After helping to save the multiverse through the Elseworlds crossover event, The Flash needed a few weeks rest. Now that he’s back, Barry kind of gets sidelined on his own show.

Picking up where the last episode before the crossover left off, Nora returns to 2049 to visit Eobard Thawne in prison. (Why Thawne continues to wear his Harrison Wells disguise is never addressed. Presumably, actor Matt Letscher wasn’t available.) This appears to be something that Nora did regularly before traveling back in time to visit her father. In fact, it was Thawne who taught her about time travel. She quizzed him all about her father and even developed a bond with the evil speedster, believing him reformed. Thawne calls himself a broken man and says that he no longer hates Barry. However, after learning that he murdered her grandmother, Nora feels that she can no longer trust Thawne, and thinks he may have been lying to her all along. These themes of redemption and trust will color her behavior through the rest of the episode.

Back in 2019, Cicada has gone off-the-grid again. Barry is supposed to testify in court against Joss Mardon, the meta-human known as Weather Witch, but gets called away on Flash duties when a hot chick wielding meta-tech (Gabrielle Walsh) steals a Lamborghini and leads the police on a high-speed chase. Barry almost catches her, but gets repelled back as soon as he touches the car, and suddenly finds that he can’t stop his body from vibrating, which could result in him phasing right through the ground.

Cisco’s solution for this is to drop Barry into a containment cell in the Pipeline that will dampen his powers. That should keep him safe until the effects of his collision wear off in about 24 hours. Unfortunately, that means he’s going to miss his court date. Nora, who is officially on staff at the CCPD as his assistant, volunteers to fill in for him, but loses her cool on the witness stand and rants about how villains can never be trusted and should never be forgiven, even as Cecille has a change of heart and goes easy on Mardon (because she can psychically sense that the woman feels remorse for her crime).

While Mardon is being transported to prison, the Lambo girl jacks the police van and busts her out. That Mardon didn’t actually want to escape doesn’t concern her. She brings Joss to her secret base and pitches her on the idea of being the founding members of a new supervillain group she’s calling the “Young Rogues.” She needs Mardon’s help to break into an A.R.G.U.S. facility and steal something very powerful.

Cisco IDs the new villain as Raya Van Zandt, a former Air Force pilot (call sign: “Silver Ghost”) who was dishonorably discharged and has somehow come into possession of meta-tech that allows her to control any vehicle.

Joss slips away and tries to surrender to Nora, asking her to vouch for her to the police that she gave herself up voluntarily and was kidnapped against her will, but Nora doesn’t believe her and dumps Joss off at the CCPD as if she’d captured her. Later, however, Nora has a heart-to-heart with her dad and begins to feel that she was too hasty in writing Joss off.

Silver Ghost hasn’t given up her plan. She busts Joss out of jail again, and this time Joss is more amenable to joining forces. If everybody’s going to believe she’s a villain, she might as well be a villain. Silver Ghost hands over her weather staff, which she’d stolen from police lockup.

Together, the two ladies break into an A.R.G.U.S. center and steal a very expensive prototype stealth car (which looks like a tricked-out classic Chevy Nova) fresh off the Wayne Tech assembly line. From an amusing emoji-laden touchscreen control panel, the vehicle can fire rockets, phase through walls, and even turn invisible.

Nora and Killer Frost try to capture Joss and Silver Ghost, to no avail. The fancy car eludes them. With Iris’ help, Nora broadcasts a radio transmission and makes an appeal to Joss, apologizing for misjudging her. It works, and Joss lays down a sheet of ice that causes the car to crash before Silver Ghost can hit Nora with it. The two ladies are gone when Nora and Killer Frost get to the car, but Nora is confident that she got through to Joss.

When his 24 hours are up, Barry is released from the Pipeline, now fully in control of his body again.

Nora returns to 2049 and tells Thawne that she still doesn’t trust him, but is willing to give him a chance to prove that he’s good now. Meanwhile, in the present, Sherloque (who’s become fixated on decrypting Nora’s secret coded language) enters the Time Vault room and asks Gideon to give him any files on Nora, only to be told that Nora herself deleted all those files. This makes him very suspicious of the girl.

A Cure for What Ails Ya

Cisco hasn’t been able to use his Vibe powers since coming in contact with Cicada’s dagger, and has started to feel that he’d rather not be a superhero after all. When Caitlin removes the last dark matter-infused dagger shards from his hands, Cisco analyzes them and determines that they could be used as the basis for an anti-meta-human cure that will turn any meta back into a regular human. Cisco is really excited about this discovery, but Caitlin is wary of it. If she were “cured,” she’d lose Killer Frost.

As Cisco makes some progress on his cure, Killer Frost stops the experiment. She (for obvious reasons) doesn’t want him to go through with it either.

Eventually, they come to a compromise. Caitlin brings Cisco to her father’s laboratory in the Arctic and offers to help his research, so long as he promises that they will never force their cure on anyone who doesn’t want it. Cisco agrees.

Episode Verdict

For an episode of The Flash, this week is pretty light on actual Flash action, instead focusing mostly on the female cast. In some ways, that’s refreshing, but overall this is a middle-of-the-road entry, neither one of the show’s best episodes nor one of the worst. Silver Ghost is a decent enough meta-human foe, but all of Nora’s angst and trust issues are much less interesting.

Perhaps the best bit in the episode is a crossover gag when Barry, stuck nothing else to do sitting in his cell, reads a copy of the pulp novel Mick Rory has been writing on Legends of Tomorrow and really gets into it.