The Flash must travel a year back in time in order to seek out the help of Eobard Thawne, who at the time was pretending to be Harrison Wells, unbeknownst to the Flash team at STAR Labs. Barry Allen needs to get faster to achieve his eventual goal of defeating Zoom, but will Thawne help him or kill him?

Warning: Spoilers for The Flash #217, "Flash Back," are ahead.

5. The Flash has to Travel Back in Time, on Purpose

In the present, Allen has plateaued with his speed, and he thinks the only person that can help him is someone who truly understands the Speed Force: Eobard Thawne. Unfortunately, Thawne is dead, so Allen has to travel back in time to seek his help. Allen has travelled back in time before, but he's still new to the whole idea of using his speed to manipulate himself through time.

4. A New, Deadly Force Appears

While travelling back in time, something passes Barry. Fans of The Flash comic book series may think it's the Black Flash, who is a symbol of death for speedsters. Thawne eventually explains what these creatures are and their purpose: "[a] Time Wraith follows someone who travels through time and doesn't know what they're doing."

3. Thawne Confronts Allen

Allen tries his best not to give away he's from the future, by getting his past self out of the way and not letting his companions know what's coming down the line. However, Thawne is extremely intelligent and knows something is wrong, so he knocks Allen out and handcuffs him. Thawne eventually gets the information he needs from Allen and is about to kill him; however. Allen says there's a hidden letter which he gave to his past self and if Thawne kills him, Thawne's ultimate plan in that future will never happen. From here, Thawne is game to help Barry.

2. There are Other Speedsters

From the inception of this series, viewers have seen numerous characters that have tapped into the Speed Force: The Flash, Reverse Flash, Jay Garrick, Zoom, and even the woman from episode 16 that used the Velocity 9 serum to gain super-powers. While Thawne and Allen are talking, he mentions in passing that there are other speedsters, aside from Allen and himself. Who are these other metahumans? We can assume one of speed force users that Thawne is speaking of is Wally West, since he's already been introduced on the show. However, does that mean Thawne knows about Zoom or Jay Garrick or are there even more super-fast humans we have yet to learn about?

1. Pied Piper is on the STAR Labs Team

One of Barry's other goals during his mission to get faster was to not alter time Obviously, Barry's actions changed the past, for better or worse. The Flash team enlisted Pied Piper's help to stop the Time Wraith. Piper was one of Flash's Rogues and ended up getting locked away at STAR Labs. However, in this new timeline, Piper is the only way that the team can get rid of the Time Wraith. Flash gets the Time Wraith to follow him to the present, and in that time, Piper developed a weapon to destroy the creature. After all is said and done, Piper is now an acquaintance to the team and no longer a criminal.

Extra Development: Zoom is Hunter Zolomon

During the previews for next week's episode, it's revealed that Hunter Zolomon is Zoom, which could mean that the Jay Garrick they know, who may be dead, isn't Zoom. Earth-1 Jay Garrick is named Hunter Zolomon, which was revealed much earlier in the season. This doesn't answer everything, but it does give a bit more clarity to the story and a stronger connection to the comic book.

When Barry Allen messes with time, everything changes. Aside from Pied Piper now being a good guy, there are some other major things to think about. Eobard Thawne was supposedly defeated again, but did it go all the same way the audience saw in season one or just the way Thawne wanted everyone to see? Is he still out there? Allen doesn't know because he wasn't actually there to experience it.

The episode brings in few concepts from the comics books into the show. Aside from the idea that there are more than the few speeders the audience can currently see, the Time Wraiths, which resemble Black Flash and the current look of the Black Racer, enter the episode. Allen wants to get faster to be able to defeat Zoom, but as he does this, he keeps digging a deeper and deeper hole, creating problems all around him. Now, Allen has these creatures after him, and his world just got a whole lot bigger. It's getting to the point where he won't be able to do this all on his own.

I really didn't want Flash to start messing with time travel so soon. None of the time travel plot stuff is interesting.

So can Barry time travel on his own or does he need some kind of device

@lurkero: He shouldn't be messing with the timeline at all.

This is also worth discussing. Especcially parts with "I don't" and "You can't lock up the darkness".

Pretty sweet episode. I wonder if a time Wraith has something to do with Zoom?

@nightfang3: He'll never learn until something bad actually happens and it will. Barry is incredibly selfish.

"2 There are other speedsters"

And so far they're all faster than Barry. The 3rd fastest man alive.

@zackisme said:

I would go with dumb and forgetful.

Well he technicality is the fastest natural speeder of the 21 century sense Zoom and Trajectory use Velocity 9 and Eobard Thawne is from the future.

And he is technically fastest man alive since Zoom is from another world and Trajectory with Eobard are presumely dead.

That's true unless Zoom is Earth-1's Hunter Zolomon.

"I'm Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive in the 21st century and doesn't do drugs."

That would still be a better opening line then what arrow has ended up with after three seasons.

You're right on both counts that it's not even funny.

Aaaand we have another break.

Finally I notice the difference between Eobard Wells and Earth Two Wells

Great episode, terrible that it's back on break.

@rubear: Technically schmecnically. He's still not the fastest.

Another excellent episode. To bad we have to wait until the 19th for the next one.

OH MY GOSH THIS SHOW IS SO AMAZING.

From the looks of the next episode, Zoom and Barry battle again and Barry actually beats Zoom via the tachyon thingy or does Zoom let Barry beat him? In any case, Barry takes Zoom someplace and interrogates him and somehow the poop hits the fan and Zoom get loose. Just a great big fat guess. What do you all think?

what with all the breaks between shows now? This is so annoying.

When Barry opened the digital code toward the end of the episode I saw Johnny Quick's numeric phrase in the middle of all the digital displays.

More speedsters are hinted at, which makes me think that the final battle against Zoom will need Wally West, Jesse Quick (she was injected with Velocity 9), Barry, and hopefully the real Jay Garrick (I'm still holding out hope that he's not dead-dead) to work together...

I wonder of they'll touch on RF's relationship with Jay. He recognized his helmet at the end of Season I, it's be interesting to know how. Also Wells disguised RF = Favorite on screen super villain.

Time Wraith

Look carefully, it's wearing tattered pieces of a costume. The time wraith may or may not be the Black Flash but whatever it is, it was probably once a speedster. It can move as fast as Barry, it could travel through time and it wears the remains of a costume.

The entire series is moving at sort of break-neck speed (no pun intended) to keep up with non-comic book reading fans who want development more and more and don't have patience.

It's why we essentially rushed through the second appearance of Grodd, why every Rogue only takes one episode to beat and why they sometimes have cross-overs, so that more stuff happens in a finite amount of time.

I had hoped when Reverse Flash was beaten we'd see the rise of Grodd and Flash's Rogues as the next biggest threats since in the comics when Flash wasn't fighting Reverse he was almost always fighting Grodd or the Rogues but they basically seem to jump from Speedster enemy to Speedster enemy.

Don't even get me started on how useless that Supergirl crossover was

That time vault scene with Barry and Thawne was one of the best scenes of the series. I also think they will introduce a time wraith again but as the Black Flash next time.

After the previous episode they really should've changed the intro.

'My name is Barry Allen and I am not the fastest man alive, if I were transgender I wouldn't even be the fastest girl.'

@doc-holiday: When he is running through time and comes across the wraith for the first time it looks even more like it's wearing a suit similar to Barry but with part of the face torn off.

Yeah, I was wondering if possibly the Time Wraith (assuming it's not Black Flash) is in fact Barry. The result of a possible time or dimension where Barry ran so many times between times and universes that it started to have an effect so to stop others from making the same mistake, he tries to stop them.

@doc-holiday: That seems like a good guess, but I would assume that Barry would be more effective if he just told people to stop traveling through time and dimensions so carelessly.

My theory is that something happened to Barry and so now only a portion of his brain functions; this is going on the idea that the Time Wraith is Barry. Wells refers to Time Wraiths but it's never specified whether that means multiple instances and no one sighting variations or similarities between wraiths or multiple wraiths.

Going on the assumption that he meant multiple instances of seeing a singular wraith then it's possible Barry or even another speedster became the wraith after chronic misuse of their ability to time travel.

This is all just conjecture at best of course going off of what little info we have.

The thing I don't love about all this time travel is that they're not using the Time-Treadmill. I mean they already have the treadmill.

I wonder why they chose to make the Pied Piper a good guy now? I thought he was one of the best villains they had.

I also wonder if Flash will ever have to deal with a Time Master (or is it time Lord) as he continues to mess with time travel. I feel like Rip Hunter must know how to deal with Time Wraiths.

Wow The Flash screwed up Time in a big way this time. It's funny because now any number of plot twits can happen because we don't know what happened on the modified timeline. If Eddie is dead, then Eobard Thawne must be dead (but he might have some contegiencies and he might have looked through Barry's lie).

I can't believe that there is another 3 weeks break, The CW has to get it together before it kills completely this shows momentum.

Zoom>>Trejactory>>Reverse Flash(Season 1)>>Barry>>Reverse Flash(Season 2)

I'm not even a fan but this series butchers everything Flash related. I don't understand how fans aren't ripping it apart. The writing is some of the worst formularic chick flick level of TV writing I have had to endure recently, it drives me nuts how idiotic it is. And here we have another episode filled with nonsense, pseudo science attached to super powers that is pulled out of the ass and a story completely irrelevant.

Also another great example of this nonsense writing, somehow they assume Jay and Zoom are the same people even though Jay was on Earth 1 the entire time trying to fix the breach WHILE being Zoom on Earth 2. Sure Reverse Flash could run so fast imposing as two people, dressing and undressing, while making no sign of moving because it's convenient for the plot (but then never reaches comparable speed when he fights)... But Zoom doing that AND running through a goddamn dimensional rift also? Sound logic there people. But considering the quality of the show, I guess it's logical. But hey it's the same series that has a character walk in front of the danger zone for no reason to do a victory pose, just to get hand stabbed to death. Wouldn't have worked any other way.

We don't know how the Reverse Flash from Season 1 compares to Zoom, He stomped Barry at the end of season one easily and at the time that Zoom beat Barry we know that his limit hadn't change since Season 1.

That creators already confirmed that Zoom was faster tha Reverse Flash at the comic con.

Ah ok. But we don't know if Trayectory is faster than him.

I'm curious, please tell me how you would do it much better with a small tv level budget? The reasonwhy comic fans aren't "ripping it apart" is because Flash is one of the best if not the best superhero tv show around right now. Even though it has it's flaws it still manages to capture the essence of what/who the Flash is. That's the reason it's held in such high regards and has a 98% rating on IMDB. Can it get a little camy? Yes. Does it get formulaic at times? Yes. But so do the comics