Previously on The Flash.... Barry Allen, the fastest man alive, gave up on the idea of dating Iris West, his childhood sweetheart, and started getting on with his life. This of course guaranteed Iris would instantly become needy and jealous, furthering the mystery of why Barry has so many FEELS for her. Also, we got confirmation of a sort that Harrison Wells is in fact the Reverse Flash, which was a huge reveal but only left this recapper even more confused.

Okay, the showrunners are clearly the biggest Spartacus nerds on the planet and have roles in mind for every single one of the Spartacus actors. This is in no way a bad thing. Especially if it means my dreams of seeing Peter Mensah play Martian Manhunter may one day be realized.

Anyway, we start off the episode with a flashback, because the writers live for flashbacks, of the night of the particle accelerator explosion. At that moment the Marden brothers were narrowly escaping the coppers. And they would have gotten away, too, if the lightning hadn't ripped their plane apart and turned them into weather controlling bad-asses.

Meanwhile, in the present day, Iris is being horrible to her sweet, understanding and wonderful boyfriend and also to Barry's girlfriend by blatantly marking her territory. Maybe with all this time travel they can go back in time to give Iris her soul back.

There is a break-in at the morgue which requires both a detective and the Flash. Seriously, Barry, why did you think you were needed? Or is this just more about how totally bored you are dating Linda Park?

Well, it turns out there is a need for Barry because the coroner was iced to death which means meta-human hijinx are afoot. But for real, couldn't Spartacus Mark Marden have found out who killed his scruffy, twinky little brother with an internet search?

Anyway, now that he knows Joe did the deed, it's on.

Barry notes that the elder brother's weather powers are a lot more advanced. To which Cisco says:

"He'd have to be a ... Weather Wizard. Been waiting to use that one since week one."

I love you Cisco. Now and forever. Which is why this is an episode that will go down in infamy.

There are storm clouds on the horizon of the love affairs of Barry and Linda as well as Iris and Eddie, all caused completely by Iris and her utter lack of redeeming qualities. Eddie pouts about how she likes Barry better and Linda is awesome and basically totally over it.

Those storm clouds are nothing compared to the one centered over Joe's car, though. In fact, the downpour turns into a killer lightning storm that nearly fries up Joe extra crispy. But Barry is now faster than lightning so Joe's safe.

Captain Singh grounds Joe because he doesn't want to lose another detective. Naturally, that makes Joe grumpy because he's the only one who can stop Marden. He seems to have forgotten it was Barry Allen, CSI, who found the Mardens the last time and it was Barry Allen, the Flash, who stopped the crazy baby brother Marden.

Iris invites Barry to coffee where they talk about how unreasonable everyone is about how cuddly the two of them are. They also discuss some evidence that Iris has that hints that Wells may in fact be totally evil. But Barry always believes the best about people, so he can't accept his mentor may be a psycho killer who feeds people to telepathic monkeys.

But when he asks Cisco and Caitlin, it plants a seed of doubt in Cisco's mind. It's sort of interesting that even though Cisco is very quick to defend Wells, he's just suspicious enough to keep checking. Like how he refused to accept that Wells was involved in Nora Allen's death but then went and checked the blood samples anyway.

Mark Marden shows up at the cop shop for a little more revenge. Joe explains to him that his little brother was a murderous scumbag and Mark totally cops to that. He knows his little bro was all kinds of evil, but hey, you accept that about your family. And you don't let little things like that keep you from getting bloody revenge.

Before Joe can use the new toy Cisco gave to him, Mark goes on the attack. Fortunately for Joe, Singh is also faster than lightning and he saves Joe from getting barbecued—at the cost of getting zapped his own self. Dang it, not cool!

Over at Star Labs, Cisco has come to the conclusion that something is rotten in the state of Central City. Caitlin thinks he's making too much of it and there's no way the guy who knowingly activated a fault particle accelerator would ever do anything bad. But she agrees to keep Wells out of the office so Cisco can do some snooping. This scenario never ends well.

We finally get to meet Singh's fiancé and he's a cutie. IMDB says his name is Rob. It's just so awesome how this show deals with this thing—like it's just no big deal (because it isn't.) I hope to see more of Rob in the future. I even liked him enough to ignore the awkward and clumsy PSA about a gay partner wanting to see his injured fiancé.

Singh, it turns out, is in bad shape. The doctors, who won't share sensitive patient information with people who aren't family give Joe who is not related in any way all the details about how Singh may never walk again.

I would care more, but that I know most of these things are going to be undone by the time travel plot contrivance heading our way. Or at least they had better be.

Which is good, because from here forward things get upsetting.

Cisco recreates the shield thingy that they tried to trap the Reverse Flash in. Near as I can work it out, Wells added a little fakery into the program that made it only seem like they had caught the Reverse Flash so that it would appear that Wells and the Reverse Flash were talking to each other. That leaves Cisco with a lot of conclusions of the Very Bad Sort.

Barry and Iris talk and she once again tries to poison the well with him and Linda. Barry, so very much in the right, point blank asks her who would be right for him. Iris, of course, has no answer. She just wants to keep Barry around as a backup boyfriend.

Joe sallies forth to face off with the super powerful master of weather all on his own because he's apparently developed a death wish. Eddie, though, has his back—whether Joe likes it or not. Of course, the problem is that they're way outclassed and so Joe gets taken prisoner.

Mark Marden isn't content with just killing Joe. He wants to make him watch everyone he knows die first. Calm down, Miss Thing. Leave the wiping out of major population centers to the lunatics in Starling City.

Mark invites Iris down to the waterfront and tells her not to tell anyone. He clearly doesn't know her at all. Before she hung up, she'd already updated her Facebook with the info, texted six friends and written a blog entry about it.

Caitlin Snow has many skills. Lying is not among them. In about three seconds, Wells realizes that she's stalling him and that tells him the jig is up. So rather than try and lie his way out of whatever evidence they're digging up, he abandons the pretense and goes to deal with Cisco.

Never has an empty wheelchair been so terrifying. Never.

These writers have done some truly evil, truly wrenching things to us, the poor fans, but this may have been the worst. Props to both Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavanagh for a scene that will haunt me for a good long time.

Wells reintroduces himself as Eobard Thawne, a distant relative of Eddie's (like from the future) and fills in all the missing pieces. Like how he didn't mean to kill Nora Allen but was instead there to kill baby!Barry and instead wound up trapped here in the past. Now he needs Barry to help him get Back to the Future.

Cisco listens with two very clear realizations on his teary-face: One, the man he has looked up to and thought of as a mentor and a friend is in fact a ruthless, evil, murdering jerk. Two, that evil murdering jerk is totally going to kill him and there is nothing he, Cisco, can do to stop it.

I know the show is going to do the Time Warp to fix all these things. That doesn't make my heart hurt any less for seeing Cisco so utterly terrified and hopeless. And watching Wells/Thawne murder him was just awful.

Isn't this supposed to be the fun show?

Caitlin calls Barry to let him know that they need to revisit the "Harrison Wells for Sainthood" plan they had been working on. But he just doesn't have the time for that because there's a tsunami heading right for Central City and that has to take priority.

Her plan? Run really fast. Okay, well, thanks for that....

Barry tells Iris he didn't want her to find out about his secret like this, but hey, millions of people are going to die, so why not? And with that, he suits up and rushes off to stop the tidal wave. But not before telling her to run for her life—like there was anywhere she could go that would be safe.

So Barry runs. And he runs. And he runs. He runs faster than he ever has before. He runs so fast that he runs right into the beginning of this episode.

And so this whole episode basically never happened. Or at least, the parts with Singh and Cisco never happened because if they did I will be miffed.

That's it for this week. What did y'all think?