‘The Flash’: “The Flash and the Furious” Preview Released

The Flash may have helped save the world from a rewritten destiny in “Elseworlds,” but that doesn’t mean he and his family will be able to outrun their own when The CW series returns in January.

In a new preview for “The Flash & The Furious,” the tenth episode of The Flash‘s fifth season, it appears that fans will find out a little bit more about what Reverse Thawne/Eobard Thawne (Tom Cavanagh) is up to after the big reveal that Nora West-Allen (Jessica Parker Kennedy) has been collaborating with him. And if the preview, which you can watch in the video above, is any indication, it seems like Thawne is determined to ensure a dark destiny for the Scarlet Speedster and those he loves.

The return of Thawne is one that stunned fans at the end of the series’ 100th episode before this week’s crossover. In that episode, Nora was surprised to learn that Thawne had murdered her grandmother when Barry (Grant Gustin) was a child and raced to the future to confront Thawne who appeared to be in some sort of prison cell. Thanks to the preview, it seems like Nora may have bitten off a bit more than she could chew, apparently having made a deal with the devil (if you will) in order to experience milestone moments with her father whom was lost in a “crisis” when she was just a child.

And speaking of that mysterious crisis, fans of The Flash got even more information about that event in the Season 5 premiere but got perhaps the biggest surprise yet at the end of “Elseworlds”. While Barry, along with Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Kara Danvers (Melissa Benoist) managed to save the world from the reality warping of John Deegan (Jeremy Davies) and the Book of Destiny, it seems that the threat to reality — and Barry’s life — is only temporarily neutralized. The CW revealed that its take on “Crisis on Infinite Earths” is coming to the network next fall.

It’s worth noting that, based on the timeline set up by The Flash in its series premiere, “Crisis” happens on Earth-1 in 2024. Thawne, however, was born in 2151 which means that he is form a post-Crisis world. It’s possible that Thawne may know quite a bit about the event that he has not shared with Barry or with Nora, which means that there is always the outside possibility that the show’s original Big Bad might be attempting to help — his words about a destiny of broken families could be more a warning than a threat.

What’s certain is that “Crisis” has long been on the list for not just fans but for the series itself. Asked whether he knew how and when he intended to pay off the various teases, The Flash showrunner Todd Helbing smiled and told ComicBook.com, “Yeah. But that’s all I can say.”

He elaborated a tiny bit, saying, “Greg [Berlanti] really has a sort of master plan of things, and I’m really excited about how it’s going to pay off.”

For his part, series star Grant Gustin suggested — as he has for years now — that the plan is still to play out the crossover in 2024, so that the timeline of the episodes lines up with the events of the story. The future newspaper seen in the pilot was dated for April of 2024.

“It is really fulfilling” to see some of the Crisis stuff play out, Gustin told us. “I hope we can stick around long enough to see what’s going on with that newspaper article. We’d have to make it four more seasons, five more seasons. It’s cool, though. It feels like it’s earned. Me and Stephen had that conversation a lot during the crossover, actually. There’s a lot of even just comedic moments that we have that are funny because they’re earned — because of the history of the characters and the journey they’ve been on. It is one of the best parts of doing these as a series versus a film — people have been with us. I’ve met kids who have gone through all of high school watching this show. To have that kind of stamp on people’s lives is pretty special.”

That ten-year timeline mirrors what Gustin told us at San Diego Comic Con in 2017, when he said, “We don’t really talk about on a yearly basis, but it was mentioned early on and that’s a goal. Obviously, we’d have to go I think ten years to reach that. So there’s a possibility for sure. It’ll be fun to get there.”

The Flash returns on Tuesday, January 15, 2019 at 8/7c on The CW.