- "Liar, liar, liar, liar. Nora lied to me. She'll pay. They'll all pay."
- —Grace to her future self as Cicada in her mind[src]
Grace "Gracie" Gibbons (born 2008)[1] is the daughter of a late unnamed man and a late unnamed woman and the niece of the late Orlin Dwyer. At some point in the future, she took up her uncle's mantle as Cicada.[2]
Biography
Early life
On May 4, 2017 when Grace was nine years old, her parents were killed in a accident caused by Vickie Bolen but due to the accident being not natural to police assume that is was a meta-human attack, leaving her an orphan. She was subsequently placed in the care of her uncle, Orlin Dwyer, due to him being her next of kin. However, Orlin initially resented being Grace's guardian and kept his distance from her. Struggling with the loss of her parents and her uncle's destructive behavior, Grace became isolated and depressed.
A couple of weeks later, Grace began having outbursts at school, including calling a classmate a "rat bastard", a curse Orlin often used. At the principal's office, Orlin confronted Grace on what she said, but she called her uncle out, stating that he didn't have room to talk when all he does is drink and rage at the world.
Afterward, Orlin decided to start over with Grace and promised to be a better guardian to her. They moved into his cousin Robbie's old house on May 22, 2017, and began fixing up a dollhouse. The two soon formed a close relationship, with Grace accepting Orlin as her family.[3]
Coma
A year later, Grace attended the Central City Carnival with Orlin[1] to commemorate the past year. As part of the celebration, Orlin bought Grace three ice creams and gifted her the new doll set she wanted for her dollhouse. Just then, Grace noticed the sky turning purple from the Enlightenment. When the Flash and XS destroyed the S.T.A.R. Labs satellite hurtling towards the city, Grace, and Orlin were both hit by debris from the satellite's core, which crashed near them. Grace's head was injured from shrapnel, causing dangerous levels of brain hemorrhaging which rendered her comatose. Orlin immediately brought Grace to Central City Hospital, where she was placed on life support under the care of Dr. Vanessa Ambres.[3]
Five months later in October, Orlin visited a comatose Grace at the hospital. Ambres told him that Grace wasn't making any progress.[4]
Team Flash was able to identify Orlin as he visited her on Thanksgiving.[3]
When Nora went in her memories, Grace was able to see her. Nora tried to make her pass her portal but it closed, trapping her. They visited her memories and Nora found out that Grace remembers his uncle swearing all metas will die, becoming Cicada. Then her brain defense mechanism created a version of her uncle that aimed to kill Nora. Later Nora appeared in a memory where Grace was eating pancakes with her uncle until Nora told her that this wasn't real, and witnessed her "uncle" getting stabbed by his evil version. Nora then fought him until she knocked him out and told Grace that she can help her uncle, but Grace called Nora a liar. An adult version of herself appeared dressed as Cicada and tried to kill Nora until Barry punched her out. Nora told her parents Grace wasn't coming, and they all escaped from Grace's mind.
It was later revealed that Grace's brain was affected by a dark matter shard embedded into her forehead, which could be influencing and affecting her mind.[5]
Possible future
Future Grace Gibbons.
At some point after she awoke from her coma, Grace took on the mantle of Cicada to continue her uncle's legacy after he was administered the Meta-human cure. Eventually, Grace traveled back to March 2019 to S.T.A.R. Labs to rescue Orlin after he took the cure, though she was too late. After a battle with Team Flash, taking them all out, she killed Dr. Ambres and took an unconscious Orlin to a cabin in the woods to be healed.
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Future Grace as Cicada.
After attempting to kill the accidental murderer of her parents, Orlin tried to dissuade her from killing The Flash, but she kills Orlin instead.
Personality
Originally, bitter at the loss of her parents and forced to live with a guardian who didn't want her, Grace became very angry in general, always acting out towards all around her. As Orlin began to clean up his act and connect with Grace, her attitude also improved. Ultimately, she came to feel that she was protecting him as much as he was for her.
After falling into a coma, lost in her lingering negative emotions and still overhearing everything Orlin said about meta-humans, Grace fell deeper than ever into anger. Hearing how committed Orlin was to ridding the world of metas "for" her and knowing that metas were fighting him, she became psychotic. Trapped in her painful memories, Grace came to believe like her uncle that all metas are evil and must be destroyed.[5]
Grace is proven to have a decent deductive ability as seen by her immediate suspicion of Nora's claims, eventually leading her to discover Nora was XS. Despite this, she is slightly naive, going with Nora without much need for convincing or trust.In a potential future, as Cicada, Grace is more of a monster than her uncle was, Unlike Orlin, who refuses to kill non-metas and civilians, she will kill without remorse. She even killed her own uncle when he tried getting her to see his warped view was wrong. Even when it was revealed to her that the death of her parents was indeed an accident, Grace didn't care and was willing to kill a kind soccer mom whose powers caused the accident (in front of her own family).
Powers and abilities
Powers
- Mental defenses: The dark matter satellite shard that struck Grace created a sort of protection field that amplifies mental defenses, blocking any outside interference with her mind.[5]
Future powers
- Lightning dagger-bond: With the dark matter shard still stuck in her forehead, it has adapted to the point where it was able to give future Grace Gibbons a psionic connection to her uncle's lightning dagger.[2]
- Power negation: The dagger has the ability to generate a field that negates all other meta-human powers. Even if someone regains usage of their powers afterward, there will be a period of time where the powers remain severely weakened and long enough exposure can potentially remove their powers permanently.[6]
- Electricity generation: The dagger can also generate red electricity.
- Force-field generation: When the dagger lodged itself into the ground, it generated a force-field of red energy.
- Meta-human detection: The dagger glows red if a meta-human is near.
- Ergokinesis: Grace can generate dark matter energy from her hands, which she uses to either blast her enemies or remotely grab, move, and keep objects in place, which may give her the ability to fly via using her powers on herself. This also enables her able to manipulate dark matter in other people, therefore affecting their powers.[7]
- Flight: Like her uncle, Grace is capable of flying at breakneck speeds.[7]
Abilities
- Comatose-Hearing Perception: When a dark matter-infused satellite shard struck Grace, it put her into a coma and left Orlin badly injured while leaving a tiny shard stuck into her forehead, which may have given her the ability to hear everything going on around her in the Central City Hospital, even during the times when Orlin and Dr. Ambres were talking in her room.[5]
Future abilities
- Master knife wielder: During her battle against Team Flash, Grace used her daggers to block every single one of their attacks and even managed to block Flash's lighting attack before it could hit her.
Equipment
Future equipment
- Cicada mask: As Cicada, Grace wears a mask similar to the one used by her uncle.[8]
- Kukri Lightning daggers: In the future, as Cicada, Grace wields a pair of kukri knives which she uses in her vendetta.
- Meta-tech lightning dagger: During her retrieval of Orlin from Team Flash, Grace obtained her uncle's dagger, claiming it for herself and used it to kill Dr. Ambres.[8]
Appearances
The Flash
Season 5
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Trivia
- To date, Grace is one of the youngest meta-humans to be featured in the entire Arrowverse.
- Grace is the second main antagonist to successfully kill another main antagonist in the Arrowverse, the first being Hunter Zolomon.
- She is the thirty-ninth known version of Cicada in the multiverse. The first thirty-seven were David Hersch from various universes,[4] and the thirty-eighth was Orlin Dwyer.
- Grace is the first female main antagonist featured in the all mains shows of the Arrowverse that take place on Earth-1.
- Her life bears similarity to Nora Darhk, as both are children who grew up following their guardians' warped views.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "The Icicle Cometh"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Failure is an Orphan"
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "O Come, All Ye Thankful"
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "The Death of Vibe"
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Memorabilia"
- ↑ "What's Past is Prologue"
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Time Bomb"
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Failure is an Orphan"