This fall, worlds will live and worlds will die as the Arrowverse finally tackles “Crisis On Infinite Earths” for its next big crossover. Monday’s Arrow season 7 finale already paved the way for the multiversal event, which means that fans went into last night’s The Flash season 5 closer with an expectation that it would similarly lay the groundwork for the biggest threat the heroes of The CW’s DC TV universe have yet faced. And, sure enough, that’s exactly what it did.
Episode 5×22, “Legacy,” ended on an emotional note. With Cicada II defeated and Grace cured, it seemed like a happy ending, but the destruction of Cicada’s dagger meant Reverse-Flash escaped from his prison in the future. Obviously, this was a huge change to the timeline and resulted in Barry and Iris’ daughter Nora vanishing from existence.
Following her disappearance, a further consequence of the alteration was revealed. In the Time Vault, Gideon announced that the newspaper from the future that’s always teased the Crisis happening in 2024 – as first seen in The Flash‘s pilot episode – is changing. The exact month was kept obscured, but the year that the speedster is destined to disappear decreased to 2019.
This follows on from the final scenes of Arrow‘s finale in which Oliver Queen was taken away by The Monitor to begin his part in the Crisis, which he revealed is destined to end with the Green Arrow’s death. Fans have been theorizing this since “Elseworlds,” especially after Arrow was announced to be ending with its shortened eighth season. The question now is: will Barry vanish, too, or will time be changed further? And can he resurrect his daughter?
We’ll have to wait and see, but we’ve got the summer to spend working it out before The Flash and the rest of the Arrowverse returns to The CW later this year.