‘The Flash’ Recap: S2E22 “Invincible”

This week’s episode of The Flash has been one that fans had been waiting for since the untimly death of an iconic Arrow cast member. Unlike last week’s episode, “Invincible” returned to your typical “villain of the week” outing, but did it in a way that will likely have people talking for a while.

The episode opens with Zoom’s legion of Metahumans terrorizing Central City. The City is in flames, but as quick as the action is starting, the Flash speeds his way onto the scene and saves the day. Gleaming with a new found confidence due to his time in the speedforce, Barry is now convinced he and his team will win any battle they come across. The team however is not convinced of this, and they are worried that Barry is now over confident. While the team is planning their next move, Tina McGee at Mercury Labs is attacked by a woman using a sonic scream. The building collapses and Barry saves the day, only for it to be revealed that the mysterious woman who attacked McGee is none other than The Black Canary’s Earth-2 counterpart.

Having revealed to Barry that she knows his is the Flash, Tina McGee accompanies the hero to S.T.A.R. Labs and is confronted by Harrison Wells when she begins to accuse him of being the arson. Tina tells Barry that she now needs a black box that is in the wreckage of Mercury Labs, Barry heads out to retrieve it, only to be confronted by his father who urges him to be careful. After a small argument, the two make amends and share a touching moment as father and son, only to be interrupted by the alarm in Barry’s personal lab at the CCPD. When Barry rushes to his lab, he finds Zoom reviewing all of the evidence that Barry has collected about his mothers death. Zoom tells Barry that they are the same, and he will prove to him that they are. Zoom reveals to Barry that he is using a meta to knock down buildings, and that Barry will lose their fight because he is too preoccupied with saving people.

Eventually The Flash is forced to confront The Black Siren, who reveals herself to be working for zoom and while the hero is distracted, he is injured by her and when it seems like she is going to kill him, Wally flies into the intersection and hits her with his car, rescuing the Flash.

Back at S.T.A.R. Labs the heroes device a way to create a  “dimensional tuning fork” that will send a pulse through the city that will affect anyone who is from Earth-2, and knocking them out for Barry to round up. Stuck with a dilemma of wanting to stop Black Siren and needing to use his speed to create a barrier around the city to keep the vibrations contained from the fork, Cisco and Caitlin offer to distract her by dressing up as their counterparts and distract her.

With Cisco and Caitlin distracting Black Siren, the rest of the team successfully activates the “dimensional tuning fork”  and knocks all of the Earth-2 Metas unconscious, with the exception of Zoom who literally punches a whole through reality and creates a breach back to Earth-2 for him to escape. The Flash collects all of the unconscious metas and locks them away in the pipeline, Black Siren included.

During a large friends and family gathering at the West home, Cisco has a vibe-vision and sees Earth-2 get destroyed and during the excitement Zoom appears, and takes Henry.

Barry takes off after them as fast as he can run, following Zoom to his childhood home and the exact spot where The Reverse-Flash killed his mother. Zoom once again says that he will prove that they are the same, and then he kills Henry in an attempt to make Barry just like him.

Now that you have read the recap, you can check out our top 5 moments from the episode.

The Black Siren

Of all the things Arrow did right in its early season, Laurel Lance wasn’t one of them. From the start her character was mistreated, misrepresented, and when her death finally occurred.. it was more upsetting because they wasted a fantastic character.. thankfully The Black Siren was none of that. From the moment she appeared on screen it was clear that this is who Katie Cassidy should have been playing all along. The character was a meta (no silly scream collar), she could fight, and she was sassy. Aside from all of the character moments, the fact that she not only didn’t die in the episode, but shes now locked away in the Meta-Prison gives fans some hope that we will see this character again.

Wally West – Vigilante 

From the moment the blast hit Wally two episodes ago, I feared that the show was rushing another speedster into the show; but thankfully they didn’t do that. But all of these new changes in Wally’s life has led the young character to decide he wants to be like The Flash, and help the people of the city. All it takes is inspiration to create the spark the hero needs, and when Wally finally does get his speed, it wont be hard to understand why he feels the need to help people.

Zoom

This week gave fans a fantastic moment between Barry and Zoom with Zoom trying to convince Barry that their own personal tragedies make them the same. Clearly the ramblings of a mad man, its hard not to see that there are some striking similarities between the two characters origins (even if the show hadnt already spelled it all out plainly).

 Cisco and Caitlin.. pretending to be bad guys

Its hard not to enjoy the idea of these two characters trying to pretend to be their evil counterparts. While it was a tad goofy once the obvious was realized, it was still a fun moment for these two characters to take part in, along with all of the dialogue that followed.

Henry Allen

It was hard not to fear the worst for Henry from how the last few episodes played out. Henry returns to his son’s life, right as everyone is fearing Zoom’s intentions on killing their loved ones. Couple that with the overly hopeful and loving moments that Barry shared with his father this week, it was hard not to notice the show was setting fans up for a huge heartbreak. The scene itself was masterfully executed, with Zoom declaring it was poetic that he take his father away the same place that Barry lost his mother, by another speedster no less.

While some would argue that this week’s episode of The Flash didn’t quite live up to the hype caused by the closing moments of last week’s episode, the introduction of Black Siren, and the shocking loss of Henry Allen easily overshadow the episodes flaws. With one episode of the season left, it will be interesting to see what Barry will do now that Zoom has crossed the line.

Taylor Landine

Taylor Landine

Taylor Landine is a Veteran to online entertainment journalism who has been covering television and movies since 2005. Follow him on twitter via @taylorlandine