The announcement at the end of last year’s “Elseworlds” crossover that the Arrowverse would next come together this fall for an adaptation of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” blew fans’ minds, but it also left us scratching our heads. The event has been heavily teased on The Flash for years, but it’s known to happen in 2024. So, how is the multiversal Crisis now occurring five years earlier? Well, yesterday’s episode of The CW show may have sown the seeds for the answer.
At the end of “Cause and XS,” Nora West-Allen had another rendezvous with her secret partner, Eobard Thawne. Having travelled back to the future to visit the supervillain in his cell, Nora questioned whether the pair’s plan to change history was actually “making it worse.” Reverse-Flash then explains that if she and Team Flash can defeat Cicada and take away his knife, then they’ll succeed in altering the timeline and saving Barry.
Clearly, then, as we’ve suspected for a while, Nora’s real aim in coming to the present is to stop her dad from going missing during the Crisis, as has been foretold in that newspaper from the future since season 1. Of course, Nora wants to fix things so that she has her father around growing up, and it seems that she’s willing to partner up with Barry’s nemesis in order to make that happen.
But past seasons of The Flash have made clear that you shouldn’t ever trust Thawne and no doubt he has an ulterior motive other than just helping the Scarlet Speedster. Nora may be hoping to stop the Crisis from every happening or perhaps at least stop her dad vanishing during it, but instead, it looks like she’ll cause it to come about several years early somehow. If we might make a prediction, we can see the revelation that the Crisis is happening now dropping in the season 5 finale, as the usual tease for what’s to come in the next run.
Changing the timeline in such a way could have major repercussions for Nora herself, too. We’re not totally sure of her age, but she could be written out of the timeline if Barry goes missing in 2019 instead of 2024. Will XS cease to exist because of her own actions? We’ll have to keep watching The Flash to find out.
