Warning! The following contains spoilers for The Flash episode "Failure Is An Orphan." Read at your own risk!
Despite the odds, Barry managed to convince Cicada to take the metahuman cure and it looked like things were finally looking up in Season 5 of The Flash. Unfortunately, things only got worse as the game-changing surgery was crashed by an unexpected visitor. The visitor, who looked by all accounts to be another Cicada, killed Dr. Ambres and escaped with a still unconscious Orlin Dwyer. So, what does this twist mean towards the rest of Season 5?
That's an excellent question a lot of fans of The Flash should be asking, especially considering the new Cicada was revealed to be a grown version of Grace Gibbons. The niece of Orlin has grown up, and is sporting a glowing wound on her head forehead. That's likely part of that dark matter similar to what Orlin had in his chest, and it could be why she was able to do some interesting things her uncle couldn't.
Clearly she's had some metahuman training over the years, but was it all to travel back in time and rescue her uncle? What's Grace's motive for saving Orlin, and why would she take up the violent mantle of her serial killing caretaker? Is that all she's taken on, or is it possible she too has become a meta killer hell-bent on vengeance?
We know that Grace loves her uncle and, provided the timeline would've carried on as planned without her intervening, Orlin would've been cured and then put away behind bars. Grace would've been robbed of a future with her uncle, whom she was seen to have idolized in her memories. It isn't hard to see why she'd want to save him, much like Nora has been trying to do for her dad with Reverse-Flash.
Judging from the scene at the beginning of the episode, Grace's appearance may have been the time's way of correcting the event Nora and Reverse-Flash tried to alter. After all, not all events can be changed, so perhaps there's no avoiding having a Cicada running around and killing meta-humans in the future. Either that, or Reverse-Flash just told Nora that and he's also helping Grace.
Whatever is going on, Team Flash is going to struggle to bring down Grace. She's got some additional abilities her uncle lacked, and was able to take on Cisco, Killer Frost, and Barry with relative ease before blasting them all back with her abilities. Weirdly enough, she only killed Dr. Ambres despite having the capability to take out at least one member of Team Flash. Was that just for story reasons, or did Grace have a reason for sparing everyone else?
It seems clear Grace is the new big bad to deal with in town, and it's going to stay that way at least until next Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. ET when The Flash is on The CW. Keep with CinemaBlend in the meantime, as we continue to provide updates on this season and the next.
