Trials by Fire

''“My name is Elizabeth Mendel and all my life, I have been perceived as nothing more than a common troublemaker, a good for nothing criminal, a selfish risk-taker. So how exactly will my life play out? There's only one way to find out...”''


 * ~Elizabeth's opening monologue

Trials by Fire is the first episode of Trial of the Elements, and its pilot episode. It premiered on February 18, 2016.

Synopsis
Elizabeth Mendel was just your average girl. she had a steady job, modest apartment, good friends, and an adventurous lifestyle. but when is shot left for dead one night, her world turned upside-down as not only loses the love of life in accident, unborn child well. after waking up from coma nine months, gains mysterious powers tasked to help new friend, Barry Allen, take out meta-human who has more connection than anyone realizes.

Plot
In Central City, Elizabeth skates down to S.T.A.R. Labs, her place of employment, passing by the bank where detectives and CSI are working to solve a case dealing with the Mardon brothers. She takes a pit stop at C.C. Jitters, where runs into Iris West and Gracie Vanderbilt and picks up her friends' orders. When she gets to the labs, she runs into her fellow employees: Cisco Ramon, Hartley Rathaway, Caitlin Snow, Ronnie Raymond, and their boss, Harrison Wells. After defending Hartley and preventing him from being fired, Elizabeth heads on home early, because Wells worries about her pregnancy.

When she leaves, she runs into her boyfriend, Mark Mardon, who invites her to run away with him and his brother after the latter robbed a bank that morning. Elizabeth says she'd consider it, but when she receives a call from her best friend/roommate, Cisco, she has second thoughts and confronts the Mardon brothers about the situation at their farm. After Mark chooses his brother over her, he leaves to start the plane. His brother, Clyde, shoots her and believes she's dead, and then the particle accelerator that S.T.A.R. Labs has been working on, malfunctions, causing an explosion of negative energies throughout Central City.

Nine months later, Elizabeth awakens from her coma at the labs and finds out to her horror that both her baby and the Mardon brothers died that night. She later meets Barry Allen, who was also in a coma for the same amount of the time at the labs. After Barry reveals that he can run at incredible speeds and that there are others like him with powers, called meta-humans, Elizabeth finds out she can control fire. After finding out her attempted murderer survived his plane crash and becomes a meta-human, Elizabeth reluctantly agrees to work with Wells with the help of Hartley's new suit to get revenge on Clyde. When she arrives at the farm and sees Clyde facing off against Barry wearing a similar suit to hers, she could not bring herself to kill him after a gun is pointed at her face again.

The next day, Elizabeth questions why Barry was there and Wells reveals that he needs Barry to learn how to go faster and needs her help to do it, refusing to reveal why at the time. The end of the episode shows Wells conversing with Hartley about how Barry's trials have only started and that, through flashback, he was working with Elizabeth's father to give her meta-human blood which gave her her fire powers, showing containers for 'Project Dragon' which most likely contain more blood from deceased meta-humans.

Differences from City of Heroes/Pilot

 * Hartley Rathaway is not featured, however, he was originally planned as revealed by the original script.
 * The flashbacks involving a young Barry and his mother's murder are not featured, but they are mentioned.
 * The scene where Barry is struck by lightning with Gracie not too far from him is not featured. An alternate version of this scene can be seen in the series: "Saving Grace".
 * Eddie Thawne is not seen nor mentioned, neither is the Iris/Eddie subplot.
 * The scene where Elizabeth obtains her suit from Hartley and Wells is exactly mirrored from the scene where Barry gets his suit from Cisco and Caitlin.
 * The ending is changed, however it is still shown in this episode that Harrison Wells can walk.

Trivia/References

 * Barry tests his newly found super-speed at an abandoned Ferris Air Testing Facility site. In the DC comics, Ferris Air employs test pilot Hal Jordan, better known as Green Lantern, who is also one of Barry's closest superhero friends.
 * The cage in S.T.A.R. Labs is labelled "Grodd", a reference to DC comics supervillain and Flash enemy, Gorilla Grodd.
 * When Elizabeth enters S.T.A.R. Labs and almost runs into Cisco, he calls her 'Sonic' which is most likely a reference to the speedy video game character, Sonic the Hedgehog.
 * Being best friends with Cisco, Paco the kitten is most likely a reference to the original Vibe, "Francisco "Paco" Ramon who the character of Cisco is based on.
 * Elizabeth's pregnancy has two references:
 * In the New 52 comics, Mark Mardon has a son named Josh Jackam who is killed fairly young by Kid Zoom.
 * During one of the original comic crossovers with DC, Elizabeth has a child as a product of rape by Eobard Thawne who becomes the 'King Drakonian of Time' in the future.
 * The title is a reference to the process of 'Trial by ordeal' where someone's innocence or guilt is determined by a painful task. Elizabeth wishes to use pain to bring her baby's killer to justice.
 * The blood that was injected into Elizabeth at the end of the episode during a flashback is labeled 'Project Dragon'. This is a reference to an arc in the New 52 Draconia comic, where Elizabeth has to fight her clone, a product of that version of 'Project Dragon'.