The Flash Season 5 Trailer: There's A New Villain In Town
Oh, sweet Barry Allen. You can run, but you can't hide — not from creepy villains and certainly not from your own daughter.
Grant Gustin's Scarlet Speedster will have to face a topsy-turvy reality in season 5 of The Flash, which dropped a trailer at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday evening.
In it, Barry and his beloved Iris (Candice Patton) try their best at getting used to the parenting life after their daughter-from-the-future Nora (previously known as Mystery Girl, played by Jessica Parker Kennedy) arrives in the present day.
Neither the newlywed duo nor anyone else on Team Flash actually knew Nora's true identity until the season 4 finale, during which "Mystery Girl" helped the Flash save Central City and then admitted that she was his daughter. That scene was a bombshell-drop and a slate-cleaning reminiscent of those WTF third-act moments from MTV's Catfish, just with more time-traveling superheroes and fewer meme-able one-liners.
And speaking of time travel, Nora, who carries the superhero moniker "XS" in season 5, also previously told the crime-fighting crew that she slipped up and made a huge mistake that many Flash fans believe has something to do with her bounding through the barriers of time. (Like father, like daughter, right?) This accident will likely spark the events of the upcoming episodes — so when things go awry or the action gets particularly sticky, we know who to point to as the catalyzer.
The best part of the season 5 trailer was the introduction of an all-new villain: Chris Klein's Cicada.
In the DC Comics canon, Cicada is the criminal moniker of David Hersch, who killed his wife and later, when attempting to take his own life, was struck by lightning and granted the ability to suck the life force out of other people. Hersch adopts the name Cicada and becomes a cult leader, guiding a pack of followers determined to slaughter each and every person the Flash has ever saved from death. Cicada and co. use lightning-shaped daggers to do their dirty deeds, and viewers can spot one of those very weapons in the final seconds of the new trailer.
So, yeah, between family drama and an obsessed-to-the-point-of-murder villain, it's clear The Flash is going full dark for season 5. Seemingly the only bright spot in all this? The inclusion of the Flash Ring, which Nora gives to Barry. Nothing like a piece of costume-carrying jewelry to bring an eerily-close-in-age pair closer together.
See how Barry handles fatherhood and crazed villains when The Flash season 5 launches on the CW this fall.