SPOILER WARNING: This article contains major spoilers for "The Girl With the Red Lightning," the latest episode of The Flash.


Team Flash has pieced together Reverse-Flash's plan, but it's too late. "The Girl with the Red Lightning," the penultimate episode of The Flash Season 5, revealed Cicada's dagger prevented Eobard Thawne from using his powers during his imprisonment in Nora's 2049 timeline. All season, he has re-engineered the past so the dagger would be destroyed, thus freeing him from his death sentence.

Almost all of Reverse-Flash's Season 5 appearances have taken place in his prison cell. Notably, he wore a thick metal chest-plate in all of these scenes. However, when he was wheeled away in "The Girl with the Red Lightning," his warden removed that chest-plate to reveal Cicada's dagger underneath. Since Cicada's dagger has metahuman-dampening properties, this was used to ensure he couldn't access his powers.

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Over the course of the season, Reverse-Flash worked with Nora to teach her how to be a speedster. Angry with her mother and too young to remember her father, Nora believed Reverse-Flash to be her one and only source for information on the Speed Force. Working with him led her to trust him and so, when he suggested defeating the one villain the Flash never could, she bought right in. He convinced her that destroying Cicada's dagger would put an end to the villain's reign of terror, thus scoring a win for Team Flash and bringing her closer to the father she never knew.

Unfortunately for both Nora and Team Flash, Reverse-Flash had an ulterior motive. If Nora destroyed Cicada's dagger in the past, it could no longer be used to imprison him in the future. It is unclear how, exactly, the destruction of Cicada's dagger will impact Nora's timeline, but it is almost sure to free him; it may even mean he was never imprisoned at all. The implications of the dagger's removal from the timeline are sure to be explored next week in the season finale.

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Thanks to Ralph Dibny, Team Flash will have a short heads-up. In "The Girl with the Red Lightning," he pieced together Reverse-Flash's plan for the dagger. While he may not know how that affects the future, he understood that Reverse-Flash wanted it gone -- and that can't be good for the team. He put the pieces together too late to stop Barry and Cisco from destroying the dagger; he only looked on in horror as Cisco used the mirror gun to atomize it. Now, Team Flash will have to deal with the consequences.

Airing Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, The Flash stars Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Panabaker, Tom Cavanaugh, Jesse L. Martin, Danielle Nicolet, Hartley Sawyer and Jessica Parker Kennedy.