So much has changed after Crisis that Barry can’t even find the cemetery where his parents are buried. Where their graves were is now a highway overpass, and Barry feels lost, not knowing where they are.
His search is interrupted by a meta alert. Hartley Rathaway is robbing a jewelry store in town (why do petty meta thieves even bother trying to pull off anything when they know Team Flash is around?) and Flash speeds off to stop him.
But it’s Kamilla and Chester on the coms, another unfamiliar change that throws Barry off.
Hartley has changed too, and Barry underestimates him, allowing him to escape. Barry regroups at STAR Labs and tries to adjust his mobile Gideon unit to account for all the changes since Crisis to make him better prepared.
Chester, who idolizes Flash and is naturally a really enthusiastic guy, tries to help but is sent away by Barry. He’s had enough changes for today.
Kamilla understands Barry’s frustration trying to adjust to changes, but she reminds him that Chester is just trying to help. Unfortunately, Chester’s adjustment to the mobile Gideon unit is what allows Grodd to hold Barry’s consciousness prisoner.
Barry wakes up in a cage and has no idea how he got there. At first, he appears to be in the past, coming face to face with a pre-meta Eobard Thawne and Caitlin.
They can’t understand him, and Caitlin encourages him to use his signs. When Barry looks at his reflection in a bowl of water, he discovers that he’s Gorilla Grodd.
Can Grodd be trusted? Gorilla Grodd hijacked Barry’s mind on The Flash.
But it’s all a construct of Grodd’s mind. He speaks to Barry through Thawne and Caitlin. Grodd is imprisoned at ARGUS with a neural dampener to restrict his mental powers.
For a time, he reduced back to a primitive animal, and without the ego of his intellect, he was able to see how wrong he was to hurt people the way he did.
Grodd has changed, and he needs Barry’s help.
Grodd asks Flash to help him escape his mental prison, but a powerful gatekeeper guards the exit. Barry is sick of change and would maybe rather Grodd stay the same than accept that he’s changed.
He’s naturally suspicious, and when he tricks Grodd into letting him out of the cage, he knocks Grodd out and speeds to the gate alone.
Unfortunately, Grodd forgot to mention that the gatekeeper is Solovar. Now to escape himself, Barry has to team up with Grodd to take down Solovar before the world of his mental construct crumbles.
Back at STAR Labs, Team Flash finds Barry’s unconscious body and works out what’s happening to him. Chester realizes it was his mistake that caused the problem in the first place and put Flash at risk.
He feels terrible, but Frost tells him that it’s a mistake that every member of the team has made. It’s like a right of passage around here, and now it’s his job to help fix it.
They rig up a way to communicate with Barry, and he explains what’s going on. Barry and Grodd team up and merge their minds so they can use their combined powers to defeat Solovar.
The only other problem is that they need to separate down to the millisecond before they exit the gate, or their minds will merge forever.
Chester adjusts the mobile Gideon unit to calculate it perfectly. Grodd/Flash defeat Solovar and run home safely. Barry apologizes to Chester for being hard on him and welcomes him to the team while Frost contacts ARGUS to discuss Grodd’s rehabilitation.
At some point, while this all was happening, Chester found the graves of Barry’s parents for him.
Does Sherloque’s warning mean the return of a favorite villain on The Flash?
Meanwhile, Nash is still having hallucinations of other Wellses. First, it was Harry; now it’s Sherloque. He asks for Allegra’s help powering up a device he thinks will trap these spectres, but it’s a bust.
In the process, Allegra discovers that Nash’s attachment to her is because of his paternal relationship with her doppelganger, and she feels cheap and betrayed. He doesn’t even like her for herself.
Nash turns to Frost for advice like always, and she’s known all along what his deal was. She tells him to talk to her and be honest.
Before he can approach her, though, he’s confronted in the hallway by a vision of Sherloque, whose eyes turn Reverse-Flash red and warns him that “he’s coming.” Uh oh!
So while this week may not have been the return of the multiverse we thought it might be, it looks like something is coming.
Elsewhere, Mirror Iris isn’t getting anywhere with her Black Hole mission because it’s turned into a full-scale RICO investigation that Joe can’t involve her with.
Iris and Eva try to figure out how to escape the Mirrorverse, but Eva reveals that the machine she built that could help them escape is deadly to her.
Unsurprisingly, it’s all a ruse to buy more time. Eva might not even be Eva. The display she made left Iris with burned arms, which manifested on Mirror Iris, so they’re connected in some way.
Eva communicates with Mirror Iris, healing her arms and telling her she bought her more time. Time for what exactly we still don’t know.
Watch The Flash on Tuesdays at 8/7 C on The CW.