The Flash season 5 began yesterday with an awesome premiere titled “Nora.” As Barry’s eponymous daughter from the future is now in the present, the opener provided viewers with a lot of hints at what lies ahead for the Scarlet Speedster and the Arrowverse as a whole. The big one, of course, was the extra tease that the franchise is heading towards an adaptation of Crisis on Infinite Earths…eventually.
According to the Reverse-Flash’s holographic newspaper that’s been knocking about the time vault since season 1, the Flash will disappear in a crisis involving red skies in the year 2024. Nora showed her dad another front page from 25 years after that, 2049, which looked back at the event and revealed that the hero never returned. The content of the clipping also confirmed that other heroes were involved with the crisis, including Batwoman.
What’s interesting about this Flash-less version of the future is that it could line up with the trips to the future visited in sister show Legends of Tomorrow. For starters, Legends season 1 featured the episode “Star City 2046,” in which Team Arrow was kaput, Oliver Queen had one arm and the city was ruled over by Deathstroke’s son, Grant Wilson. We assumed this was averted when Vandal Savage was defeated, but what if we were wrong?
More recently, season 3 introduced Zari Tomaz, who hailed from 2042, another dystopian vision of the future in which metahumans had been outlawed. It’s possible that Legends‘ picture of a bleak world in the 2040s is a direct result of the Crisis that clearly took its toll on the heroes, particularly the missing Flash.
Obviously, in real time, the Arrowverse won’t reach the Crisis for another 6 years but, as time travel’s a common device in these shows, some have theorized that the upcoming Elseworlds crossover could deal with it instead. After all, a key figure from the comics – the Monitor – is set to show up in the event, as played by LaMonica Garrett.
I guess we’ll just have to stay tuned to The Flash, every Tuesday on The CW, to find out what happens from here, but you can certainly color us intrigued.
