Team Flash Made A Discovery About The Thinker That Should Put Them A Step Ahead

Despite temporarily losing the Flash and gaining an inexperienced speedster Iris, Team Flash took a few crucial steps forward in their quest to defeat DeVoe in "Run, Iris, Run." Most importantly, it looks like they might have tracked down the last three bus metas. After running into bus meta Matthew (aka Melting Point), Harry tracks down the last two bus metas on The Flash, Edwin Gauss and Janet Petty.

At the beginning of "Run, Iris, Run," Dibny, Harry, and the rest of Team Flash are frustrated. They're no closer to tracking down the last three bus metas, and Ralph is feeling the pressure of being on DeVoe's hit list. But all those fears are temporarily pushed aside when Barry loses his powers during a routine meta check, and Iris gets them. It turns out the meta they thought they were hunting, a man who could blast fire out of his hands, wasn't the one they were looking for. The bus meta they really need to find is Matthew Kim, aka Melting Point, a well-meaning EMT who doesn't quite realize the extent of his ability to take away meta powers and give them to others. Long story short: Melting Point causes his fair share of chaos by giving Iris Barry's speedster powers, but once Iris tracks him down and gets him to reverse the power swap, he quickly turns from distraction to secret weapon.

If Team Flash can get Matthew close to DeVoe without getting him killed, then maybe Matthew can take way his powers, weakening The Thinker, long enough for Barry to defeat him. At the end of the episode, Matthew seems to commit to staying with Team Flash and helping them defeat DeVoe. Even better, he's just one of the great advantages Team Flash has against the Thinker.

While Iris is running around being a speedster (an amazing sight for ever Flash fan), Harry faces his own conundrum: how to outthink DeVoe. Looking up surveillance video from the night of the particle accelerator explosion, Harry figures out that DeVoe got his powers while wearing a kind of thinking cap. More than that, he figures out how to recreate one. But, when asked if he'd help, Cisco not only refuses, he flat out shuts down the idea. As evidenced by DeVoe, the thinking cap can only make an angry man even more angry, a determined man even more determined, and, potentially, an ordinary man turn murderous. Eventually, he relents, and the two create a non-dark matter infused thinking cap that allows Harry to calculate through multiple possibilities and come up with two names for the final bus metas: Janet Petty and Edwin Gauss.

So, who are Janet Petty and Edwin Gauss? Janet Petty doesn't seem to be a name taken from the comics, but Edwin Gauss on the other hand has a long history in the DC Universe. In the comics, Gauss is a scientific genius who builds a suit that givers him the power to hop dimensions, a suit that transforms him into a superhero alter-ego called the Folded Man. While in his suit, Edwin Gauss can transform his body into two dimensions (flat) and four dimensions. Essentially, he's invulnerable to outside forces. Given the fact that he's one of the bus metas, it's likely that The Flash's version of Gauss isn't just a smart guy with a suit, but an actual metahuman. Whether or not his powers will be the same as that of the Folded Man suit remains to be seen. But now that Harry has his thinking cap, it's certain we're about to find out.

As Team Flash closes in on the bus metas, the race to a final showdown with the Thinker is officially on. Hopefully it's not too late for Janet Petty and Edwin Gauss.