueled when she finds her military records heavily redacted.
- Inspector Javert: Kristen Kramer came to Central City to arrest Frost, who is still a wanted criminal.
- Internal Reveal: The rest of the team learns about Caitlin and Frost being separated.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Cisco to Frost, "We can get you back to your normal two-minds-one-body existence. Wow, that's a Tuesday for ya." Guess which day of the week the show airs on?
- Literal Split Personality: Carrying over from the previous episode, Caitlin and Frost now have their own bodies. Which leads to dissension between the two when the former wants to be reunited while the latter wants each half to live their own lives.
- Malevolent Masked Men: Psych is a sadistic villain who uses Mind Rape and wears a mask.
- Mind Rape: Psych's M.O, fueling the visions of his victims with their own darkest fears.
- Mythology Gag: Fuerza is the name of a then-recent (circa 2019) character in the Flash comics and embodies the "Strength Force".
- No-Sell: Psych, like Fuerza, completely ignores Barry's lightning throw.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: A very strange example with Cisco. The Z in Spanish makes an S sound, but somehow Carlos Valdez prounounces "fuerza" with a Z sound, even while specifically stating that it's a Spanish word.
- Properly Paranoid: Iris turns out to be right to be suspicious of Kramer.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Ralph is said to still be MIA, following his actor's firing from the show during the time between season 6 and 7.
- Sadist: It's clear that Psych very much enjoys tormenting people with his powers.
- Samus Is a Girl: This episode confirms that Fuerza's Ambiguous Gender is in fact female.
- Shout-Out:
- Cisco names the monster from last episode "Fuerza" since, as he claims, She-Hulk was already taken.
- Joe refers to Psych as a "Freddie Krueger" meta.
- Frost mentions her disdain for This Is Us, which Caitlin enjoys and Cisco defends.
- Side Bet: When Barry and Iris are shocked to see Caitlin and Frost separated, Frost turns to Cisco and says "Told ya they'd freak" and he gives her a dollar.
- Supernatural Fear Inducer: Psych's power in a nutshell.
- Takes One to Kill One: Whatever the phenomena powering Psych and Fuerza, they're powerful enough to inflict enough damage upon the Speed Force to make it ask for Team Flash's help.
- Underestimating Badassery: Barry initially doesn't take the new threat of Psych and Fuerza seriously. He almost pays dearly for it.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Psych disappears after being defeated by Cecile's psychic counterattack.
- Wham Line:
- The Speed Force declaring both Fuerza and Psych's power sources to be of the same type as itself.
- Kramer saying she wants to arrest Killer Frost.
- Wham Shot: The Speed Force, still in the guise of Barry's mother, appears in the physical plane, having had mortal wounds inflicted upon it.
- "What Do They Fear?" Episode: Psych's fear-based mental abilities evoke this theme throughout the episode on his victims, including Team Flash. Barry, in particular, has to overcome his two nightmarish visions in order to bypass Psych's fear dome.
- The Worf Effect: Psych casually powers through the psychic inhibitor that restrained Grodd before.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Getting wounded or dying in the nightmares results in real life injury or death.
