At the end of last season, Flash managed to go back in time, see himself fighting Reverse Flash, have the other version of himself tell him not to complete the save of his mom, come back to regular time, and for Reverse Flash to get killed by Eddie. Just in time for a singularity to open above the city making it look like the world was ending. Which it would have, but then there’d be no new season.

The new season opens six months later, Flash is basically working alone, having shut out everyone else. Through flashback you find out that he ran up into the singularity, was temporarily able to contain it by — hey, no guessing — running really fast, but not able to close it. Firestorm did however, but with Ronnie disappearing in the subsequent blast. Flash opened the portal, so he feels responsible for Ronnie, Eddie and a host of other people who got killed that day, so he basically is doing everything on his own now.

Cisco works with the meta-human task force at the police station, Caitlyn is off doing regular science, everyone’s worried about the Flash’s mental state. Then a meta human shows up who looks like a corpse, is radio-active almost, and incredibly strong. Eventually, the Band gets back together, they stop Atom Smasher, and learn that somebody sent him to kill the Flash — Zoom.

The Ep is okay, but the false angst of “oh, am I responsible for all these deaths” that is resolved in 44 minutes is pretty tiresome. Berlanti does it in every one of the Berlanti empire’s shows (like Arrow), or worse, they drag it out like a whining kid. If there’s really such trauma and angst, how about showing some growth from the change? Or kick it to the curb and insert trauma cuz they didn’t learn something?

Nevertheless, the storyline was interesting, with a great last 30 seconds where they say, “Hey, nobody can get in here, all new security”, just before a new guy walks in and says hello. Oh, and he knows Zoom.