'The Flash' recap: Light gets in your eyes

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Tuesday night's episode of The Flash.

Despite the big reveal with Earth-2 Harrison Wells last week, The Flash's fifth episode of the season, "Darkness and Light," actually took a turn for the comedic, with Harrison Wells (Wellternate?) turning out to be a more cocky and brazen version of our deceased Harrison, and Barry going on a literal blind date. The reveal that Dr. Light was Earth-2 Linda Park was a stunner though, and may have gotten a bigger gasp out of me than King Shark last episode. Yes Flash, I miss time travel too, but doppelgangers are just as much fun.

There's something about Harry

In a yellow-tinted flashback, Earth-2 Harrison Wells is introducing tech to detect meta-humans, only for his conference to gets interrupted by a hostile Jay Garrick, who accuses Harrison of hiding the fact that he created the meta-humans himself.

In present-day Earth-1, Harrison is giving Team Flash the lowdown on Zoom in S.T.A.R. Labs, all the while being eyed suspiciously by Cisco and Caitlyn, and managing to uncaringly pronounce all their names wrong. Cisco bristles at Harrison's -- who he calls Harry -- dickish ways, refusing to trust him. But just as they're starting to accept his callous but truthful remarks, Joe walks in and, seeing Harrison, shoots at him. Barry miraculously catches all three bullets in one of the coolest visual effects of the season (the show's budget is really working overtime), and talks Joe down, explaining the whole situation to him.

Meanwhile at the coffeeshop, Patty sneaks in on Barry and Cisco's way too out-in-the-open conversation about Harrison. Patty dubs their killer shark from last week King Shark, and she and Barry awkwardly flirt in front of Cisco right before Cisco gets soundly rejected by the girl at the coffeeshop ... who looks very familiar. But all this cutesy set-up is just filling up time until Cisco getting another Vibe flash where he sees a breacher (which they dubbed the alternate-world metahumans) robbing a bank. Barry speeds to the bank where he meets Dr. Light, a woman who can blind people with her super-light technology (I was kind of vague on this, honestly).

Back at the lab, Harrison is giving a very brusque presentation on Light when Jay storms in and they fume at each other before getting into a philosophy battle -- Harrison wants Barry to stop Light by any means before she can hand him over to Zoom, Jay thinks Barry can reason with her. Team Flash decide to go with Jay's route, and they get on the case.

At last we see the light

Barry goes to confront Dr. Light, almost convincing her to end her vendetta and turn against Zoom. However, when she removes her helmet, Light is revealed to be Earth-2 Linda Park, who Barry instantly recognizes, causing Light to get confused and flee -- but not before blinding Barry.

Back at the lab, the team tries their best to heal Barry, but he'll only get his normal sight back after 6 more hours. Iris arrives at the lab and makes everything with Harrison awkward again, despite the fact that Joe warned her beforehand. She and Barry do some heart-to-heart and she convinces him to go on the date with Patty despite his crippling blindness. This results in the most hilarious Odd Couple routine with Barry stumbling his way through a date with Patty and Cisco whispering in his ear. Despite Cisco and Barry's apparent success fooling Patty, she instantly sees through their sham and calls him out on it -- but it's fine and they kiss anyways. The pair are almost immediately interrupted by a crime scene call at the Central City Citizen newsroom.

Jay and Caitlyn's attempt to stake out Linda Park's workplace in case Light shows up doesn't go well. After an intimate moment between Jay and Caitlyn (THAT WAS FAST), they get attacked by Dr. Light and she strolls into the newsroom to kill Linda Prime and take her place in this world. Thanks to Iris' fast trigger finger and Jay's heroic (but ultimately useless) run into the office, she fails to kill Linda and accidentally kills an attacking editor instead. Barry and Patty arrive at the scene later to find a shaken Linda and a dead body, but also Light's helmet that Iris conveniently shot off.

Good Vibes

Continuing his run of douchebaggery, Harrison scolds Jay for being a coward, gets into a fist fight with him like a man, and reveals to everyone that Cisco is secretly a metahuman. Through Cisco's powers and Harrison's caustic urging, they're able to find out that Light has made her way to the train station and is trying to flee Central City.

Barry quickly makes his way over to Light and tries to stop her, but almost gets knocked down by her light beams. Harrison takes over the mentor role from Jay, telling Barry to create a speed mirage to confuse Light. Barry tries and fails, but Jay encourages him, saying Harrison was right and that Barry will be faster than he'll ever be. With that pep talk, Barry successfully knocks out Light, and the team lock her up in the pipeline.

After the battle, Barry decides that they should plan to lure Zoom in with Light, but Jay is incredulous, saying Barry is not ready to fight Zoom. The rest of the team stand behind Barry, but Jay backs out, not wanting to be responsible for Barry's death -- leaving the lab with the lingering words that Earth-2 Harrison has his own secrets too.

However, the team don't seem too concerned with Harrison's intentions, celebrating their victory at the coffeeshop (and Cisco's date with future Hawkgirl) and finally dubbing Cisco as Vibe. Meanwhile, we seem to have made a tradition of ending the episode with people watching each other creepily from the window -- this time with Harrison staring in at the happy trio. And with the last minute, it all makes sense -- Harrison's blunt nature and sudden resolve to help Team Flash is because of the fact that his daughter is imprisoned by Zoom.

Flash Faves:

• Hawkgirl origin story: It began in the coffeeshop.
• The bullet-catching scene may be my favorite visual effect after King Shark. And it's nice how the show is subtly building up Barry's powers in each episode.
• Grant Gustin doesn't get to do enough physical comedy. His date scene was comedy gold.
• Did Jay just drop a mild Aquaman hint with his "friend" in Atlantis?
• Caitlyn "was just getting used to Jay being part of the team"? When? When he showed up for all of one and a half episodes?
• I doubt that Earth-1 Linda Park will become our Dr. Light, though that would be a nice twist. I'm pretty sure an Arrow episode hinted that a former S.T.A.R. Labs employee, Arthur Light, was well on his way to becoming that villain.
• Ah, I knew Harrison's daughter was too cute to just damsel away the season. Violett Beane is apparently Jesse Quick. More speedsters! Speedster team-up with Jesse, Wally and Jay against Zoom? I can dream, can't I?