What does Barry Allen’s goofy yet cryptic message mean on The Flash?

By Nick Tylwalk | Oct 11, 2017

The Flash -- "The Flash Reborn" -- Image Number: FLA401a_0151b.jpg -- Pictured (L-R) Jesse L. Martin as Detective Joe West, Candice Patton as Iris West and Grant Gustin as Barry Allen -- Photo: Katie Yu/The CW -- ÃÂ© 2017 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved. /

Surely, the message that Barry Allen carried with him from the Speed Force will pay off later this season, but it’s hard to figure out how.

Note: This article contains fairly heavy spoilers for the season 4 premiere of The Flash, “The Flash Reborn.” Consider yourself forewarned!

All summer long, the big drama for The Flash was how long it would take the team to retrieve Barry Allen from the Speed Force, where he willingly journeyed during the season 3 finale in order to save it from tearing up multiple Earths. The answer? Not long.

Barry was rescued thanks to some techno-wizardry by Cisco Ramon and the returning Caitlin Snow before the halfway point of the premiere. That’s in keeping with the fast pace of previous cliffhangers, as even the complete rewriting of time in Flashpoint was resolved in just one hour (albeit with lingering permanent effects).

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But Barry wasn’t quite in his right mind when Team Flash first got to talk to him. Not only was he spouting gibberish as a result of being exposed to the non-linear experience of time inside the Speed Force — which may not be gibberish after all, but perhaps instead are hints at the future — he spent a lot of time writing weird symbols on any available surface.

Cisco eventually deciphered Barry’s code, because that’s what he does. However, what he discovered wasn’t something profound at all, but rather a simple message: “This house is bitchin'”

It was good for a chuckle in an episode that had several lighter moments, but it’s unlikely to be a throwaway line. The writers suggested as much by having the team address it with Barry toward the end of “The Flash Reborn,” though he had no idea what it meant or why he would write it.

The phrase probably isn’t a warning, as Barry has managed to send those from the future and they’ve been pretty straightforward. Many fans have noted that it doesn’t even sound like something Barry would say.

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That just deepens the mystery. Could it be Barry delivering a message on behalf of someone else trapped in the Speed Force? We know that it needed at least one speedster to maintain its equilibrium until … whatever it was that Cisco and Caitlin did, but other people could hypothetically be stuck there as well.

Maybe it’s a tease for Bart Allen, the future Kid Flash/Impulse/Flash from the comics. Almost any possibility is on the table, but it definitely stands out as a plot point that will be revisited down the road. Until we get an explanation, be on the lookout on The Flash for any house that does, indeed, seem bitchin’.