Godspeed

For the eponymous character, see August Heart.

"There hasn't been a speedster in Central City since that... crisis piece your mom wrote about, like, decades ago. I mean, Flash, Kid Flash, Jay Garrick, that-that weird purple speedster that just showed up one day. They're all gone"

—Lia Nelson

"Godspeed"
Information
Season 5 » Episode 18
Episode number	110 of 184
Original airdate	April 16, 2019
Written by	Judalina Neira Kelly Wheeler
Directed by	Danielle Panabaker
Guest stars
Kathryn Gallagher as Lia Nelson BD Wong as Godspeed (voice) Ese Atawo as Detective Curtis
Chronology
Preceded by	"Time Bomb"
Followed by	"Snow Pack"
Blog post	Post 92 "#WTShrap?!"

"Godspeed" is the eighteenth episode of the fifth season of The Flash, and the one-hundred-tenth episode overall. It aired on April 16, 2019.

Synopsis

After discovering that Nora is working with Thawne, Barry and Iris disagree about how to handle their daughter in the wake of this shocking news. Team Flash isn’t sure they can trust Nora, so they go through her journal to find out exactly how she came to work alongside their greatest nemesis.

Trivia

• The title is a reference to a speedster from the comics named Godspeed.
• This is the first episode of the season where Chris Klein (Orlin Dwyer) is not credited in the main cast bill, due to the death of his character in the previous episode.
• Danielle Panabaker makes her directional debut in this episode.
• Most of the episode takes place in 2049.
• Danielle Panabaker revealed that the most challenging thing to direct was Nora's backstory, she stated: "creating a world 30 years in the future on a TV episodic budget. It allowed everyone to be really creative and really push themselves, but it was certainly a challenge."
• Lia mentioned that there was a speedster with purple lightning that used to operate in Central City. The identity of the speedster is unknown, but it's possible that she's talking about Accelerated Man or Iris West, presumably the latter, as it's unknown whether the Accelerated Man's ever traveled to Earth-1.
• This episode includes many references to Season 1, especially "Pilot":
  • At the beginning of the flash-forwards, Nora is seen running late to a crime scene she suppose to investigate, similar to Barry in the pilot.
  • Nora gets knocked into a shelf full of chemicals and gets knocked out cold by Godspeed is similar to what happened to Barry when he was struck by lightning in the pilot.
  • After getting struck by lightning, Nora wakes up at the hospital, while we see Lia from her point of view and the song "Poker Face" plays in the background. The same thing happened to Barry in the pilot (though Barry woke up in S.T.A.R. Labs with the same song playing, rather than in the hospital).
  • The way Nora catches the power-dampening chip is similar to how Barry caught the coffee cup at Jitters in the pilot.
  • The first time she used her super speed, Nora accidentally ran into a truck with the name of Gambi, getting confused about what just happened. The same thing happened to Barry in the pilot.
  • When trying to teach Nora how to phase, Eobard gave her the exact same speech he gave to Barry while teaching him how to phase in "Tricksters".
  • At the end of the flashforwards, Eobard is seen drinking Big Belly Burger, which is the same drink he used to have many times throughout Season 1.
  • The way Nora responded to Gideon when they first meet is exactly the same as how her father Barry reacted to Gideon when he first met her in "The Trap".
  • Nora's board dedicated to hunting down Cicada is similar to the board Barry kept up in his lab when trying to find out who the Man in Yellow was in order to prove that his mother hadn't been murdered by his father.
• The way Nora first interacts with Gideon is the same as when Sherloque first interacts with her in "Memorabilia".
• In the Time Vault, Gideon pulled up a video filmed by Barry. Though Barry's face takes up most of the screen, a red sky looms ominously in the background. The sounds of a battle rage around him; Oliver Queen can even be heard shouting indistinctly. At one point, something off-screen flashes and causes Barry to flinch. Red skies are, of course, are significant to the Crisis of 2019 event where Iris also noted red skies as well as Barry, Oliver, and other heroes present in her article.
  • This is also a reference to Marv Wolfman and George Perez's DC comics event Crisis on Infinite Earths. When the sky turns red, it heralds the death of the multiverse.
• The footage of Zoom that Nora watched at the Flash Museum was taken from "Rupture".
• When Nora's hurrying to a crime scene, she bumps into someone, and then apologizes, saying she's "really late for an important date", possibly referring to a quote by the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
• The way Nora began to see Eobard Thawne who is incarcerated at Iron Heights, to ask his help to catch the new speedster Godspeed, is very similar to the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs.
• On his profile, August Heart got kicked out of Mercury Labs after being found guilty of administering Tachyon stimulants to 17 different comatose patients a reference to his comic-book Rebirth storyline, in which a Speed Force storm gave a whole bunch of people (including August) speedster abilities, to which Godspeed then kills them all to take their speed.
• On August Heart's profile his birth date is August 16, 2021, a reference to his first appearance in the Flash Rebirth which was released August 2016.
• A Flash comic is shown on Nora's desk in her office, issue #172 when Cicada tries stealing Wally West's speed using his Speed Force daggers, marks the second time that the comic is shown, the first being in "Memorabilia".
• One of the nicknames that Lia gives Nora is 'Lady-Flash', who in the comics, was the name of a speedster who's real name was 'Ivana Christina Borodin Molotova', she was from the Soviet Union and was part of a group called "Blue Trinity" and later joined the "People's Heroes."
• Nora goes to Ollins Laboratories, a reference to the Firestorm comic issue #19 (January,1984), a lab that was testing a drug called "Nuvafed" on Fred Delmar turning him into Goldenrod.
• In the storage room Nora picks up a box labeled "Flash suit version 16" with Choi Industries on it, referencing Ryan Choi the future version of the Atom to help create the Flash ring.
  • In addition a Choi Industries Building was briefly shown when Nora fight Godspeed.
• Iris in 2049 is in Coast City for the majority of the episode, which in the comics is the home of the Silver Age version of Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern.
• In the storage room in 2049, the Killer Frost, Vibe, and Kid Flash costumes can be seen.
• Barry says to Nora that he'll sense her in the Speed Force if she tries to come back, a reference to when Jay Garrick stopped him when he tried to Flashpoint again in "Paradox".
• After Nora destroys several cop cars, one of the cops says that "Captain Frye is gonna be mad", a reference to the New 52 Flash comic book run as Captain Darryl Frye was the Captain of the CCPD.
• Nora tries to apprehend two robbers Bug and Byte, who in the comics, are a brother and sister duo and are enemies of Firestorm, they appeared in The Fury of Firestorm #23 and #24.

Goofs

• Iris gives out to Sherloque for not telling anyone about his investigating of Nora. Except he did in "Seeing Red", even asking her a few questions about Nora's behavior, the only difference now is that he has some evidence to back up those suspicions and has figured out what she was hiding.
• It's noted about Godspeed that no other speedster has white lightning, even though Savitar's lightning was white whenever he wore his suit.
  • However, when Savitar ran without his armor, his lightning was yellow, meaning that Savitar's lightning wasn't actually white; it just looked that way because of the way it reflected off of his armor.