‘The Flash’: 7 Things We Want Nora Allen to Bring to Season 5

The Flash wrapped up its fourth season with a pretty major bombshell, with the reveal of the identity of Nora Allen (Jessica Parker Kennedy). After sporadically showing up throughout Season 4 – and causing a lot of intrigue amongst The Flash fans – it was finally revealed that Nora is a speedster from the future, the daughter of Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Iris West (Candice Patton), and that she comes to the past having made “a big mistake”.

While The Flash has certainly dabbled in time travel and such before, Nora’s arrival is promising to have a pretty major impact on the show itself.

“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.” executive produer Todd Helbing told ComicBook.com after the Season 4 finale. “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.”

So, what exactly could Nora’s arrival change within the world of The Flash? Here’s what we’d like to see.

More Comic Details

For longtime fans of The Flash’s DC Comics tenure, the Season 5 trailer held a few pleasant surprises, namely in the form of a certain piece of jewelry. In particular, the trailer showed Nora gifting Barry his Flash ring, which (presumably) holds a spare version of his comic-accurate suit from the future.

Having Nora be most familiar with an older version of Barry – one who appears to have evolved into a superhero more in line with his comic counterpart – could be a bit of a blessing for the show.

Sure, The Flash has given Barry’s suit a few upgrades and Easter eggs here and there, but Nora presents an opportunity to make some more drastic comic-accurate changes right out the gate, without taking years for something to evolve or develop.

New Speedster Abilities

Granted, The Flash started out as an origin story, with Barry Allen essentially learning the schematics of being a speedster as he went along. Especially in early seasons, Barry would uncover new abilities as it suited the plot, whether it be phasing through a truck to detach himself from a bomb, or running so fast that he accidentally traveled back in time.

But even with Nora apparently being a relatively new speedster, it doesn’t seem out of the question that she could have learned some new tips and tricks from the older version of Barry or some other speedster – things that the current version of Barry didn’t even know was possible.

It’d be an interesting sort of role reversal for the series, one that gives Barry a new set of skills without taking a season or so for him to uncover them. And hey, we already have a few possibilities in mind for what Nora could bring from the future.

A New Point of View

On that note, Nora playing a larger role on The Flash could inject a completely-new perspective into how the team deals with things.

As fans have seen over the years, Team Flash is a sort of ever-evolving thing, with its roster of characters occasionally getting a bit of a makeover. But going into Season 5, Team Flash almost feels like more of a family than ever, with even new-ish arrival Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) feeling even more at home within the group.

Having Nora still fit into that family mindset – while bringing a completely different viewpoint with her – could be really interesting when it comes to how the show handles certain problems. Again, Nora may still be a fairly new speedster, but her angle on particular villains of the week or various drama between characters could inject something new into the team dynamic.

More Representation

Coming off of that, Nora bringing her viewpoint into the world of The Flash also adds another positive — more diversity within the Arrowverse itself.

While the Arrowverse shows and Black Lightning regularly get praised for their strives in diverse representation onscreen, the cast and crew often admit that there’s always more that can be done.

“For so long our cast was just two women, [myself and Danielle Panabaker],” Candice Patton said in a recent interview. “My question was always like, ‘When are we getting more women?” We’d go through another season and we’d add a male. And then the next season, we’d add another male. We’re going into Season 5, we just added two women of color [Jessica Parker Kennedy and Danielle Nicolet] on our show as series regulars, bringing our number of female regulars on the show up to four, which is amazing. I mean, if you would have said that to my 14-year-old self, there’s no way I would have believed you.”

Adding Nora – a biracial woman of color who is an established superhero – into the world of The Flash will surely have a meaningful, relatable impact for viewers in some form or fashion. And as Patton’s comments prove, having more female characters join the fold impacts the makeup of the show itself, something that female viewers will certainly be happy about.

Details About the Arrowverse’s Future

Almost from the get-go, The Flash established a pretty unique future for Barry Allen and the rest of the Arrowverse’s heroes. Sure, there have been a slew of various paradoxes and timeline changes since then, but some fans are still pretty curious to see what the Arrowverse’s endgame ultimately looks like.

At the moment, it’s unclear exactly what era or timeline Nora is coming from (or how old she even is). But realistically, the future she is from would have to be at least eighteen to twenty years ahead of the Arrowverse’s current events, which could lead to some major revelations in the process.

Did Barry’s “Crisis” actually end up happening in 2024? Are we any closer to the “Star City 2046” timeline that’s been teased on Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow? And why did Nora seem so mad at Harry Wells (Tom Cavanagh) and Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost (Danielle Panabaker) when they crossed paths in Season 4? Maybe Season 5 will bring some answers.

New Villains

The Flash has certainly gone to some pretty creative lengths with its Villains of the Week, most recently with the whole ordeal with the “Bus Metas”. The number of Flash comic villains that have yet to make their way onscreen could theoretically continue to dwindle, but there’s a chance that Nora’s arrival could help with that.

For one thing, Nora shares a superhero moniker with Jenni Ognats/XS, who is Barry’s granddaughter and a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the comics. Even if it isn’t confirmed within the show that Nora is a member of the Legion, there certainly is an opportunity to bring in some of the group’s various antagonists for Team Flash to fight, without overriding how the Legion is currently being used on Supergirl.

There’s also a chance, depending on how far into the future Nora is from, that certain “legacy” villains could play a role as well. Having a second generation version of a foe that Barry has already fought would be a pretty interesting twist, and would possibly provide an opportunity to present some of those villains in a more comic-accurate way.

(Possibly) Her Brother

While Nora might share a superhero name with Jenni Ognats, it definitely seems like she’s an amalgam of both Jenni and Dawn Allen, Barry and Iris’ daughter from the comics.

With that in mind, we can’t help but wonder — could Nora actually have a twin brother as well?

For the uninitiated, Dawn actually has a twin brother named Don in the comics, and they operate as a speedster duo under the nickname “The Tornado Twins”. While it would be perfectly fine to just have Nora be Barry and Iris’ only child, previous Easter eggs have hinted that the Tornado Twins are most likely on the way.

So, what role could Don Allen have? Is he also a speedster? Does he have something to do with one of Nora’s “big mistakes”? Could he somehow be tied to the emergence of David Hersch/Cicada (Chris Klein)? We don’t know, but we’d love to find out.

—

What do you hope Nora Allen brings to the world of The Flash? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

The fifth season of The Flash will debut on Tuesday, October 9th, at 8/7c on The CW.