‘The Flash’: Candice Patton on How Iris Will React to Nora’s Arrival

The Flash ended its season with one heck of a cliffhanger, and it sounds like one of the show’s main characters won’t quite know how to take it.

Candice Patton, who plays Iris West-Allen on the hit The CW series, was recently asked about the arrival of Nora Allen (Jessica Parker Kennedy), the future version of Iris’ daughter. As she explained during a panel at POPSUGAR’s Play/Ground festival, Iris and Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) will have a pretty understandable reaction to Nora.

“I mean, I think anyone in that position would be like ‘What the…?” Patton explained. “You know. Because it’s weird, her daughter came back from the future, essentially at the same age that [Iris] is currently. So, it’s super trippy. I think both her and Barry are kinda like ‘What the hell?’”

Even as Nora – previously “Mystery Girl” – was popping up on The Flash for the majority of season four, some fans were pretty shocked by her season-ending appearance. And as Patton pointed out, Nora and her “big mistake” introduce a whole slew of new questions that the show has to answer.

“And that also means that, you know, Iris has to be pregnant at some point.” Patton continued. “When does that happen? How does this affect the time continuum, if she’s coming back to the past? Could it fudge up whole storylines? Could Barry and I not be together? I have no idea what’ll happen.”

Executive producer Todd Helbing hinted as much after the season four finale, teasing that Nora’s appearance is going to defy expectations.

“We always like to introduce characters and sort of highlight areas that come from the comics but we don’t want to be beholden exactly to them so we can change the stories as we see fit and tell it for a television show.” Helbing told ComicBook.com. “With [Nora], it’s the time that she comes from and what she did. She makes this sort of big mistake at the end of the episode — you see the concern of what she’s done, and Barry certainly learned his lessons from time travel, so now it’s going to be interesting to put him on the different side of the problem and see how he can help her fix it.”

Are you excited to see how Nora factors into The Flash‘s fifth season? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

The Flash‘s fifth season will debut Tuesdays this fall at 8/7c on The CW.