The Flash
“The Flash” Season 2, episode 22 saw Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) square off against a familiar face in order to fend off his villain’s meta-human invasion. The CW

The Flash” Season 2 is finally wrapping up and the penultimate episode pulled no punches. With the meta-human invasion in full swing, the newly invigorated hero had to confront a very dark enemy before finally taking on his main villain in episode 22, titled “Incinvible.”

The penultimate episode opened with the army of powered villains fighting the police in Central City. Joe (Jesse L. Martin) is on the front lines and is about to be captured when The Flash (Grant Gustin) reintroduces himself and his speed powers to Earth-1. He’s running all over the city cleaning up the streets when he gets a call from S.T.A.R. Labs informing him that Zoom’s (Teddy Sears) prisoner, Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) has been returned to them. She’s visibly shaken up by her encounter with the villain, but Barry believes it will just take time for her to be OK and for them to defeat Zoom.

Since his incredible return from the speed force last week, the hero has been saying a lot of optimistic things and it starts to rub his team members the wrong way. He’s eventually confronted about it by his father, Henry Allen (John Wesley Shipp), but claims his experience didn’t harm him, it just made him a bit more fearless and confident. However, Zoom eventually calls on him to come to his hideout at the Central City Police Department. When he does, the demonic speedster picks at him, suggesting that the only difference between them is that he looks at anger as power, while The Flash looks at it as dirty. He suggests that he’ll win because while The Flash is busy doing the right thing, he’ll be conquering Earth-1. Out the window, it’s made clear that there’s a building coming down outside, forcing the hero to go deal with it instead of finally stopping the villain.

Buildings have been coming down a lot in Central City lately, with Mercury Labs being demolished the previous night. The culprit is none other than Black Siren (Katie Cassity), who fans may recognize as the Earth-2 doppelganger of “Arrow” character Laurel Lance. This villain is gifted with the same sonic scream technology, but her’s is much stronger and capable of taking down a building.

While trying to convince Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) to stop trying to fight meta-humans on his own, Barry gets a call to go and fight Black Siren. Sadly he’s unprepared for her powers and she not only stuns him, but lays in some pretty good face and body shots too. She’s in the middle of gloating about how she’s better than all the other assassins that Zoom sent before her, when Wally appears out of nowhere and hits her with his car and drives The Flash out of there.

Meanwhile, back at S.T.A.R. Labs, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) and Harry Wells (Tom Cavanagh) have developed a sort of smart bomb for the meta-humans. It was previously discovered that people from Earth-2 vibrate at a different (higher) frequency than those on Earth-1. Using that, they created a noise that would knock out all the invaders in one fell swoop. They just need The Flash to generate enough speed around the city to power it. Just as they’re about to get started, they get an alert that Black Siren is planning to take out an entire apartment high-rise complex. Since they can’t have the hero in two places at once, Cisco develops a plan.

Now that Caitlin is back, he and her pose as their Earth-2 doppelgangers, Killer Frost and Reverb respectively, and distract Black Siren with a fake offer to overtake Zoom. Sadly, she quickly discovers them prompting Cisco to panic and generate a push attack from his hand for the first time. Although he can’t recreate it, it doesn’t matter as the smart-bomb begins to work. All the meta-humans collapse in the street and The Flash is able to round them all up in either Iron Heights prison or S.T.A.R. Labs. After some brief exposition about how they don’t plan to tell the group on “Arrow” about Laurel’s doppelganger, they decide it’s finally time to celebrate.

Claiming that it’s a celebration for Henry’s decision to stay in Central City so that Wally doesn’t figure out Barry’s identity, they host a little family dinner at the Wests’. If it sounds like things were going too well for a second to last episode of the season, that’s because they were. As they’re talking, Cisco has a vision of Earth-2 being completely destroyed and split down the middle. Just as he’s processing it, Zoom, who escaped back to Earth-2 to avoid the smart-bomb, returns and captures Henry. He calls out the Flash and the hero and villain run to the same house that Barry lost his mother. After an exchange of good and evil, Zoom murders Henry in front of the hero’s very eyes in the same spot where he had to watch his mother die.