Time Bomb

"I used to think that keeping secrets from people for their own good was a noble decision, that it would protect them. But when you do that, you just rob those people from making their own decisions."

—Barry Allen to Nora West-Allen

"Time Bomb"
Information
Season 5 » Episode 17
Episode number	109 of 184
Original airdate	March 19, 2019
Written by	Kristen Kim Sterling Gates
Directed by	Rob Greenlea
Chronology
Preceded by	"Failure is an Orphan"
Followed by	"Godspeed"

"Time Bomb" is the seventeenth episode of the fifth season of The Flash, and the one-hundred-ninth episode overall. It aired on March 19, 2019.

Synopsis

Team Flash finds out that a suburban mom named Vickie Bolen is in danger and they race to save her. Upon meeting her, they discover she's a meta-human who is hiding her abilities from her family. Barry encourages Vickie to share her secret with her family, which makes Nora realize she needs to come clean with her parents about Thawne.[src]

Plot

Thawne is at a misfortune with the presentation of the new Cicada and concedes he can no longer assist Nora — he needs her to mention to her father what they've been really going after. The group starts to address laborers at the emergency clinic in trusts they can discover data on where Dwyer's presently being kept. Nora's noticeably vexed and however stood up to by her dad, will not educate him regarding working with Thawne.

Somewhere else Orlin awakens and is welcomed by the more seasoned Grace, who uncovers she's from a substitute future — much like Nora West-Allen. She breaks into the police office and stills a document that Barry later discovers was from years earlier.

Sherloque's investigation of the images is finished, however he's hindered by Cisco since somebody's taken a thing from Team Flash's storeroom. They discover the thing, a period circle, in two areas, showing that the new Cicada has gone from what's to come. The group follows the lead and discover the records was about her folks, who were accidentally executed by a meta. The gathering comes to an obvious conclusion and understands the new Cicada is Grace.

Barry and Nora can find the meta to a nearby fun place where her little girl is hosting a birthday gathering. After a short time, Grace assaults however Barry and Nora can stop her and empty the structure. Effortlessness comes back to their alcove and proceeds to contend with her uncle about her arrangements of vengeance. Dwyer has clearly flipped sides, needing her to stop her frenzy.

Effortlessness assaults the clinic where the ATM meta is at with her little girl. XS can speed the meta away, yet Grace and Barry begin battling outside. After a short time, her uncle Orlin advances toward the emergency clinic and takes a stab at talking her down from harming additional individuals however it doesn't work and she kills him.

Back at STAR Labs, Sherloque wraps up his examination of Nora and mentions to the whole group what she's been doing. The moment he hears that Barry secures Nora one of the cells in the storm cellar.

Cast

Starring

• Grant Gustin as Barry Allen/The Flash
• Candice Patton as Iris West-Allen
• Danielle Panabaker as Dr. Caitlin Snow
• Carlos Valdes as Cisco Ramon/Vibe
• Hartley Sawyer as Ralph Dibny/Elongated Man
• Danielle Nicolet as District Attorney Cecile Horton
• Jessica Parker Kennedy as Nora West-Allen/XS
• Chris Klein as Orlin Dwyer
• Tom Cavanagh as Professor Eobard Thawne and Sherloque Wells
• Jesse L. Martin as Detective Joe West

Guest starring

• Sarah Carter as older Grace Gibbons/Cicada
• Victoria Park as Kamilla Hwang
• Catherine Lough Haggquist as Vickie Bolen

Co-starring

• Malia Baker as Alice Bolen
• Michael Edwards as Man
• Stephanie Florian as Woman
• Islie Hirvonen as Grace Gibbons
• Alexander Moonie as Barista Jason
• Jeff Sanca as Cop
• Helenna Santos as Nurse Shelley
• Chris Shields as John Bolen

Trivia

• This is the first episode since "The Death of Vibe" to feature all ten of this season's series regulars.
  • Danielle Panabaker is absent for the majority of the episode, only appearing at the end, as she was busy directing episode 18, "Godspeed".
• This episode marks the first time since the Season 5 premiere ("Nora") where Barry uses the Flash ring on-screen. Although Oliver (in an alternate reality; where he and Barry swapped lives) used it in "Elseworlds, Part 1".
• The episode's title is referenced when John Bolen refers to his wife Vickie as being a "human time bomb" due to her meta-human powers.
• The episode's title also has the same name as the Earth-76 TV Show Wonder Woman Season 3 Episode 7.
• When Ralph keeps getting the waiter's name wrong at Jitters he says "Larry" to which the waiter corrects him saying that it's "Jason", a possible reference to "Cause and XS" when Nora kept changing names in Jitters over and over again by going back in time.
• Grace's life bears similarity to Nora Darhk's, as both are children who grew up following their guardians' warped views.
• Grace is the first female main antagonist featured in any of the main shows of the Arrowverse that take place on Earth-1.
• Many items from previous seasons appear in the Starchives:
  • The helmet Barry wore when Team Flash was testing his speed for the first time on the Ferris Air runway in "Pilot".
  • The vacuum cleaner that Cisco, Caitlin and Felicity used to fool Captain Cold in "Going Rogue".
  • The Time Sphere that Team Flash built in order to send Eobard Thawne back to his time in "Fast Enough".
  • The B.O.O.T. which Team Flash has used through Season 2 and Season 4.
  • The Speed Force bazooka made by Tracy Brand to use against Savitar from Season 3.
  • The Flash suit from Season 4.
  • The breach implosion reactor which was used to close 51 of the breaches (the last one supported by the speed cannon rings) to Earth-2 in "Escape from Earth-2".
  • Jay Garrick's iron mask which he wore in Season 2, while being held captive by Zoom.
  • The autobiography of Eobard Thawne, disguised as Harrison Wells, titled 'Wells: A Biography', which Barry was reading in a flashback when meeting Martin Stein for the first time in "The Nuclear Man" and also read by Harry Wells when he came to Earth-1 in "The Darkness and the Light", as well as Eobard's glasses and his wheelchair.
  • The shield used by the CCPD to use as defense against Leonard Snart's Cold gun and Mick Rory's Heat gun in "Revenge of the Rogues".
  • The chessboard which was the same that Eobard and Barry played with back in "Going Rogue".
• Cisco mentions "Operation: Shazam", before proceeding to scratch into the Time Sphere with a shape looks to be a lightning bolt, a reference to the DC hero of the same name.
• While talking with Kamilla, Cisco remarks that what they are doing is as important as "not Penny’s boat", this is a reference to a famous scene in the finale of season 3 of Lost.
• This episode marks the first time on The Flash when the main villain is killed off before the season finale.
• When Ralph says he "Peter Parker'd" Kamilla, he references the character's radioactive mutation and being a "Spider-person", as well as doing the famous Spider-Man "thwip" motion.
• When Sherloque takes out the Time Sphere plans, there's writing on it that says, "Neutron Flows cannot be reversed", a reference to a recurring line from the classic TV series Doctor Who.
• When Sherloque is analyzing Nora's diary, a line mentions Game of Thrones not ending in 2019, as it is expected to in the real world.
• The way Sherloque exposes Nora and her secret is very similar to how Sherlock Holmes would expose a criminal at the end of a story.
• When Sherloque is watching Eobard Thawne's video diary video log 247, a reference to Season 1 when Eobard created the time language code, used to record all the timeline changes, which he calls the source code of the multiverse, a reference to Jack Kirby's The Source Wall and Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Goofs

• The Time Sphere blueprints Sherloque and Iris look at are labeled "S.T.A.R. Labs Time Sphere", but this was only a nickname Cisco came up with on the spot in "Fast Enough", to which Eobard had responded "Is that what you're calling it?".
• Barry says that in order to give Grace the meta-human cure, they would first need her consent. As a medical procedure on a minor, especially an experimental one, they more likely would need the consent of her legal guardian; in that capacity, Orlin gave his consent in the previous episode as a condition of receiving the cure himself.