The Flash is really heating up right about now. The midseason finale surprised audiences with the revelation that Nora West-Allen is apparently working with Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse-Flash.

For those who don’t know, Nora’s the metahuman daughter of Barry and Iris who travelled back in time from the future in order to team up with her father after his mysterious disappearance. What made her working with Thawne so strange was that Nora absolutely idolized her father. She closely studied his adventures, spent hours at the Flash Museum learning about his villains and desired nothing more than to be a hero like him. And she very well could have been, if her mother hadn’t secretly implanted a power-dampening chip in her head that prevented her from using her innate superspeed.

Anyhow, the true nature of her partnership with Eobard remains a mystery, but these comments from an interview with showrunner Todd Helbing suggest that we’re soon going to get some answers.

“We don’t wanna just do the same villain over and over and if we had the exact same attitude with Eobard Thawne, that we’ve seen this whole time, that’s not going to be interesting either. So, he was part of the pitch from the beginning and I think what we really wanted to do was just see a different attitude from Thawne that we hadn’t, see him in a different light and, you know, there’s a big theme of legacy this season. And so, when we started talking about that with every other character and then we got to Thawne, it’s like, ‘What does legacy mean to him?’ So that’s what we start to touch on in the background.”

The Flash: 5x08 - "What's Past Is Prologue" Gallery 1 of 11

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Could Thawne have turned over a new leaf during his incarceration? It’s possible, and as we left the show, Nora had just discovered that Eobard had concealed his role in killing her grandmother from her, so he’s certainly got a lot of explaining to do.

The interviewer also spoke to star Tom Cavanagh about reprising his season 1 part, and here’s what the actor said about it:

“I always think if you’re fortunate enough to be on a long-running TV show, maybe you don’t necessarily have to reinvent but it’s best not to get too staged in, you know, what you present to the viewership because I think they know you know an occasional ignition in one way or another. I think that with taking the classic villain, keeping him the classic villain, but showing a different error or different side or different aspect, if you will, with it was enjoyable.”

The Flash will return to The CW on January 15th, 2019, and it seems that the best of this season may be yet to come.