The Flash - 'Family of Rogues'

"Is that what I think it is?"
"I dunno; what do you think it is?"
"A big blue wobbly thing in space."

It's actually quite surprising that the recent STAR Labs security upgrade didn't reveal the honking great wobbly blue unstable event horizon in the basement. I mean... you'd think.

Professor Stein claims to be recovering from his seizure, but Jay insists on doing most of the work on building a 'speed cannon' to enable objects - and depowered speedsters - to pass through the breach into Earth-2. While he's about this, the rest of Team Flash are asked by Lisa 'Golden Glider' Snart to find her kidnapped brother, someone having jumped them during a heist. Barry finds Snart pulling a job with his father, Lewis Snart. Lisa refuses to believe that he would work with their bullying, abusive monster of a dad, but a headless corpse provides the answer: Lewis has a way to inject a thermite charge into someone's head, and if Leonard won't work with him, he'll blow up Lisa's brain.

Those things on the floor are frozen laser beams. That sigh you hear is science
taking its own life in despair.

To summarise the summary of the summary: Lewis Snart is a colossal dickbag. Also Michael Ironside.

With the tech guy's head asploded, Barry infiltrates Snart's team as a replacement, using his speed to make up for lack of criminal chops when he is dragged along on the actual job. Meanwhile, Cisco works to remove the bomb from Lisa's head without setting it off. Barry catches a bullet (literally, snatching it out of the air in the way that makes physicists sob and nerds yell 'Speed Force' as though that were an answer indistinguishable from magic) but prevents anyone dying, then once Lisa is safe, Snart Jr turns his old dad's heart into a snowball.

'Family of Rogues' shines a bit of a light on Leonard Snart and the past that led him to become a cool, calculating control freak. It also shows that he has a softer side - as well as protecting Lisa, he is clearly outraged at the idea of Lewis's plan just being to gun down the guards - and a hard edge; Lewis's murder is carried out with reptilian sang froid, just in case we thought he was going to look like a good guy anywhere but standing next to Vandal Savage. Lisa also gets a little more depth, with some sincerity behind the femme fatale flirting with Cisco and as much drive to protect her brother as he has to protect her. This is a good episode for Cisco, not just getting to date (well, kiss) the metaphorical Catwoman, but running rings around Snart by unveiling a cold gun tracker and new thermal threading to let Flash's suit shrug off the effects of the gun.

In subplot land, Barry gets digits from Patty in a adawkward scene at the coffee shop. Ball's in your court, Allen. Caitlin also gets a little flirty with Jay, who eventually decides not to return to Earth-2 just yet. Stein has another seizure, and this time his eyes turn white and he shoots blue Firestorm flames before collapsing. Elsewhere, Barry advises Joe to fess up to Iris that he lied about her mother dying, and just about everything else to do with her mother, and it's good advice that is actually followed (woo!) Maybe someone is finally learning that in the Arrowverse, secrets are bad, yo.

And then someone comes out of the breach and - dun dun dah! - it's Harrison Wells!

Meet the new villain; same as the old villain?