Harry returns from Earth-2, asking for help with Jesse's newfound powers. Meanwhile, Team Flash has to deal with a new metahuman with control over metal.
Tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Well, foster parents. Frankie's foster father is physically and emotionally abusive.
- Anger Born of Worry: Barry lets Wally have it for risking his life in order to potentially trigger latent powers. It's so thorough that even Joe doesn't have to say anything else.
- Antagonist Title: Not a hard guess who the Monster of the Week is. In a subvertion, she pulls a Heel–Face Turn.
- Arc Words: Given a twist with "Run, Jesse, run."
- Asshole Victim: It's hard to be sorry for Frankie's adoptive father when Magenta hurts him
- Atrocious Alias: Downplayed Trope. Cisco is unimpressed with the name "Magenta"."Meh."
- Blessed with Suck: For the first time ever, the show touches on the negative side of Barry's power: Moments can feel like hours for him.
- The Bus Came Back: Harry and Jesse make their return.
- Bullying a Dragon: Julian believes that the frightened and traumatized girl in the police station is a dangerous metahuman. How does he decide to test that hypothesis? Getting in her face and yelling about how he knows what she is and what she did. No points for guessing how that works out.
- Bookends: This episode begins and ends with Barry and Iris going on a date and having that date interrupted.
- Commonality Connection: Harry and Barry bond over their tendency to cause massive mistakes and how all their attempts to fix them just make things worse.
- Cry into Chest: Frankie, on getting rid of Magenta, cries into Flash's chest while sobbing about how she's "so sorry."
- Die or Fly: Jesse's powers first manifest when she's about to be hit by a car.
- Discriminate and Switch: When Caitlin goes to talk to Jesse about how she should take things slow with stopping metahumans, Jesse automatically assumes it's because she's a girl, unlike Barry.
- Dramatic Irony: Wells asks Cisco to talk Jesse out of being a hero, which he turns down as an active user of power. Wells then leans on Caitlin, who conspicuously denies any experience with powers. In general Caitlin spends the subplot anxious as she's pressured to keep her powers secret as everyone treats her as the person with the most experience with powers without actually having them.
- Expy: Not personality-wise, but Magenta's powers are a few letters away from someone else.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: Implied with Julian at the end of the episode where he actually mocks the idea of the Rival being killed by a ghost.
- Foreshadowing:
- When talking to Jesse about having speed powers, Wally mentions having dreamed about it. After the climax the team is questioning Frankie about how Alchemy got to her. She says it started with dreams of her other life before he started calling to her and offering that power. The camera lingers on a shot of Wally with a knowing look as she describes this.
- Frankie's struggling with Magenta mirrors that of Caitlin struggling with Killer Frost later on in the season.
- Gilligan Cut: Immediately after Wally is talking with Jesse about how being put in mortal danger allowed her to jumpstart her powers and gets the idea to do it himself, it cuts to Barry chewing him out about walking into traffic like she did, and how if Jesse wasn't there he would have died.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: In the beginning of the episode, Barry used his speed to arrange flowers he bought in a shape of a heart to Iris.
- I Just Want to Be Special: Wally really wants to be a speedster like Jesse and Barry.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Between The Flash and Frankie. It works.
- Insufferable Genius: Julian in spades! He treats Joe (a senior detective) like a waiter, refuses to share his theories about Magenta with anyone else at the precinct and he nearly gets everyone killed for it.
- Idiot Ball:
- Rather than tell Joe about his theories about Magenta, Julian confronts her himself, loudly and in the middle of the police station, which leads to her having a freak out and nearly getting killed by her.
- Barry firmly grabs it when he realizes that the "Flashpoint" metahumans are having dreams of that other life and he doesn't let Wally know he was Kid Flash, though that may be cause he's trying to honor his promise of not telling people unless they want to.
- Jerkass: Julian is so petty that he stops Barry from ending his shift 1 minute before the official end.
- Load-Bearing Hero: The Flash (later replaced by Jesse so he can confront Magenta), generates a wind tunnel to keep a tanker from landing on a hospital.
- Mundane Utility: Barry uses his super speed to buy flowers and make a decorative flower gift for Iris.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Frankie's reaction when she snaps out of Magenta's control.
- Mythology Gag: Wally seems to be fond of wearing yellow lately, the primary color of his Kid Flash costume.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Harry alienates his daughter by trying to discourage her from using her powers. He comments with Barry how each other tends to worsen things.
- Julian acts recklessly when he pressures Frankie, which awakens Magenta and almost gets himself killed until Flash saved him.
- NOT!: Harry's new Verbal Tic for his sarcasm. Given a Lampshade Hanging.Cisco: Really? We're doing "not" on Earth-2 now?
Jesse: No, that's all him. - Pay Evil unto Evil: Magenta cripples her abusive father.
- Pet the Dog: Subverted with Julian, who first kindly asks Frankie if she is OK and offers her a new glass of water, but only to take a DNA sample.
- The Resenter: Wally is understandably incredibly disappointed that Jesse has powers but he doesn't, even though they both got struck by the same dark matter wave.
- The Reveal: While implied by Jay Garrick in the previous episode, this one confirms that the only timeline change was on Earth-1. As far as Jesse and Harry know, the Speed Lab never existed before Barry's bout of Reality Warping Is Not a Toy.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Harry and Jesse are insulated from Barry's timeline changes due to being on an alternate Earth when he went back.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Magenta's whole motive is to kill her abusive father.
- Save the Villain: Team Flash is saving Magenta's Abusive Parent only to prevent innocent bystanders from getting caught in the crossfire of Magenta's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Shout-Out: Both to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (a genuine Jekyll & Hyde scenario) and Primal Fear (a case of Hyde Plays Jekyll) when discussing Frankie's split personality.
- Split Personality: Magenta and Frankie, due to Dr. Alchemy's influence. Eventually Flash is able to convince Frankie to get rid of Magenta.
- Split-Personality Takeover: Magenta's second motivation for working with Alchemy, as he told her the empowerment would give her complete control.
- Spotting the Thread: Harry is immediately able to ascertain that he's in an alternate timeline of Earth-1 when Caitlyn reveals the existence of a "Speed Lab" and Barry shows just as much ignorance regarding it as he and Jesse do.
- Superpowered Date: Near the end of the episode, Barry decides to use his Super-Speed to bring Iris to a more romantic dinner date location near the ocean.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Played with in that Magenta already existed before Frankie got her powers.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Caitlin denies having metahuman powers a couple of times throughout the episode.
- Talking the Monster to Death: In the end, the Flash convinces Frankie to resist her split personality, and the entire climax ends without any battle at all.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Magenta's second attempt to kill her foster father is to throw a tanker at the hospital.
- Too Dumb to Live: Wally thinks that he might have a chance at unlocking Super-Speed, so how does he test this theory? By jumping in front of a speeding car not knowing what would happen. When Barry calls him out on this, Wally actually lampshades that he didn't know how this would play out.
- Tragic Villain: Magenta's the most sympathetic metahuman since Griffin. She's not really evil, her mind is being poisoned by Dr. Alchemy who's playing up her resentment of her abusive foster dad.
- Troll: Joe jokes that Barry is not so much his son as a second daughter, and that he overshares his feelings, so he didn't need to see "Dad Cop." When Barry seems almost upset, he says yes, he's messing with him.
- Verbal Tic: Harry has taken to using "NOT!!" when he's being sarcastic.
- Visions of Another Self: How Alchemy is described as recruiting his allies. He sends them dreams of their Flashpoint lives, before he brokers a deal to give them the power of that life in exchange for a favor.
- What the Hell, Hero?:
- Harry calls out Barry for screwing with time, much to Barry's annoyance since he's been chewed out enough already.
Barry: I don't need to be reminded thank you.- Joe calls out Julian on his blunt interrogation of Frankie since a) it's not his job and b) it causes her to have a breakdown that leads to Magenta coming out.
- Barry gives Wally an earful after the latter risked his life (by running into the path of a speeding car) in order to jumpstart his powers. Also an example of Anger Born of Worry.
- Caitlin calls out Harry for his overprotective attitude with such ferocity that he is forced to Stunned Silence (and unbeknownst to anyone else, she's also venting her own issues with her getting Killer Frost's powers).Caitlin: If you helped her navigate her powers rather than just assuming they'll destroy her, she'd turn to you, rather than push you away.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
- Joe tries to convince Wally that he doesn't need any superpowers to do good.
- How Barry exactly did his Talking the Monster to Death above.
- You, Get Me Coffee: Barry has been stuck doing all the paperwork in the lab since Julian's the "senior" scientist, even though Barry's been working there longer than he has.
