Nora's future rift with Iris is revealed, and it's up to Barry to bring her around, the same time as a new meta with hypnotic powers is causing havoc. Meanwhile, Ralph and Sherloque compete to see whose methods will lead to Cicada's capture first.
- Achievements in Ignorance: The episode ends with Cicada looking utterly bewildered as he crushes a metal pole with nothing but his bare hand.
- Ambiguously Bi: Hinted when Nora first calls Spencer cute when talking about her app and later confirmed when the two start flirting. It's not clear if Nora is strictly into girls, both, or it's simply not an issue in the future.
- Attention Whore: All Spencer cares about is buzz for her blog and nothing else. She goes so far to brainwashing people into creating disasters to write about.
- Big Damn Heroes: Iris teleports to the stadium and fires a tranquilizer dart to a brainwashed Nora to save Barry from her.
- Blatant Lies: Barry trying to assure Iris that her half-burned pancakes taste good. She doesn't buy it, especially after tasting them herself.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Happens first to Officer Jones, who is forced to throw a bag with a bomb inside at the scene of the baseball match and later to Nora in the climax thanks to Spencer's powers. She comes this close to killing Barry before Iris saves her.
- Broken Pedestal: Barry ends up becoming this to Nora at the end after stating he would have stood by his wife's decision to suppress her powers.
- Brutal Honesty: Nora makes no attempt to hide her disdain for Iris throughout the episode.
- Butterfly of Doom: Nora helping destroy the satellite changed the trajectory of its dark matter-induced debris. So rather than hit David Hersch and turn him into Cicada, it hit somebody else instead.
- Call-Back: Barry confronts Nora in the same stadium he fought the Reverse-Flash in.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Sherloque cannot bring himself to admit he was wrong to dismiss Cicada's helmet as inconsequential, only managing to say that he was "less right" than Ralph.
- Deus Exit Machina: To make it difficult for XS to save the Central City Picture News office, Spencer makes The Flash go to Las Vegas. Thankfully, Iris is able to guide her.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Nora starts flirting with Spencer instead of activating the metahuman-scanner right away.
- Endangering News Broadcast: Iris tells Spencer that her blog about metahumans is putting them in danger of a serial killer.
- Engineered Heroics: Spencer uses her powers to make others instigate disasters in order to publish pre-written stories.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Nora is heartbroken when Barry stands by Future Iris' decision to suppress her powers. She promptly moves out of the loft and in with Joe and Cecile.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Sherloque realizes that Cicada's breathing is because he has lung damage.
- Evil Cripple: Cicada suffers from a damaged lung and a shard embedded in his right shoulder, causing him pain.
- Flashback: The first scene shows the Enlightenment from Spencer's perspective.
- Flat "What": Nora's reaction to Iris saying that she believes she had a good reason for suppressing her powers.
- Gambit Roulette: Spin's entire plan to have XS stop a bomb attack at the softball game relies on the assumption that XS will read the article that Spin posted, and thus get hypnotized into stopping the bomb. Since she didn't know XS's real identity, she couldn't know whether XS followed her app and therefore couldn't be sure she would see the article. The plan works of course, but it could very easily fall apart.
- Hit Me, Dammit!: Sherloque asks Caitlin to hit him on the diaphragm area to test how would he breath in the air mask. After provoking her, Caitlin punches him and he makes a similar sound to Cicada's Vader Breath.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Nora doesn't believe Spencer could be behind the engineered disasters, in spite of the evidence piling up (though this is mostly due to her having a crush on the blogger).
- Jerkass Ball: In previous episodes, Nora was simply cold and distant toward Iris. Here, she does such things as deliberately not telling her about getting a phone (or giving her her number) and mocking her about how Spencer has more followers than Iris does, and thus must be a better reporter.
- Lethal Chef: Iris’ attempt to make breakfast ends up mostly charcoal, and according to Nora, she never improves.
- Magitek: "Meta tech," objects with powers derived from the dark matter released during the Enlightenment. The team theorizes Cicada's dagger is one, and Spencer's phone was another.
- Misplaced Retribution: Downplayed: while Nora has every right to be upset with the future Iris' decision to suppress her powers, A) her taking it out on present Iris (effectively blaming her for a decision she has not made yet) comes off as harsh, and B) Iris probably had a pretty good reason to do so considering future Barry's disappearance and Cicada's still at large in Nora's timeline.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Iris is aghast that her future self would try to suppress her daughter's powers.
- Mythology Gag: Barry being in Las Vegas is a nod to DC: The New Frontier, where Barry battles Captain Cold on the Strip.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Iris hadn't told Spencer that Central City's newest speedster was named XS, she wouldn't have been able to type up the headline that hypnotizes Nora into trying to kill her father.
- Oh, Crap!: Team Flash when they realize that the remains of DeVoe's satellite have the power to turn mere objects into metas.
- Out of Focus: Cisco doesn't appear in this episode. This is significant not just because it's his first episode absence but the first absence of one of the core five (Barry, Iris, Caitlin, Cisco, Joe) in the series.
- Passive Aggressive Combat: Nora engages in this with Iris, from giving everyone on Team Flash except her mother her new phone number to following a rival blogger.
- Pet the Dog: Sherloque gives sincere credit to Ralph's fixation on Cicada's mask as the key to his "Eureka!" Moment, something he was too arrogant to consider.
- Rejected Apology: Iris tries to apologize to Nora about the power dampening chip, but Nora is too offended by it, mainly because she thought she had a good reason without knowing what it was, plus it's worsened by the fact that she learned through another person.
- Remember the New Guy?: Spencer is an ex-colleague of Iris during her time at Central City Picture News.
- The Reveal:
- There's a very dark reason why Nora is so cold around Iris. Future Iris evidently didn't want her daughter following in her dad's footsteps so she put a dampening power chip in her from a very young age. When Nora found out (which was only six months ago) she didn't take it well.
- DeVoe's satellite might have created new metas, but it also created meta tech, putting metahuman powers in the hands of ordinary humans. Among other things, that means the metahuman detector is useless for finding them.
- Running Gag: People mispronouncing Sherloque as Sherlock.
- Saying Too Much: When meeting Spencer to dissuade her from writing about metahumans, Iris tells her that the Flash or XS are in danger. Spencer discovers that XS is the alias of the new girl.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The reporter creating disasters is the final straw for Mayor Van Buren, who resigns. Ralph notes "I'm amazed she lasted this long."
- Stealing the Credit: Played with. At first, it seems like Sherloque is taking Ralph's idea of investigating Cicada's helmet as his own. But then Sherloque openly admits that the idea was all Ralph, congratulating him for it.
- Super-Strength: Cicada realizes he has this at the end of the episode, crushing a metal pole.
- Ungrateful Bitch: Nora. Despite Iris talking her through the right way to put out the fire at the CCPN building, and later preventing her from killing her father, she still treats her badly over the actions of her future self.
- Villain Has a Point: When Iris points out that Spencer's articles could pose a danger to XS, Spencer reminds her that she didn't have any issue with that possibility when she was writing articles about The Flash. Of course, there wasn't a serial killer hunting metahumans at the time.
- Willfully Weak: For obvious reasons, Barry doesn't use his powers during the baseball game and botches a few moves.
