The Scarlet Speedster’s eternal nemesis featured in a big way throughout season 5, but so far Reverse-Flash has yet to return in The Flash season 6. This is doubly strange as he teased that he was due to mess with Barry Allen’s life again soon in the season 5 finale and he was fated to play a role in “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” which he ultimately failed to turn up for. Better late than never, though, as the show’s most recent episode promised that Eobard Thawne is on his way to Central City to cause some havoc.
For the past few episodes, Nash Wells has been receiving visions of Earth-2’s Harrison “Harry” Wells. Harry’s survival should be impossible as we’ve been told that Nash is the only Wells still around in the post-Crisis multiverse. However, in episode 13, “Grodd Friended Me,” Nash began seeing other versions of Wells instead of Harry. At the episode’s close, we got our biggest hint at what all of this is to do with. In the corridor outside the Central City Citizen office, Nash is visited by an echo of Sherloque Wells who warns him “he is coming.” In case we don’t know who he’s talking about, Sherloque’s eyes grow red as his form vibrates, the signature move of the Reverse-Flash.
While this tells us what’s at the heart of the Wells mystery, we’re still left none the wiser to the specifics of it. Ok, so Thawne is coming, but why and how is Nash seeing all these others Wellses who no longer exist? Alternatively, given that Sherloque acts like Thawne when he appears to Nash, what if this is Thawne himself and “he is coming” actually refers to an even bigger threat that Reverse-Flash is trying to warn his old enemy and his friends about? If he’s being held a prisoner, perhaps outside of this dimension, that could explain why he missed Crisis.
The Flash continues next month with episode 6×14 “Death of the Speed Force,” featuring the return of Keiynan Lonsdale’s Kid Flash. Seeing as it’s so Speedster-centric, could Thawne reappear there? Time will tell.