‘The Flash’: 7 Questions Raised by “What’s Past is Prologue”

Tonight’s episode of The Flash gave fans a lot to take in. Not only did it offer viewers some great references to The CW series’ previous seasons and some clever pop culture Easter Eggs, it was also packed with some major twists that could call into question a lot of what we thought we knew about Nora Allen and her reasons for being in the present.

Of course, questions about Nora and her motives aren’t the only questions presented tonight in “What’s Past is Prologue”. After everything that’s gone down, we aren’t sure what’s next for Team Flash, if Sherloque can be trusted, and there are some things that went down that have us wondering if we really know how time travel works on The Flash. Since it’s a lot to unpack, we’ve broken down our top seven questions about tonight’s episode for you to ponder, but just so you know, there are spoilers for tonight’s 100th episode of The Flash beyond.

What’s next for Team Flash?

Team Flash had a near perfect plan for defeating Cicada. They assembled a device to dampen his dagger and, once his dagger was out of the way they could apprehend him. Sounds easy, but it didn’t go to plan. Cicada was able to summon his dagger despite being breached into space, then escaped without a trace.

So, what’s next? Sure, they got close to capturing Cicada, but now he’s onto them. He’s also apparently off the grid for now and while we’re fairly confident that that won’t last what is certain is that the team is going to have to come up with a better plan as soon as possible if they want to have any hope of capturing “the one who got away”.

Can we trust Sherloque?

Sherloque has been kind of an odd figure since his arrival to help with the hunt for Cicada, but tonight he seemed to take on more of a shady vibe. First, he seemed to be more skeptical of Nora than usual, but then he pilfered her journal and translated some of the text to reveal a message: “the timeline is malleable”. It’s a reveal that seemed to be very interesting to Sherloque.

So, can we trust him? We’re not sure, but with the reveal that Nora is working with Eobard Thawne — Wells version — in the future it’s starting to seem like a good course of action would be to not trust anyone who looks like any version of Harrisone Wells.

Wait…did Thawne just confirm the Tornado Twins?

When Thawne figured out that Nora wasn’t just some random female speedster and was, in fact, Barry’s daughter, he called her Dawn and then made the comment that at least Barry still had one.

While mentioning Dawn Allen alone is a curious reference, what’s more interesting is that Thawne appears to mention her in the context of Dawn being Nora’s twin — and as DC Comics fans know, in comics Barry and Iris have twins Dawn and Don — the Tornado Twins. Comics Dawn Allen is the mother of Jenni Ognats, also known as XS.

If Thawne’s comment does line up to the idea that Nora has a sister, Dawn, that seems like there really are twins in the future. It also confirms that a throwaway comment Barry made while speaking Speed Force gibberish last season — the one about needing more diapers — could very well be about the West-Allens having multiples. However, fans might not want to get their hopes up too soon: the look on Nora’s face when Thawne called her Dawn is a clue that there’s something unpleasant waiting in the future.

Why didn’t Nora know Thawne murdered her grandmother?

Nora presents herself as knowing all about the Flash thanks the the Flash Museum, yet tonight it turns out that she didn’t know perhaps one of the biggest things to know about Barry Allen: his mother, Nora, was murdered by Reverse Flash Eobard Thawne. Even with Barry disappearing when Nora was young, you’d think she’d know this fact and yet, she was completely blindsided by it. How?

The only thing we can think of as to why Nora has no idea that Thawne murdered her grandmother? There has to be major issues with the Flash Museum, making it a deeply unreliable source for information on the Scarlett Speedster.

Did the encounter with Zoom just mess up the timeline?

When Barry and Nora went back to the day Barry lost his speed to Zoom the encountered a major issue: Zoom spotted them and chased them into the Speed Force only for Zoom to be taken away by a Time Wraith. Doesn’t that mess up the timeline? Right now it’s a huge maybe, but if so it could have major ramifications on the timeline is Zoom was taken out before he was supposed to be.

That said, some fans have already started theorizing that the Time Wraith didn’t “kill” Zoom, but instead just dragged him back to the correct point in the timeline.

Was that Dr. Ambres?

In the chaos following the STAR Labs explosion, Barry and Nora lurk around the hospital so that they can place their device in a convenient location for retrieval five years in the future and audiences see a doctor doing tirage on the many victims being brought in — the same Dr. Ambres we’ve seen collaborating with Cicada this season. While she doesn’t have a huge role, the brief moment seems to set the stage for her disdain for metahumans and makes us even more curious as to her role in Cicada’s crusade — specifically, we’re starting to wonder if maybe she’s the real Big Bad.

Why is Nora working with Thawne?

Perhaps the biggest question of them all comes in the last moments of tonight’s episode when it’s revealed that Nora has been working with Thawne — or at least sending data to him in 2049. Why would Nora do that, considering he’s her father’s nemesis?

While there are million possibilities, it might be Thawne’s presence during the crisis Barry disappears in in 2024 that is driving Nora’s actions. Given that she’s documenting events in a special time language that doesn’t change no matter what happens to the timeline and appears to have written down that the timeline is malleable, she may be using him to save her father from the crisis entirely — and that means Thawne might be using her for his purposes as well.

What questions did you have about tonight’s episode of The Flash? Let us know in the comments below.