Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for The Flash season 9, episode 12, “A New World, Part Three.”
The classic X-Men storyline Days of Future Past was inverted in the penultimate episode of The Flash. The four-part finale of the long-running Arrowverse series found Barry Allen lost in time, disconnected from the Speed Force, and struggling to get home as his wife went into labor. While stories involving time-travel are not unusual for the Scarlet Speedster, The Flash season 9, episode 12 seemed to have more in common with the famous X-Men story than anything from The Flash comics.
The rest of Team Flash became aware of what happened to Barry Allen in The Flash season 9, episode 12, “A New World, Part 3,” but had no clear way of helping him after they figured out Barry was trapped in 2049. A solution presented itself when the team determined that telepath Cecile Horton’s powers had grown so strong that she could track Barry’s thoughts across time. This led to a plan for Cecile to telepathically take control of her future self, to help the depowered Barry battle the Negative Speed Force. This plan inverted the central storyline of X-Men: Days of Future Past.
The Flash Season 9, Episode 12 Inverts X-Men’s Days Of Future Past
Originally published in Uncanny X-Men #141-142 in 1981, Days of Future Past was one of the most important comic book stories of all time, both to the X-Men and comics in general. Set in an alternate future where the Sentinel robots constructed to fight mutants turned on humanity, the story finds what few X-Men survived working to send a grown-up Kitty Pryde back in time to avert the assassination that led to the mass-production of Sentinels three decades earlier. This method of time travel sends a person’s mind through time and into the body of their past self.
The base story of Days of Future Past was adapted for a 2014 X-Men film, with some minor alterations to the story. Rather than Kitty Pryde, it was Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine who was sent back in time into the body of his past self to avert a bad future. In both cases, The Flash season 9 inverts the original story concept, with a hero sending their mind forward in time to avert a disaster.
What Cecile’s Time-Travel Telepathy Means For The Flash Finale
It is fortunate that Cecile’s massive power upgrade was saved for The Flash series finale, as it risks completely upending the balance of power otherwise. It became exponentially more difficult for the writers of The Flash to challenge Barry Allen and his allies as Barry’s powers increased. The same has been true of Cecile, whose empathy powers were written vaguely enough to be a deus ex machina even before she was shown to be able to send her consciousness across time. Despite this, it seems unlikely that Cecile’s upgrade will be a major factor in The Flash finale, beyond trying to coordinate the heroes in the battle against multiple evil speedsters.
The Flash series finale airs Wednesday, May 24, on The CW.
Key Release Dates
