Nora Allen came into the Arrowverse like a thunderstorm, leaving a trail of an enigma in her wake before she left. The Flash is supposed to vanish in the future, never to be seen again. This will lead to Nora being raised by Iris only, without having her husband around to do the rest of the parenting. But why did the Flash vanish?
Was the reason for his disappearance so great that he was willing to leave his family behind? Isn’t the timeline supposed to be on a correction course ever since Season 1 saw the end of the tyranny of the Reverse Flash? What is going on?
Time is playing hula hoop with Barry Allen and apparently, Barry is being forced to play along because of something Nora Allen has done.
It turns out, Nora Allen is the reason for the flash going missing. And the new Batman Beyond comic books hold the answer as to why. Presenting – New Batman Beyond Easter egg reveals Nora Allen’s deepest, darkest secret! Let us first dive into the Batman Beyond comic books released a short while ago that have led us to this conclusion.
Nora’s use of future slangs might hold the answer
In The Flash Season 5 premiere episode, we see Nora Allen frequently using the words ‘grife’ and ‘schway’. These are futuristic slangs that will not come into fashion until the later part of the century. The first word ‘grife’ actually belongs to the 3oth Century era Legion of Superheroes timeline.
It is a word that the heroes frequently use when a plan goes awry. The word ‘schway’, well that is a different story altogether and we will be discussing it in just a moment.
The fans of the DC Comics universe will likely try to relate these slang words to the DC Comics Universe. Since Barry Allen was not around to tutor his daughter on the grave consequences of time travel and dimensional hopping, Nora was almost always free to roam wherever and whenever she could.
This would mean that Nora also came into contact with the future Legionnaires like Saturn Girl and Lightning lad, the latter of which is also name-dropped by Nora in The Flash Season 5 Episode 1!!
The Batman Beyond Connection
In the Batman Beyond TV Series and the comic books, the word ‘schway’ is used several times. It is no strange a fact when we say that the Flash TV Show was not the first to use that word in the small screens. It has been there in the comic books since a long, long time.
In Neo-Gotham, the future has morphed into a dark and future-noir style landscape where an older Bruce Wayne now lives in seclusion and trains the young Terry McGinnis in the ways of the Dark Knight.
In this world, the term schway holds a lot of sway. The creators of the Batman Beyond universe took in a lot of effort to ensure that the world reflects the cyberpunk lifestyle that was glorified and made popular in Blade Runner, a movie that was one of the topmost trends of that time.
Ridley Scott had made a landscape that had combined American skyscraper designs with Asian aesthetics, creating a bizarre and highly petrifying world of ultra-modern technology and sophistication. And just like Blade Runner, the Batman Beyond universe’s Neo-Gotham also has a lot of Chinese characters riddled into its various buildings.
If a person who knows Mandarin is asked the meaning of the word ‘schway’, he or she will be quick to say that the word is closely related to another Chinese word called “Shuai” which literally translates to nice or handsome. That is an understandable explanation but wait till you hear this.
The slang in question may not sound as important but trust us, it is. The Arrowverse heavily features many of the other DC Characters that could be related to this word. In the whole of the Batman Beyond and the Arrowverse universe, there is seldom a Chinese word as spot-lit as Schway. This word is also another representation of the Chinese character called Huang.
And in Chinese, Huang translates to Yellow. Tell me, in the world of the Flash, who is the man most associated with the word Yellow??
The Yellow connection
In the Batman Beyond animated series, the skyline of the city of Neo Gotham could be seen holding several characters that are a fusion of Chinese and English alphabets. The creators of the show were heavily influenced by the Cantonese culture and they used that element right from the opening credits of the show to the end credits.
One such character that stood out from the rest was a yellow monolith mandarin character that, if not for the title of the show being slightly bigger in the credits sequence, would have almost been mistaken for the title of the Batman Beyond show itself.
This character draped in the colour yellow has a huge connection to the future foundations of DC Comics’ most iconic superhero. If you have seen a lot of Batman Beyond episodes like me, you would be able to figure it out within a second. But if you need helps till let us help you.
That word we talked about, Huang, is closely related to one of the most well-known families of the DC Universe. It could be pronounced as Wayne. But here’s the catch, the word is actually not related to Bruce Wayne as technically speaking, it translates to Wong better rather than Wayne. So we suggest you let that slide out the window.
This still leaves the origin of the word Huang dangling in the wind. This is exactly why we translate Huang to Yellow in the true sense of the word. In the Flash Universe, there is only one nemesis of the fastest man alive that could give the Flash a run for his money. And that was the nemesis that almost won against the Flash in season 1. That’s right folks. Nora Allen is somehow related to the Man in Yellow aka the Reverse Flash.
The Nora Allen-Reverse Flash connection
In the world of The Flash, the colour Yellow is danger personified. It represents everything the Flash stands against. It is the colour of Eobard Thawne aka The Man in the Yellow Suit. He is the guy that is the reason the Flash’s life is so drastically changed now.
He is so big a figure in the world of the Flash that the creators of the show were willing to give Zoom a black suit in Season 2 rather than the comic book accurate yellow version just to ensure the fans realize the severity of the rivalry that exists between the Reverse Flash and the Flash.
So when we hear the word Schway and the big red and gold flag as well as Sherloque Wells starting to doubt Nora Allen’s story, we are forced to assume that something is fishy. Believe us when we say this, the show-runners of The Flash would not have put in this little Easter egg if it did not have any meaning.
Besides, there is one more reason that we are willing to count Reverse Flash into the equation. In the future’s newspaper that tells the flash goes missing, there is also another piece of news that says the Reverse Flash now leads an army of shadow demons.
Are these “shadow demons” actually time wraiths that hunt down time travelling speedsters? If so, then how did the Reverse Flash manage to sway him into his side? Maybe the Flash did not vanish. He was just hunted down by the Time Wraiths.
Maybe in the future, the Reverse Flash actually wins and which is why the word ‘schway’ holds so much clout. That, my friends, is a terrifying assumption, one which we hope the Flash is strong enough to prove us wrong on.
The Flash Season 5 has already aired its first episode. The official synopsis for the season 5 of The Flash reads:
Matching wits with The Thinker, who by season’s end had harnessed the powers of all twelve bus metas he created, stretched Team Flash to their limits, but with the help of some new allies, Barry Allen (aka The Flash) and company were able to put a stop to the Enlightenment and save Central City once again. However, with the arrival of Barry and Iris’ speedster daughter, Nora, who arrived from the future admitting to having made a “big mistake”, things are anything but status quo. Will parenthood be the challenge that finally slows The Flash down?
