The Trap sees the endgame of The Flash’s first season gather significant pace as we head towards the final three episodes of the show’s debut year.
As the episode opens up, Barry (Grant Gustin), Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) have discovered Harrison Wells’ (Tom Cavanagh) hidden lair and Gideon. The three are quickly brought up to speed on several facts; The Flash is missing in 2024; Iris West becomes Iris West-Allen; Barry created Gideon; Harrison Wells wants to kill Barry; in the future Barry Allen will become the Director of the Central City Police Department and a founding member of the… Aw shucks, Gideon was cut off just in time to get fanboy minds racing to a Justice League conclusion to that line.
Elsewhere, Eddie (Rick Cosnett) wants to propose to Iris but gets some major rain poured on his parade by Joe (Jesse L. Martin), who has his own ideas on how matters will play out in the future. As for Iris, she is starting to piece together a few things, most notably that all of the odd happenings in Central City have taken place since S.T.A.R. Labs’ particle accelerator went BOOM, and by the episode’s over she also seems to realise that Barry Allen and The Flash are indeed one and the same. On the whole marriage front, that is definitely a theme that is constant throughout The Trap; Eddie wants to marry Iris; Barry now knows that it will actually be he who will marry Iris in the future; and we also get a conveniently timed mention of Captain Singh’s (Patrick Sabongui) upcoming marriage.
Regardless of the topic of holy matrimony, the juicier parts of this episode centre on one thing: proving that Harrison Wells killed Nora Allen. With Cisco having nightmares about an alternative timeline in which Wells killed him, the plan is to use some rather Vibe-like glasses device to take a further look into Cisco’s tormented dreams. Once the rest of the crew get the full idea of what Cisco sees, the plan is put in motion to have the same events play out, only this time with Cisco keeping himself alive once he gets a confession from Wells on the topic of Barry’s mother’s murder.
Recreated perfectly, all is going absolutely to plan… well, until it’s revealed that the trap that Barry, Joe, Cisco and Caitlin had set for Wells was actually all just part of the trap that Wells had set for them. The Wells that confronted Cisco was actually Hannibal Bates, aka the shape-shifting Everyman, and the real Wells instead makes audio contact with Barry and Co. and the cat is firmly out of the bag. Not only does Barry now know that Wells did indeed kill Nora, Wells knows that Barry knows, and Barry knows that Wells knows Barry knows. Keeping up? Good.
If that wasn’t enough, the closing moments of The Trap see Reverse-Flash kidnap Eddie and reveal that the two are related, that Wells is Eobard Thawne. And as touched upon earlier in this review, the final moments of the episode also see Iris seemingly picking up on the fact that Barry is the Scarlet Speedster.
The Trap was one of the very best episodes of The Flash to date, and it was one that just concentrated on our core group of key characters rather than any particular villain of the week sort. Sure, Barry had to develop a new power and create a vacuum to take down a fire, but the main shady happenings of this outing land at the door of Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne. Still though, the Wells character is still helping Barry Allen right the way through this episode up until the final reveal and twist. We even get to see Wells coming to the aide of the comatose Barry in a flashback moment set after disaster caused by S.T.A.R.’s particle accelerator. The father-son dynamic between Barry and Wells is there for all to see, but the gloves are now firmly off.
As the season comes to a close, we have three episodes left and a whole lot of questions and possibilities to consider. Just what will Eobard Thawne do with or say to namesake Eddie? How will Iris approach things now that she is seemingly aware who The Flash really is? Is that Gorilla Grodd’s lair that Reverse-Flash took Eddie to (it totally is!)? How will Cisco and Caitlin react now that they have concrete confirmation that Wells really is a murdering time-traveller who likes yellow? And will there be any characters (Henry Allen, we’d watch our back if we were you) who become collateral damage to further the tragedy of Barry Allen?
Buckle yourself in tight, for the next three episodes promise to deliver a mighty bumpy ride for the Sultan of Speed.