Catching Up: The Flash Episode 201, "The Man Who Saved Central City"

So last night was the hotly anticipated return of CW's hit series, THE FLASH, now entering its second season. When we open, we are well past the cliffhanger ending of season one, which saw Central City, the Earth, and everything else about to be sucked into a singularity caused by the wormhole opened by the Reverse-Flash. In fact, Central City is preparing a "Flash Day" to present their hero the key to the city for having saved them.

So why doesn't Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) want to attend, and why is he moping around, pushing away all his friends and rebuilding Central City building-by-building every night?

Well, it turns out Barry doesn't think he saved Central City -- that it was accomplished by someone else, at a great sacrifice. And when we flash back to the events to see them play out, he's partly right. He did get help, and that help came with (apparently) tragic losses.

So now Barry works solo out of S.T.A.R. Labs. Cisco (Carlos Valdes) is a scientific advisor assigned to Joe West's (Jesse L. Martin) anti-metahuman task force. Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) has taken a job for Dr. Tina McGee at Mercury Labs. And Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh)...

...well, Harrison Wells may be dead and gone, but he's left one more surprise for Barry Allen. But we'll talk about that later.

The plot of this episode involves one Al Rothstein (Adam Copeland, aka Edge), who's initial appearance is as a body at a crime scene, having been strangled by someone -- or something -- very large and very powerful. We soon learn, at the Flash Day events, that this strangler was... Al Rothstein. But this Al Rothstein is strong, and when he absorbs nearby radiation, he gets stronger -- and bigger! And he's out to kill The Flash for reasons we learn at the climax of this plot.

So the big takeaways from this episode are:

• Barry is given the title to S.T.A.R. Labs via Harrison Wells' living trust
• There's a homecoming and a going away
• One of the Team Flash members is presumed dead
• Jay Garrick

Yes, that's right. Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears) has been lurking around, and ultimately makes his presence known, setting the stage for next week's episode, "Flash of Two Worlds," which promises to really get things moving! We'll be there!

(Deducting a half-point for making me think about the Flash Signal and why it's image wasn't reversed to make it project correctly.)