The Flash Season 5 Premiere: Nora Just Revealed a Huge Secret About Barry's Future

It turns out the time-traveling apple doesn't fall far from the speedster tree when it comes to Nora West-Allen (Jessica Parker Kennedy) and Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) on The Flash.

While she may have claimed she was stuck in the past thanks to tachyon issues (ain't it always the way?), Nora's real reasons for sticking around were much more deeply rooted in emotion than science. At first, we worried something terrible had happened to Iris (Candice Patton) in the future, considering Nora seemed a little too intent on keeping her distance from her mom, but as it turns out, it was actually her dad who had a hidden twist in his future.

Remember that headline from Season 1 about the Flash vanishing in a crisis in the future? If you thought that wasn't still an issue, you were way wrong. In fact, according to Nora, Barry doesn't just go missing... he stays missing. There's still no sign of him 25 years later, and thanks to his disappearing act, Nora grew up without a father, bringing Barry's worst fear -- missing out on his child's life the way his parents missed out on his -- to life.

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For that reason alone, Barry decided not to out Nora to the rest of the team and let her stay in the past, provided she doesn't change any major events, of course. That way, he can at least get to know his daughter -- and hopefully stand a chance at changing his future along the way! Though really, if he goes missing in 2024, we've still got a few years before that becomes an issue. Unless we do a serious time jump along the way, we'll be waiting a while to solve this particular mystery.

But if Barry is fixated on the future, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) has her sights set on the past. Not only does she still have no answers regarding how Killer Frost was part of her as a child, she's now got to deal with the fact that her father might be very much alive. Ralph's (Hartley Sawyer) digging into her dad turned up a faked death certificate, meaning he either faked his death or there's something very hinky going on with Caitlin's family -- beyond the fact that they've apparently been keeping her childhood ice powers a secret all these years.

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

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