‘The Flash’: Did “Blocked” Possibly Hint at an Outcome of “Elseworlds”?

Nora being from the future has presented a few challenges for Barry on The Flash, a passing reference to the events of Season 4 may have just dropped a hint about the outcome of the upcoming “Elseworlds” crossover event.

Spoiler’s for tonight’s episode of The Flash, “Blocked”, below.

Tonight’s episode saw Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) desperately trying to live up to the superhuman skills and abilities Barry (Grant Gustin) has as a more seasoned speedster. However, all of Nora’s information about Barry comes from what’s available through The Flash Museum of the future and when Barry mentions the time he spent in prison, it’s revealed that the museum doesn’t have a record of Barry ever having been incarcerated.

One would think that a museum devoted to The Flash — one that appears to have details about every single fight he’s ever been in — would have a significant entry about how he was falsely convicted of murder thanks to The Thinker, but it doesn’t. Nora is genuinely surprised to find out her father was ever behind bars. While there could be completely ordinary reasons for the omission — Nora did already establish that the real names of villains had been removed from the museum’s records so maybe Barry’s jail time was, too — it’s also possible that in the future, there is no record because it never happened.

Despite the influx of images, teases, and the new Elseworlds poster recently, there’s not much known about the crossover event in terms of plot. While things appear to be pointing to a “what if” scenario in keeping with the DC Comics roots of the Elseworlds name — Elseworlds was an imprint that put familiar heroes in “what if” scenarios — news that LaMonica Garrett has been cast as The Monitor for the crossover also hints at the possibility of a Crisis on Infinite Earths-type story.

The Monitor was one of two ageless beings (the other being the Anti-Monitor) who personified and wielded the energies of the matter and anti-matter universes. Crisis on Infinite Earths dealt with the idea that since the matter universe had been split into an infinite multiverse, each of the individual universes was weaker, leaving them more vulnerable to attack by the Anti-Monitor than they otherwise would have been. At the end of the story, most of the universes were destroyed and the universe that remained was DC’s only one, with all of its history merged into one, for about twenty years until the next set of Crises.

With many fans already thinking that The Flash is heading towards a Crisis on Infinite Earths‘ thanks to the curious future newspaper headline Nora revealed in the Season 5 premiere, if “Elseworlds” does go down that route and all of the multiverses are merged into one, it might have the end result of wiping out Barry’s “criminal record” and removing the time he spent in prison from history altogether. It would certainly explain why the museum didn’t have any record of it — especially if one assumes that Nora comes from a post-Crisis future — and why Nora didn’t know about it through other means, such as stories from her grandfather or mother.

If “Elseworlds” is a Crisis on Infinite Earths type story, it could also have some much larger ramifications. In tonight’s episode Barry and Nora let everyone in on the idea that he disappears and never returns in the future. If “Elseworlds” does end up being a Crisis story, depending on how things go, Barry might truly never return. In comics, Barry dies as part of Crisis on Infinite Earths and remains gone even with the multiverse reset for many, many years.

What do you think? Let us know your best theories in the comments below.

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.