The central theme of this week’s episode was honesty. Each storyline was portraying how hard it is, telling the truth, but also how important it is.

Spoilers below

Barry (Grant Gustin) has been trying to figure out how to tell his friends that he has to die to protect them. How do you look your family in the eye and tell them you have to die and they can’t save you?

Last week Barry and Iris (Candice Patton) decided they would tell them about Infiniti Crisis and the Monitor, but not that Barry was going to die. That didn’t go over too well, especially with Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker). She had a little panic attack worrying she wasn’t going to live long enough to discover what her favorite ice cream flavor is.

Caitlin gave her the chance to have a life, and now she finds out that she may die in seven weeks. That’s not easy to hear, but it’s also not the whole truth.

Eventually, Frost picked up on the fact that Barry wasn’t going to survive the crisis because when he spoke of after, he wasn’t in the picture.

That may have been the tipping point of him coming clean to his team, but it wasn’t the only thing that changed his mind.

Barry worked a lot with Dr. Rosso (Sendhil Ramamurthy) this episode. The doctor was their first suspect for stealing the dark matter, of course, because of him trying to get Caty do give him some from Star Labs. It wasn’t him, but this gave Barry a perfect chance to test him, and he failed, trying to take the dark matter.

Rosso, being caught red-handed, led to a compelling scene of him seeing the same look of acceptance on Barry’s face as he did his mother. He couldn’t understand why his mom and Barry would choose walking towards death instead of fighting. I don’t think Rosso thought Barry was completely honest with himself, but Barry insisted that it was the right thing to do.

Then Rosso mentioned how hard that conversation would have with his friends. It was the anguish on his face that showed Barry thought maybe he should have told them.

If that revelation wasn’t enough, Iris also had her an encounter with hiding the truth. Iris had all the right reasons for keeping Allegra (Kayla Compton) in the dark about the new Wells, but in the process, she had forgotten the fundamentals of being a journalist is to report the truth. Allegra reminded her of that duty.

From the beginning, I believed Iris and Barry should tell Team Flash the truth. One so the team could find a way to save him and two because they deserved the truth.

I still believe that Team Flash will find a way to save Barry. The show isn’t ending (this season anyway), and we will need our title hero.

Separate from Iris and Barry’s storylines, we met Ralph’s (Hartley Sawyer) mom and learned she’s been lying to him for most of his life.

It gave us a new perspective on our favorite detective. His mom has been telling him that all of her boyfriends died, instead of she just broke up with them. She hated seeing her son hurt when his father walked out that she didn’t want to put him through that again, and believed he was okay.

He, of course, was being strong for her but was upset every time. No wonder Ralph had little sense of family before being accepted into Team Flash. He’s used to people leaving or dying (well, so he thought).

We finally have our Wells (Tom Cavanagh) for the season! He seems like an Indiana Jones type. I’m not sure what part he will play on the team, but looking forward to getting to know him better and seeing how he integrates into Team Flash.

How great was that scene with Wells and Cisco (Carlos Valdes)?! We’re skipping all the steps, and Cisco is just telling this Wells how it is – they will bond. Scenes between these two characters have always been excellent. I can’t wait to see more this season!