‘The Flash’ Season 5, Episode 1 ‘Nora’ Premiere Recap: Daddy’s Little Speedster

The long-awaited Season 5 of The Flash finally came out, and things picked up where they left off in the season 4 finale—total confusion. It’s understandable to be confused when a young girl steps into your life and claims she’s your kid. Not only did she help The Flash stop the satellite, which could screw up the future, but she also appears out of nowhere confessing who she is. And damn, she is a mouthful of spoilers.

“Nora” kicks things off with a crisis after another. Barry (Grant Gustin), who just saved the city from destruction yet again, goes into total freak out mode when Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) appears out of nowhere claiming to be his future daughter with Iris (Candice Patton). Afraid of another Flashpoint, he entrusts recently-heartbroken Cisco (Carlos Valdes) to help her get back to her time as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Ralph (Hartley Sawyer) tries to wrap his head around time travel while assisting Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) figure out Killer Frost’s past.

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Like father, like daughter

The welcome home party of Jenna Marie West gets crashed by a young girl who knew everybody despite nobody knowing who she was. She introduces herself as Nora West-Allen, Barry and Iris’ future daughter.  This blew everyone’s mind and compelled Cisco to drink his ass off. She claims that she can’t run fast enough to open the speed force to go back and she needed their help. They bring her to S.T.A.R. Labs where they could get a hold of her abilities. In her run, she had a combination of yellow and violet streaks, a clear sign to Iris that she was their daughter. They quickly realize that she’s a walking spoiler alert, so Barry asks her not to reveal anything more about the future to not mess it up.

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Nora sticks around Barry, pestering him at the CSI office where he was reinstated but left with a lot of work. Nora offers help, with her also being a forensic scientist in the future. While Cisco battles out the science behind Nora’s mistake and the hangover behind the recent Gypsy breakup, Central City faces another Meta which Nora reveals is a baddie named Gridlock. As Nora remembers it, Barry defeats the guy in one go. But her being there at the scene, he gets away.

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Negative Energy

In an attempt to send Nora home, Cisco creates a device to help Nora open up the speed force through Barry. It fails, and Wally (Keiynan Lonsdale) finds out that the problem was Nora had negative tachyons which don’t allow her to go home. Barry gets frustrated and tells Cisco to focus on the Gridlock case while he worked on the device to get Nora home.

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Cisco finds out that Gridlock harnesses energy from his opponents to get stronger. They knew right away that whoever this guy was had to be stopped as soon as possible. But with Cisco’s satellite gone, they can’t get a hold of where he is. Cisco goes old school and tracks his phone instead. He boarded a plane with a plan to crash it.

Feel the vibe

Gridlock crashes both engines, and the only way to save the people inside is if they vibrate the entire plane, which could work with three speedsters. Cisco vibes Barry, Nora, and Wally inside the plane. Nora has never vibrated, but with some pep talk from daddy Allen, they manage to land the plane in the river safely and put Gridlock in cuffs.

The episode ends with Gridlock on his way to the meta-precinct in a truck when suddenly a lightning bolt appears out of nowhere to stop the truck. A hooded figure emerges in front of Gridlock, presumably wanting to kill him.

Speedy Revelations

Of course, Nora couldn’t help but spoil what’s going to happen in the future, and boy are they big ones. Turns out that Barry disappears and never returns, which explains Nora’s excitement. Barry was so concerned about the future when in fact he wasn’t even there. This compelled Barry to let Nora stay for awhile.

Ralph may still be catching up on the whole time travel, multiverse talk, but he did come out ahead on Caitlin’s end. He finds out that Caitlin’s father’s death certificate was a fake, which opens the door to more questions.

‘The Flash’ Season 5, Episode 1 ‘Nora’ Overall Verdict

The season is off to a good start with a new problem to solve and more future instances to avoid. Nora reveals her true objective, which is to keep her dad from disappearing. Obviously, she gets that from her father. It also presented a new set of questions about Killer Frost, which Caitlin is surely determined to understand. With the addition of the new speedster, it begs the question of whether or not another Flashpoint circumstance will be at play. One thing for sure is that with Nora, the future is uncertain.

The Flash continues with “Blocked” next Tuesday, October 16th, at 8/7 c on The CW.