Warning: potential SPOILERS for The Flash
The Flash TV show may be showing some love to Batman Beyond with its new "schway" vocabulary, but those new hints at Nora Allen's future may have revealed the REAL reason she has been forced to change history - and save her father for the biggest battle he never got the chance to fight.
Not only does Nora's connection to the future of the DC Universe spawn new theories linking the Arrowverse to the world of Batman Beyond, but may actually answer one of the animated show's most nagging mysteries, too. But to get into that realm of rumor, research, and tin-foil-hat conspiracy theories, fans first need to understand the true meaning of the word "schway." And trust us, once we outline our heartbreaking theory... you may never watch Batman Beyond the same way again.
- This Page: The Origins of Batman Beyond's 'Schway'
- Next Page: Does Reverse-Flash WIN in Nora's Future?
Nora Brings Future Slang To The Flash
The main slang terms added to the Flash mythology with the arrival of Nora are "grife" and "schway," and both are some of the show's best Easter Eggs to date. In the case of the former, "grife" has its roots in the Legion of Super-Heroes. By the time the 30th Century rolls around and the future heroes organize into their most well known society, "grife" becomes one of the foremost curse words shouted when a plan takes a turn for the worse.
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Fans can theorize about the ways that Nora would pick it up... especially if her time-hopping, universe-altering father wasn't around to bring her face to face with the likes of Saturn Girl, or Lightning Lad (whom Nora also namedrops in her first appearance). But the mystery of the word "schway" is easier for fans to identify... the clue it may offer about Nora, Iris, and the Arrowverse's future, however, will be easier to miss.
The Meaning of "Schway"
For many fans watching the first and subsequent episodes of The Flash Season 5, the first use of the word "schway" to describe something that appears "cool" will be instantly recognized as a nod to Batman Beyond. The animated series (and later comic book) set far into the future of DC's current universe, where an elderly Bruce Wayne trains a teenage Batman introduced the term "schway" serving the same function. But the show never actually explained the origins of the word, or why it existed as one of the only made-up terms distinguishing the Beyond future of Neo-Gotham from the current version.
Fortunately, a mystery that glaring does come with a massive clue. In developing their future city and style, the creators of Batman Beyond turned to some of the most well-known films to ever make use of a future, cyberpunk-ish aesthetic - Blade Runner chief among them. And just like Ridley Scott's combination of Western/American visuals with those of an Asian metropolis, Batman Beyond's skyscrapers were marked with as many Chinese (even Cyrillic) characters as English ones.
So if you pose the question "what does 'shway' mean?" to someone familiar with Chinese languages specifically, they'll be quick to tell you that it looks and sounds like the standardized Mandarin word "shuài" - typically meaning "nice" or "handsome." A perfectly believable evolution of American and Chinese citizens and their vocabulary.
So where does the clue towards Nora's secret, or the hint that "schway" may actually mean trouble, if the timeline in which The Flash takes place eventually evolved into that of Batman Beyond? Well, as we mentioned before, hardly any other Chinese terms or characters are featured prominently in the Batman Beyond series or the comics. But the one fans have never missed - and which has no actual explanation - is the Chinese word and character huang.
Or as it's translated to in English... Yellow.
Page 2 of 2: Batman Beyond's Future Suggests... Reverse-Flash Wins?
Batman Beyond's Mysterious 'Yellow' Monolith
The fusion of Chinese language and characters into the future of Gotham will come as a surprise for some readers, but certainly not those that have actually watched a substantial amount of episodes of the show. Because the show's creators waste no time in making that point known to viewers. In fact, as the skyline of Neo-Gotham emerges from fog in the show's opening title sequence, one massive Chinese character is literally the first thing they see. It's so dominant in frame than if the show were screened for unfamiliar readers of standardized Chinese, one could mistake it for the actual title of the show (see above).
So, what business - presumably a major part of the story and its fictional future - does this symbol represent? We couldn't tell you. And neither will watching the show. All we do know, thanks to an extensive search of Chinese characters, is that the massive logo-like character emblazoned on this even larger structure is 黄 - spelled in romanized Mandarin as "huang." At a moment's glance, the pronunciation of the word may seem like a Mandarin approximation of the word "Wayne," and therefore a clever detail among the animators. But Bruce Wayne's company (merged with another empire) is shown to have an English name and insignia - plus huang is actually pronounced closer to the surname "Wong" than "Wayne."
The real meaning, then, must come from what the word huang actually represents. And that is where The Flash's growing connection to Batman Beyond become downright sinister for theorizing fans. Because that symbol looming over Neo-Gotham... means "yellow."
Nora Allen's Secret Tied To Reverse-Flash (Again)?
When it comes to the shared universe and altering timelines of a show like The Flash, there are things you do, and things you DON'T do. And one of the things that the writers don't get to do is make any allusion to "yellow" without fans placing it under the microscope. Not since showing a yellow blur killing Barry Allen's mother in the pilot episode, and later introducing Barry's greatest nemesis as "The Man in the Yellow Suit." In the realm of DC speedsters, the color yellow is the mark of the Devil himself - otherwise known to fans as Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash.
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The pigment's legacy proved so strong in the TV show that Zoom- the villain who followed in Thawne's footsteps as the second Reverse-Flash - was given a black suit, as opposed to his yellow facsimile of Thawne's. So whether the minds guiding the newest season of The Flash have intended it or not, making so strong a connection to the future of DC's Universe now gives the opening to Beyond a new lens through which to view it (as oblivious to yellow's meaning for Flash as Nora's mention of "schway" to Terry McGinnis or Bruce Wayne). And now that "Sherloque Wells" has raised suspicions about Nora's story, this massive red-- yellow flag may be a clue to her true motivations.
After all, the future newspaper showing The Flash vanished and stayed missing for twenty-five years effectively confirms that the show's Barry Allen goes missing in a version of Crisis on Infinite Earths. And while the original report suggested Flash and Reverse-Flash took eachother out in the incident, the report from the future adds one notable detail: rumors of "Reverse Flash leading an army of 'shadow demons.'" That's certainly one way of describing the Time Wraiths who punish timeline-changers. They pursued Thawne before... but could he eventually have led them against Barry, leaving himself to become more powerful in Nora's future?
To go any further into this theory is impossible, given how sketchy and complicated Eobard Thawne's mere existence has become in the flood of time travel, reality-changing, and "time remnant" mythology. We'll leave that to the fans who, like us, suspect that Nora may have returned to save her father... so his greatest enemy can't reign unchecked in her own future.
Now, we can only wait and see if Nora Allen's motives are that personal for Barry, or another strange plot has driven her to pull her father back into existence.
The Flash airs Tuesdays @8pm on The CW.