History Headscratchers / TheFlash2014

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New entries on the bottom. '''Spoilers''', naturally.

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder:Knocked off mask]]
* How did Barry's mask get knocked off in the fight with Mardon? It managed to stay on as he ran without problems, and yet suddenly it gets knocked back.
** Perhaps his own momentum was pressing it against his face and nose so forcefully, when he ran at his absolute maximum speed, that he had to remove it himself to be able to breathe.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Speed mechanics]]
* This may be long-winded, but I'm confused as to how exactly Flash's superspeed actually works in this series. You see, in pretty much every depiction of superspeed ever (e.g. the original Spider-Man films, ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', Days of Future Past), from the superfast character's point of view, the character is shown moving at normal speed while everything else around them either moves in slow motion or stops completely. This makes sense since the normal application of superspeed extends to the user's entire body, as they would have to perceive the world on a faster level than everyone else in order to react to the environment around them at that speed. We get a brief glimpse of this in the pilot, but after that, from his viewpoint, everything else moves at superspeed as well. So which is it? And if he does see everything that way, how on earth does he react to anything? Would he have to train his body to move before he could even think about it?
** RuleOfPerception. They do slow motion when they need to show what's going on (the coffee shop and when Flash rescues the biker from the cab), but they prefer to show how fast he's moving, which boils down to blurring either him or the environment. When we need to see him, we get the blurred environment.
** FWIW, the blurring effect when he runs isn't that different from how RealLife tiger beetles, the fastest animals on Earth when adjusted for scale, can't see clearly when they're running full-speed: they move too fast for their eyes and brains to receive and process visual information about whatever's near them before they've already passed it. Barry presumably faces the same problem when he moves in a straight line at maximum speed, so ''has'' to slow down somewhat if he's got obstacles to navigate around or people to interact with.
** In episode 10, Wells mentions that Barry is getting better at reacting to stimuli at superspeed. It seems like while his mind is sped up, it's at a different rate from his body. Which makes sense; otherwise running from Central City to Starling would have taken a couple days from his perspective.
** His perception still needs to match his physical speed. If he ran so fast but couldn't tell what was in front of him he'd explode from the kinetic energy whenever he ran into something. Taking this into consideration it would still take, from his perspective, days to run that distance.
** From Wild Mass Guessing, Perhaps Barry's Speed has nothing to do with velocity or running, notice a general LikeRealityUnlessNoted physics edition that goes on whenever he "runs". Possibly what's actually happening is that the exotic matter gave him the mutate ability of an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive Alcubierre]] [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warp_drive drive]].
** Sometimes we see things from his eyes, sometimes from the camera behind him. In general, when you're running, things in your peripherals blur while whatever is ahead is in focus.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Multiplex footage]]
* When Multiplex robs the gun store, why is only one of him seen on the security footage? Barry notes from the multiple sets of footprints that there were six robbers, obviously indicating that he used his clones for the robbery, so why weren't they in the video?
** He shot the camera a few moments later. The other clones probably came in after he shot it.
** Or, he budded them off after he shot out the camera to confuse people. The cops only saw one guy until Barry pointed out the multiple foot tracks.

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[[folder:Multiplex clothes]]
* How did the homemade Multiplex clone have the same clothes?
** [[ComicBook/FantasticFour Unstable molecules?]]
** This version of Multiplex implicitly buds stem-cell based duplicates, so TechnicallyNakedShapeshifter?
** It's possible he can replicate, not only his own cells, but any organic cells. That means that, as long as his clothes were made of cotton, he'd be able to replicate them as well.
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[[folder: Danton Black's ability to clone inorganic matter]]
* I'm fine with Danton Black being able to duplicate his living (skin, blood, nervres, bones, etc...) and non-living tissue (hair, nails). However how can he clone inorganic matter, such as the water that consists of 80% percent of his body. How about the entirely inorganic stuff like the clothes he wearing or the gun he's holding?
** He can't, obviously. It makes no sense that he could clone his clothes. This is a common problem with MesACrowd -type characters, but in this case since magic does not apparently exist in this universe the writers have little choice but to handwave it and hope viewers ignore it.
** Alternatively as this version of Multiplex implicitly buds stem-cell based duplicates that would imply that he has the RequiredSecondaryPowers of a TechnicallyNakedShapeshifter and epic ShapeshifterBaggage.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Multiplex corpses]]
* How many corpses did he leave behind? His own, I mean. Why is the newspaper report so tame?
** Perhaps Danton had the ability to absorb them back into his own body. With regards to those he left behind after he died, Barry probably just used his superspeed to remove and dispose of them before anyone besides Team Flash knew that they were there. Correct me if anything I've said contradicts any canon material; I haven't watched that episode in a while.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Central City]]
* Where is Central City? Batman works out of Gotham, Superman out of Metropolis, both New York {{expy}}s (bad/good respectively).
** So, is Central city an expy of Chicago, and Starling City one of St. Louis?
** Central City is located in Missouri according to most sources.
** In the context of both shows, Starling City has slowly had its location narrowed down to the West Coast (Felicity mentioned they're roughly 1000 miles from Las Vegas, and Robert planned to go to China by boat), and the natural side effects of filming in Vancouver (heavy coats, overcast appearance) narrowed it down to the Pacific Northwest (for what it's worth, the current comics have him operate out of Seattle.) Central City is supposed to be at least 600 miles away from Starling, and it's implied that it's further inland (maps of Central don't show any coastline, only a river running through it), so it's probably in the same general area.
** As of [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E15OutOfTime Out Of Time]] we can assume that it's a state that has both gay marriage and the death penalty by gas chamber, which reduces the number of possible locations.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Pipeline logistics]]
* So they're going to keep metahumans in the particle accelerator. Who's going to feed the prisoners? Do they get a bathroom?
** I'm sure they'll add those to the cells.
** Considering the very strong implication that Wells saw this eventuality coming, it's quite possible that they'll find that the accelerator is "conveniently" easy to modify for this purpose. The cells themselves are implausible enough (from the perspective of the team, not the audience), finding out that there are coolant pipes or whatever that they can jury-rig into waste plumbing isn't going to surprise them.
** We've seen inside Hartley Rathaway's cell and there was no toilet or sink.
** There's a website from Cisco where he has a journal talking about letting the prisoners out every so often to get something to eat and watch a movie. His goal is to try and reform them.
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[[folder:Levitating liquids]]
* Seems to be an OhCrap sign whenever it happens, but why does it happen? Is it the Speed Force? A sudden change in gravity?
** Since it happened before Prof. Zoom's attack, I'm guessing Speed Force.
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[[folder:Gas mask]]
* When they were planning to have Barry fight a bad guy whose sole power is to control poison gas, why did nobody suggest using the gas mask he pulled off back in the pilot? It might not have worked, depending on whether the Mist could exert enough force to pull the mask away from his face, but nobody even suggested it.
** Maybe running at supersonic speeds, Barry's lungs go so fast that the gas mask would run out of air too quickly?
** Gas masks only filter air. They don't require their own dedicated air supply.
** Ever try fast breathing through a straw?
** Although, Cisco did say that the suit was originally designed for fire fighters and fire fighters wear oxygen masks, not gas masks.
** He didn't seem more out of breath than the exertion merely of running would explain when he removed it in the pilot, though.
** When Barry is running super-fast he must also be breathing super-fast. All gas masks restrict breathing to a certain degree, so it's possible that Barry felt like he was being smothered while running at super speed and he couldn't stand wearing it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: What took them so long?]]
* Barry was in a coma for nine months, so why did Multiplex and The Mist wait until he woke up to go after their targets? If they had attacked at any time before Barry woke up they would have gotten away with it.
** They might have spent all that time getting used to their powers and the somewhat altered lifestyles that likely came with them. Heck, Multiplex could've been plotting his revenge for some of those months in order to get it perfect, and Peek-A-Boo herself told her boyfriend that it took her a lot of time to master her abilities.
** It's mentioned that there have been freak weather occurrences for months; apparently the Mist has been active for a while, it's just now someone (Barry) is finally in a position to realize what's actually happening.
** Given it took Barry, who has a HealingFactor, nine months to recover from becoming a Metahuman, its possible the others didn't develop their powers to a usable degree until some time after the particle accelerator explosion.
** In the pilot, Barry does some research and finds out that all kinds of strange things have been happened in the nine months he was in a coma. So presumably, there were dozens of crimes committed by metahumans, except, either nobody noticed them, or the people who noticed kept quiet because they thought they were seeing things or they knew nobody would believe them. As of episode 6, the Flash has for the most part kept his existence (and the existence of other metahumans) a secret from the wider world, so it's more than likely the other metahumans have been successfully doing the same.
** It depends on what happened during their transformation. Weather Wizard had broken nearly every bone in his body, while Plastique was recovering from shrapnel wounds and being experimented on by Eisling. On the other hand, Everyman was framing people only a short time after the particle accelerator explosion.
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[[folder:Iron Heights]]
* Why are Central City's regular criminals jailed in Iron Heights, a prison located in Starling City, 600 miles away?
** It's very likely that Iron Heights isn't located in Starling City, but rather, is located in between the two cities in order to serve as a local prison to both places.
** Local? Central City is in Kansas, Starling City is somewhere in Washington or possibly California. That's like housing Texas inmates in Louisville, Kentucky.
** Have they specified that in the show? The pilot showed that the two cities were close, given Barry was able to see a sign for Starling City after accidentally running to the edge of the city, so unless its specified that the two towns are several states part, so far it appears they're located not far from one another.
** Oliver says that they're 600 miles apart which, in the grand scheme of things, isn't that far. Depending on how you drive it, it's roughly the distance between Seattle and Boise, Idaho. They could also be even closer together in terms of a straight line, and 600 miles is in terms of miles travelled through long, twisting, winding roads (that area of the US is quite mountainous). It's entirely possible that Central and Starling are in the same state, and Iron Heights is some kind of state prison where the worst of the worst are sent.
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[[folder:Armored truck guards]]
* Why did the people driving the armored truck immediately leave their vehicle, thus putting themselves at the mercy of Snart's crew?
** Didn't they get pulled out of it against their will?
** The criminals used a tow truck running in reverse to pick up the back end of the armored car. This is a pretty good feat since special tow trucks are usually needed for vehicles that heavy, and the driver would have to have been pretty oblivious not to be scanning his mirrors or noticing the tow truck backing into him and the guys on motorcycles. Proper protocol is to radio for police assistance while trying to get away.
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[[folder:Barry's day job]]
* So I get HollywoodScience and all, but according to ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' canon, Barry's an assistant, not even a full-fledged CSI tech. Yet he seems to have his own lab/office area. Who is he assisting, anyway? There are no other CSI techs. A city the size that Central City is supposed to be would have CSI techs dedicated to fingerprinting, bloodwork, fibres, et cetera, but the show only shows Barry doing...pretty much everything. [[ArsonMurderandJaywalking Also, Barry doesn't even have a cool CSI windbreaker.]] Which he probably needs, given how young he looks.
** It's possible they mean assistant in terms of an internship, meaning he does whatever anybody tells him to. Maybe they gave him his own work space simply so he can stay out of everybody's way as he does the grunt work nobody else wants to do as it gets dumped in his lap (he was working with a busted centrifuge, so maybe his office is full of other people's castoffs). Also, it's possible Joe keeps requesting Barry personally (he's already ran interference a couple of times to prevent Barry getting fired when Barry shows up late or shoves his foot in his mouth).
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[[folder:Innocent bystanders]]
* I'm sure it's probably already been explained in the comics, but whenever Barry pulls innocent bystanders out of the way of a bullet/Snart's cold gun/whatever, how is he able to do that without the other person feeling like they just got hit by a speeding train?
** The Speed Force, presumably, which allows him to rapidly accelerate and decelerate objects that he's in contact with. Really, every time you see wonky physics, just assume that it's the Speed Force.
** One of the Flash's oft forgotten powers is the ability to "lend" speed to others for a short time. Barry is presumably doing this unconsciosly when he drags a person or object along with him.
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[[folder: Barry's secret identity]]
* Even if he is locked up, why did Barry reveal his secret identity to a psycho thug like Girder? It's called a secret for a reason! If and when these guys get out, they are going to zero in on Barry now.
** It admittedly does lead to the disturbing implication that Barry and the STAR Labs team have basically sentenced Girder, and all the other metahuman inmates, to life imprisonment, without a trial.
** Most likely, the idea of them escaping just hasn't crossed Barry's mind; so far, supervillains are still a new thing, and none have proven to be able to escape, so he's just GenreBlind on this issue. There's also the fact that Barry just ''really'' wanted to rub in defeating him. Its definitely a WhatAnIdiot moment, but a pretty understandable one for anyone who's ever been bullied and wants to show off their success to a bully years later. Of course, there's also the fact that, now that he knows how to beat Girder, he's probably just over-confident and isn't worried about fighting him again because he thinks he can just do the MegatonPunch again.
** Whelp, Girder's dead now, so it's a moot point.
** Wells probably chose him for the distraction (instead of Nimbus) because he knew Barry's identity.

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[[folder:Barry and Eddie]]

* Why did Barry reveal [[spoiler: himself as the Flash to Eddie]]?
** In the scene immediately following the reveal Eddie is still having second thoughts about lying to Iris to convince her to give up the search. Presumably Joe and Barry agreed that getting Eddie to both comply with their plan to keep Iris from pursuing her investigation and also not starting one of his own up (if he dies Iris is not only heartbroken but redoubles her efforts making it a literal worst case scenario) was to come clean.
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[[folder: Just Shoot Clock King!]]
* Okay, he had some good reflexes, fine, but there was an entire police station full of cops there! Why the hell did they only get up one at a time instead of everybody standing up and filling him full of lead? I mean, to quote Jim Gordon: 'There's 50 cops in here. Try something.'.
** According to Clock King there were more like eight or nine cops. And look what happened to Eddie. They might not have wanted to take another risk.
** It's relatively late at night when this happened, with only the people on the late shift present, most of whom either had their guns holstered or didn't have them on them while he had the gun on him and was pointing it at them. By the time it would have taken to draw their guns and fire, he'd likely have either shot them, or shot someone else, which they probably didn't want. There's also the fact that, as police officers, they would have wanted to take him down alive and avoid killing him, while he didn't care about who he had to kill, so he'd be OK with just killing any who stood up without a moment's notice.
** And after all, Clock King is all about the timing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Sending a metal man to fight a man with electric powers]]
* Why did Wells think that was ''ever'' going to work? Was it just a convenient excuse to get rid of Woodward since he knows Barry's identity?
** Yes. He told Woodward he wanted him to kill Blackout, but admits to the rest of Team Flash that he was just a distraction.
** At the time, their only other prisoner was Mist, a death row inmate. Faced with a choice, Wells decided to release the prisoner whose crimes were less severe.
** Not to mention, Mist can turn himself into...uh, mist. If Wells let him out Mist probably would have just killed him and then gone into the air vents, leaving the team to their grisly deaths.
** If the metal covered all of Girder's body, then it would form a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage Faraday Cage]], meaning his body is protected.
** Now we know how ruthless Wells really is, the first theory makes a lot more sense.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Barry get superspeed?]]
* Now in the comics, the origin is pretty straight-forward. He gets struck by lightning and doused in chemicals, giving him super-speed. MUCH later, he discovers that this incident enabled him to tap into the Speed Force (or, as per ''Flash: Rebirth'', ''created'' the Speed Force. At first glance, it appears that its pretty much the same thing on the show (albeit, the storm cloud was seeded by the particle accelerator explosion). However, since then, Barry has encountered a number of metahumans, and a common pattern seems to be that every metahuman develops powers that are in some way related to what he/she was in contact with at the time of being exposed to the fallout of the explosion. For e.g. Danton Black was working on cloning technology at the time, and so developed the power to duplicate himself; Bette Sans Souci had grenade fragments embedded in her and so developed the ability to cause explosions; Farooq was tangled in powers lines and so developed the power to manipulate electricity etc. So, by that logic, shouldn't Barry have developed, say, some kind of electricity-based powers too, since he was struck by lightning? It doesn't entirely make sense that he ended up with speed, going by the 'rules' established by the show...
** That comes back to the thing about the lightning bolt "choosing" him. Basically, the implication is that the particle accelerator let the Speed Force out into the world, and it started looking for a host, finding one in Barry.
** To some extent, Barry's powers ''are'' electricity based powers; whenever he uses his powers, there's always a crackle of electricity around him and his eyes tend to spark with electricity when he's about to do something particularly awesome. Essentially, while Blackout got the ability to drain and divert electricity, Barry got the ability to super-charge himself.
** There's another possibility: Dr. Wells/Thawne stated ''multiple'' times that he needed to recreate the Flash, and that ''everything'' he did was to make certain that happened. Therefore, he would have wanted to make ''damn'' certain that Barry got speed powers, and nothing else, from the particle accelerator explosion. Yes, what you are in proximity to determines what powers you get from exposure to the particle accelerator explosion. Wells/Thawne was either aware of this or strongly suspected it. When Wells/Thawne uses his super-speed, his blur is red. Barry's is yellow. Now, go back to the scene where Barry gets hit by the lightning bolt. Use freeze-frame and slow-motion, and you will clearly see that there is a ''red blur'' moving through the lab as Barry gets thrown backward after being struck. Wells/Thawne had Barry's lab under surveillance, he knew where Barry was, and he's easily fast enough to have sped from the particle accelerator to Barry's lab and be close enough to him when the lightning bolt struck (maybe even shoving him into the rack of chemicals) so that his speed powers would be what Barry gained from the particle accelerator. Also observe that the liquids in the lab start floating in the air before the lightning strike, which has been established as a sign that a speedster (usually Reverse-Flash) is around. Even if it wasn't Wells/Thawne, the red blur proves there ''was'' another speedster present who knew what was going on and what needed to be done. Whether that speedster is a friend or foe of Barry's remains to be seen.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Flash as a public enemy]]
* Why the hell does Eddie think the Flash is dangerous? Yeah, after getting roughed up by him it makes sense, but at the start of the episode, not so much. Unlike the Arrow, the Flash has never hurt anyone, let alone killed them, and anyone who had contact with him would be a) an unharmed criminal delivered to the hands of b) the cops, or c) innocent civilians whose lives he saved. HE PAINTS MOTELS FOR PEOPLE. WHAT IS THE DANGER HERE?
** It's BewareTheSuperman, pure and simple. Barry could do a horrific amount of damage if he ever turned evil, as his brief rage-fest showed. Toss in the fact that every other meta shown has been using their powers for evil, and you can understand his suspicion. Besides, we don't know precisely what he was asking for. He just said "task force." While now that's obviously going to include guns, that could have easily meant a bunch of cops doing research to figure out what this guy wants and whether he's a threat.
** There's also the obvious reason why Eddie is so quick to push for something to deal with him: He's jealous of Iris' obsession with him. To at least some extent, he feels threatened by this and so doesn't trust/like the Flash; combined that with the above, it makes sense he'd push for this.
** Also, when Barry is Flashing around, you often see car windows shattering en masse. Assuming that that happens to all non-reinforced glass, you're looking at many thousands of dollars of property damage more or less constantly. And that's assuming nobody is hurt from the glass suddenly flying through the air. All it takes is a bit of bad luck and some poor innocent is blinded. Particularly bad luck could lead to serious injury or death. Even if this hasn't happened yet (which seems unlikely), being concerned about the possibility is quite reasonable, particularly since there doesn't seem to be any current way of stopping the Flash.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Keeping metahumans secret]]
* Why the {{Masquerade}}? I get why Barry needs a SecretIdentity, but why keep metahumans a secret?
** A couple of reasons: 1) Letting the public know could easily result in FantasticRacism happening if they feel threatened by the Metas; 2) This will bring further scrutiny towards Wells and Star Labs as it was them who made them in the first place; 3) It might encourage the villainous Metas to stop hiding/using their powers covertly, which could put innocents at risk; 4) It could alienate the good/neutral metas and push them into joining the bad should the above FantasticRacism start; and 5) If people know that the Particle Accelerator explosion gave those it hit/effected powers, it could lead to those who know of Barry's accident to figure out he's probably a meta too.
** In addition to the above you really don't want people looking at the metas and thinking "wow that's cool I want some." Sure not everybody can build a particle accelerator in their garage but Arrow and Flash are in the same universe. Mirakuru was essentially made with WWII tech depending, in many cases kids in their garages have more power than that today. In true comic book fashion they'd probably never manage to recreate the Mirakuru but comics are also filled with tons of examples of people who might not have gotten what they were aiming at when trying to recreate a specific power set but still managed to create something extremely dangerous.
** This fear is more real when you see both Simon Stagg and Eiling. Both of them learned of the metas and showed the intention to mass produce them, and both of them have the resources to do so and are amoral enough to actually try. Do you want to give the next yahoo on a position of power the same idea?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Barry and Felicity and the accelerator]]
* Was Barry talking to Felicity on the phone as he entered his lab just before the particle accelerator exploded? The [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E1Pilot pilot]] suggests that he wasn't, but the end of the ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' episode [[Recap/ArrowS2E9ThreeGhosts "Three Ghosts"]] suggests that he was.
** See Retcon on the main page; its apparent that they decided to change the scene in the pilot thanks to the decision to forgo using Arrow episodes as PoorlyDisguisedPilot sources.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Barry and Team Arrow]]

* How did Oliver, Felicity and Diggle find out that Barry was in a coma when Joe and Iris didn't know them and the CCPD didn't know what Barry was doing in Starling City?
** Felicity probably called Barry and ended up getting in touch with either Joe or someone else close to Barry (possibly Iris) who informed her. Or maybe she called the CCPD and found out from one of his colleagues. It's even possible it might have made the papers - someone getting struck by lightning (on the day a particle accelerator explodes no less) in the middle of a forensics lab is more than likely to get ''some'' media coverage.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:"I think the lightning chose you."]]

* Doesn't Oliver's belief that the lightning "chose" Barry seem really out of character? Oliver has never been a particularly religious or spiritual person. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would believe that a bolt of lightning was guided by destiny or some supernatural force.
** Well there are a few ways we can look at it. The First, Oliver was talking metaphorically, like he thinks it was an accident but it couldn't have happened to the more perfect person for the job so "the lightning bolt chose him". The Second, didn't Barry tell Oliver about what happened to his mom? Maybe Oliver was thinking that the powers Barry gain will allow him to prevent that from happening to anyone else. The Third, Oliver was speaking poetically, after all it seems like he was trying to inspire Barry to inspire people.
** Or maybe it's just some of Ollie's HiddenDepths.
** Then again, it may have accidentally foreshadowed Oliver's experience with the supernatural. By that point the only metahumans he's had experience with were supersoldiers, not random mutations. Magic, however, sounds like the perfect thing to explain lightning choosing somebody to empower.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Flash vs Arrow]]

* Am I the only one to think the fight in "Flash vs Arrow" ended rather decisively in Ollie's favor? Indeed, while both fighters got in good shots, it ended with the Arrow having a good hold on Barry. And do we remember Season 1 Ollie's [[NeckSnap second favourite method for murdering people]]?
** I think you could make an argument that it was a solid tie. Ollie only had him in that hold for the couple of seconds needed for the machine to un-whammy Barry's brain. Had the fight gone on past that I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that Barry could have escaped the hold before he got his neck snapped. And I think Flash fans could reasonably argue that the whammy effect was clouding Barry's thinking to the point where Oliver actually had a slim advantage. All in all it's just one opinion versus another, so it seems prudent to call the fight a draw.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Barry's strength]]
* How is Barry able to carry all those people so easy all the time?
** He may not be ''super''-strong, but his muscles would probably be more powerful than the average human either ''from'' all that running or [[RequiredSecondaryPower so he can run]].
** The [[MemeticMutation lightning giving him abs]] would imply the latter.
** In the recent ''Series/{{Arrow}}'' episode, "The Brave and the Bold", he was able to do the salmon ladder at SuperSpeed, so he's certainly stronger than he looks.
** He lifted with his legs.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sweating out poison]]
* When exactly did Barry learn he could vibrate/sweat out poison. The battle with the Mist would have been a joke if he'd known he could do that and if he hadn't known he could do it he would have lost to Arrow. And not even in a Batman always has kryptonite sort of way. That would have been a clean and legit victory.
** Who says he knew beforehand? He could have just been grasping at straws and it happened to work.
** I believe he was actually metabolizing the poison, which Barry knows he can do- it's the same process that keeps him from getting drunk. The gas coming off him was just visual shorthand.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Bette Sans Souci/Plastique]]
* Everything she touches is turned into an explosive, and she cannot control her power. So, how is she able to change clothes, eat, go to the bathroom, etc.?
** I think that she has to concentrate ''really'' hard. It is possible that her power only began to rise recently.
** Her powers must be at least somewhat controllable. Notice that in one scene they give her a pair of gloves so she won't touch anything in STAR Labs.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Flash and the Red Sky crisis]]
* Why everyone seems think the Flash disappearance in 2024 is linked to the Red Sky Crisis? It seems to be to complete different articles. For what we can read, 'Red Sky' isn't used in the Flash article and vice versa.
** The article is titled "Flash Missing Vanishes in Crisis" so it is definitely not two different articles. There is a secind article titled "Red Skies Vanish" and a third titled "Wayne Tech/Queen Inc Merger Complete", but there is no doubt the Flash is missing due to something he did in the Crisis.
** Because, generally, if there's some kind of 'Crisis' going on, superheroes tend to get involved? If a hero disappears during the time that something big like ''the sky turning red'', there's a good chance its linked.
** Almost every DC "Crisis" involves a Flash dying.
** More specifically, the [[ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths original Red Sky crisis]] in the comics had Barry Allen making a memorable HeroicSacrifice. Since the series is heavily inspired by the comics, it's a common guess that the reason he is missing is because he sacrificed himself to avert the Red Sky crisis, just like in ''Crisis on Infinite Earths''.
** Flip through a few DC crises- Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Flashpoint. The sky almost always turns red when major events are happening in the DCU; it's probably got something to do with the Bleed between the walls of the different universes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Speed Force and computers]]
* Okay, it seems to be generally agreed upon that the way Flash can grab people at eight hundred miles an hour without slamming into them like a brick wall, and set them down without them skipping like a stone is an effect of the Speed Force. Does that also effect computers? In 'Revenge of the Rogues' they come upon project F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. which is stated to be over eight hundred pages. Even acknowledging that lots of it is probably references and schematics Barry reading that entire article over a period of five seconds requires the computer to be keeping up with Barry.
** Eh, it wouldn't be that difficult. Most of it would be text, which loads faster, and this was the same computer they use for all their hacking and crime-fighting, so it would be pretty well built all around.
** Really, he might cause some strain on the keyboard, but that's probably all.
** Actually...you are correct. While I'm sure that the processing could be fast enough (and mayyybe the input, let's just assume that the keyboard and mouse inputs could be detected as discrete inputs at Barry's speed) there is definitely no way that the actual monitor would be able to do so. Computer monitors generally run at 60hz, meaning a maximum of 60 frames per second before getting visual anomalies. This would limit Barry to one page per second, which would cap his read speed at 300 pages in five minutes. This would double if they had, say, 120hz monitors, but that's not 800 pages. I guess it could work if more than one page was displayed per screen.
** Slight correction to the math here: 60 Frames per second means 60 complete refreshes of the screen per second, meaning he could theoretically see 60 pages per second, or 3600 pages per minute. If the screen were a higher refresh rate--say, 240Hz, easily doable with current high-end displays--that would allow him to clearly read all 800 pages in less than 5 seconds.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Pied Piper]]
* Why was the Pied Piper imprisoned in STAR Labs (twice)? The containment cells are for metahumans, but his powers are only technological, like Captain Cold. So why was Captain Cold sent to prison but not the Pied Piper ?
** Maybe after Captain Cold and Heatwave escaped police custody so easily just last episode, STAR Labs thought that Pied Piper had a similar contingency plan.
** He also knows the identities of Flash's associates. A lot of people in prison would like to know that.
** For better or worse, he is also a part of the STAR Labs family, making this an internal matter.
** It should also be noted that the Piper has cochlear implants that give him super-hearing, whereas Captain Cold is just a dude with a gun. It's easy to separate Cold from his cold gun. Not so easy to separate the Pied Piper from his ears.
** Plus, considering how easily Cold and Heatwave were able to escape police custody, it's highly likely that if they are ever caught again they will be put in the pipeline as well.
** ^That does raise an interesting secondary question. Now that the authorities in Central City are aware of the existence of metahumans, have they now officially endorsed the Pipeline as a prison for metahumans?
** The authorities don't know about the Pipeline, except Joe, who clearly approves.
** As of Season 2, Iron Heights now has a metahuman wing, rendering the pipeline unnecessary. Even before the end of Season 1, the authorities were made aware of the pipeline's existence. As for Joe, he sees the necessity of the pipeline but doesn't truly approve of its use.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Piper's name]]

* Why is Hartley called the Pied Piper anyway?
** He liked the story and name?
** Plus he has some similarities with the story's piper; first of all, his special abilities come from sound manipulation, and second, he sees himself as the Piper, and Wells as the Hamelin's people. Hartley, like the piper, offered Wells a service (working for him) and in the end he was betrayed by his employer (getting fired, and threatened with ruining his career), so Hartley gets RevengeByProxy, using his sonic abilities to attack those close to Wells (Barry) just like the story's piper went after the town's children. Not to mention that he has a PunnyName (Hartley 'Rat-Away') that fits perfectly with the story.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Peak-a-Boo's Powers]]
* It's instantly obvious that nobody, including herself, has a particularly firm grip on how her powers function, and the explanation Wells gives doesn't even make sense. She very clearly does not need line of sight toe teleport, there are multiple cases of her teleporting around corners or backwards or originally teleporting ''in her sleep'' and appearing in strange places. And Clay Barker was clearly not in sight during the finale. Dr. Wells somehow comes to the conclusion that line of sight is necessary because of the way her cells react to light. That's right up there with seeing a person getting a tan and thinking you could blind fold them and prevent the process.
** I think it's best to assume those scenes you mention were a mistake. The writers meant for her powers to work on line of sight but they didn't plan their scenes or proof-read their script as well as they should have.
** As for Wells figuring out her weakness, let's not forget he has knowledge from the future. It's entirely possible that he recognized Peek a Boo's power and remembered her weakness or just used Gideon to look it up, then BS'ed some explanation to keep the others happy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why is Harrison Wells in a wheelchair?]]
* Why would Harrison Wells be in a wheelchair, if [[spoiler:he could walk]]? The only reason why I can think of why he is in it would be he can't control the speed force, and even that doesn't make much sense.
** I think the point is not so much he needs the wheelchair so much as he wants people to think he needs one. We know he doesn't use it at home by himself and we've only seen him fall specifically when he started to run and then the Speed Force failed him. The chair is nothing more than a tactic to get people to underestimate him.
** Also: he was injured during the explosion of the accelerator. It's possible that he has healing factor like Barry, but slower-acting. So, he gets a normally debilitating injury, is put in the wheelchair... then, over the next weeks or months, he heals completely, but now he can't stop using the wheelchair because he would reveal that there's something weird about him.
** The show later explains that the wheelchair is a kind of charging device for Wells' speed.
** Plus, when Barry inevitably starts trying to solve the mystery of the Man in the Yellow Suit, who could possibly be under less suspicion than the guy in the wheelchair?
** Sympathy gambit - yeah, Harrison Wells may have wrecked the city and given dozens of people dangerous mutations, but he suffered too, cut him some slack! Plus, it's a convenient way to constantly charge himself with tachyons and maintain his speed. Without it, he'd either have to keep popping into the Time Vault to charge up (which would be an oddity that drew suspicions), or wear something else that would probably be conspicuous.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Firestorm]]
* We know that Ronnie's body has been completely vaporized by the Particle Accelerator, and his radiation collided against Professor Martin Stein's body that's holding the F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. matrix. So how come the FusionDance results in Martin's mind inside Ronnie's body instead of the other way around? It wouldn't be a stretch to assume that Ronnie's mind is trapped inside of an old man's body.
** They ''thought'' he was vaporized. He was actually changed into a weird non-physical entity that merged with Stein. Since the merge was imperfect, natural selection prevailed, and the stronger body (Ronnie's) got the stronger mind (Stein's).

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Firestorm death of old age]]

* It's heavily implied in ''Fallout'' that if Ronnie or Stein dies the other does too. Stein is already pretty old so what happens to Ronnie when Stein dies of old age?
** It's possible that the connection provides Stein with added life force through Ronnie, so the aging process for him may be slowed or slightly reversed. In that case, they would eventually become the same age, and it wouldn't really matter as much. We also have to consider that they are essentially a nuclear reactor and could be elongating their natural life spans every time they fuse or even as a trickle process when separated.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Martin Stein and Wells]]
* Why did Wells [[spoiler: willingly hand Stein over to Eiling?]]
** My guess is that it was ultimately to engineer the re-merger of Firestorm for an as-of-yet unexplained reason, or at least to make them both leave town (which they ultimately did). Given that Stein was safely rescued in the end (and Wells, when in front of the others, encouraged his rescue), the whole scenario was seemingly pointless.
** Another thought: it's also possible that he knew Stein was Barry's main source of knowledge about time travel, and because he didn't like this, he wanted to get Stein out of the picture in any way he could.
** It wasn't about Firestorm, it was about Eiling. Eiling knew about STAR Labs' involvement with the Flash and Firestorm, and would have found a way to raid the place sooner rather than later. Failing that, he could have just gone straight to their homes. By cooperating with him and then getting the others to rescue Firestorm, Wells managed to keep two powerful heroes on his side, without needlessly antagonizing Eiling or the military. The big question is what they'll think [[spoiler:since a speedster kidnapped Eiling from a base. Hopefully the cameras were good enough to see that it was the Reverse-Flash, not the Flash]].

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Stein telling the others about Wells]]

* Why didn't Stein tell the others about how [[spoiler:Wells handed him over to Eiling]]? Even if the drug made him forget the circumstances leading up to his capture, shouldn't he look into ''that'', and combine that with Wells' false story of the military arriving at STAR Labs on their own and taking Stein by force?
** You'll note that Wells pretends to be concerned for Stein as the drugs are taking effect. He's not doing a very good job of it, but any discrepancies in his acting will be brushed off by Stein since he's too dizzy to focus properly. And it's unclear what precisely Wells told the others. He could have told a very careful version of the truth: "Stein fell unconscious after drinking, and then Eiling showed up. He must have known somehow."
** Or "Eiling somehow managed to drug the booze and I was just lucky I hadn't had a drink yet when he burst in."
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Wells [[spoiler:being in two places at once.]]]]
* Ok, so "Out of Time" reveals that Wells is so fast that he can create a "speed mirage" and essentially be in two places at once, but even if one accepts that, how can his "speed mirage" be in the Reverse-Flash costume while Wells himself is not (or vice-versa) in "The Man In The Yellow Suit?" I mean, even if he can move so fast as to create an after image, it should look the same as him, right?
** Wells rigged the containment field with a recorded hologram of his "Reverse Flash" persona. Wells rehearsed it as a way to throw off any suspicions on him.
** The thing that's the most confusing is the moment where Wells speaks and turns his head at normal human speeds WHILE his "speed mirage" is still standing there because HE'S STILL RUNNING BACK AND FORTH. That doesn't seem like it would work unless he was literally speaking a fraction of a syllable of each word each time he was in that spot, before running back to the second spot and back to speak another... What? Also, I confirmed, he WAS still making the speed mirage, because once he finished turning his head and speaking, he turns and walks away from the mirage, with the afterimage falling back into place with him to show that he had still been doing it.
** Just found the moment. "It's an afterimage." (Looks over at afterimage). "A speed mirage if you will." (Turns and walks away, afterimage fuses back into him).
** Its possible that after he ran fast enough to make the after-image, he actually stopped, but was still visible because of the delayed effect of what he was doing. The fact it faded as he was talking was possibly just timing on his part.
** He's just so fast that he kept putting on the Reverse-Flash costume and taking it off over and over.
** So, Wells rigged the forcefield with a recording of him as the Reverse Flash, then went into the room and responded to the recording in a way that made it look like a conversation, then superspeeded himself into the containment field and mimicked being beaten to a pulp by the Reverse Flash by "miraging" between himself and Reverse Flash so fast that he was able to punch himself and then steal the tachyon device, take out the cops and fight Barry while also maintaining the Wells persona on the ground in the generator. Is that how it works?
** Or it could be that he made the recording of the Reverse-Flash, then used the mirage to fight himself in the cage, then when the field was turned off to save him it tripped a pre-programmed hologram of a beat-up Wells on the floor while Wells (in his Reverse-Flash suit) sped out, took out the cops, fought Barry, stashed the tachyon device in his hidden lab, and then came back and turned off the hologram and took its place on the floor. The only miraging necessary would be when the Reverse-Flash was beating up Wells.
** Alright, there is SOO much about this reveal that has me banging my head into a wall right now: Based on the events that led up to Wells's confession to Cisco, here's how the writers want me to think things played out in STAR Labs the night the tachyon device was stolen:
###Cisco comes up with the idea for the force field trap, Wells and Allen secure the device as bait.
###Wells goes behind Cisco's back to sabotage the device such that, when it gets turned on, all it does is project a hologram of a force field with a man in a yellow suit inside of it, which plays out its half of a conversation between itself and Wells, right up until the moment it snatched him out of the chair and beats him senseless.
###Wells explains that the person beating him senseless was, in fact, himself: a so-called "mirage" created by moving at such superhuman speeds he appears to be in two places at once. Now the comic book explanation is that the after images are physical constructs created from the matter generated by their speed from the connection to the speed force. But the show doesn't seem to be going with that. Ergo, there is only one Wells creating the illusion of being in two spots.
** If it is explained that the "speed mirage" has a type of sentience or can in some way act apart from its source, it would clear this all up. Because that would simply mean Wells set up the Reverse Flash mirage to beat him, steal the device and fight Barry before running off.
** As others have pointed out above, this explanation requires an absurd amount of extra work on Wells part to maintain the façade, from leaving behind a beaten senseless version of himself for others to tend to, to being able to leave the room at all, to the mirage and Wells looking completely different. This leaves me considering the possibility that everything he said to Cisco was a lie. But then that leaves me with why? After going back and watching the Man in Yellow again, I'm convinced that the two Reverse-Flash theory is correct. The body structure of the person beating up Wells inside the containment field is larger than he is by quite a lot. There is no way either of them is the after image of the other. If this was the reveal you were going with, then you put an actor inside the suit who at least somewhat resembles Tom Cavanagh. So the logical explanation for why he would lie would be to conceal the presence of another Reverse-Flash, thus he went in and rigged the containment field with a hologram recording after the events of that night so that he could perpetuate this lie if it were discovered. Except then he ''kills'' the person he is explaining this to. Which means the only people left who heard his explanation would be the audience. Why bother concocting this plot to dismiss the two Reverse-Flashes theory if you are going to kill the only person who could work that out. And furthermore, Mr Wells, if you really ''were'' at The Allens's house that night fifteen years ago, like you claim you were, then why did the DNA we found not match up to you? It just really feels like there are some huge cheats in the narrative here that are only happening for the benefit of the audience.
** The DNA thing is obvious: He switched out the DNA in his file for someone else. Maybe the original Wells (assuming such a man existed).
** Also about the DNA thing: If Eobard is from the 25th century then modern DNA tests might not be able to properly identify the DNA in any way, therefore giving an "unknown" result.
** Recall that when Barry asks him about the "other Barry" that he sees early on in the episode, Wells calls it a speed mirage. At the end of the episode, we find out that this other Barry is in fact a second version of himself traveling into the past. So, using the same nomenclature, it's possible that Wells sent a second version of himself into the past to furiously beat up his "normal timeline" self (or vice-versa)...similar to how Adult Barry and Kid Barry co-existed on the night of Nora Allen's murder. [[MindScrew OK, now my head hurts.]]
** In the PaleyFest trailer [[spoiler: it shows a brief shot of Barry fighting himself. If that also constitutes a "speed echo", then perhaps Wells, maybe even from a day after the theft of the Tachyon Device, traveled back in time and attacked himself. So, in essence, the "echo" was actually himself from a day later, as opposed to being an echo from that very night.]]
** Ok, in a way, that makes sense, but then that just raises more questions. The whole reason that Wells is obsessed with the Flash is because he needs Barry's speed to allow him to travel forward in time, which would imply that he's not fast enough to travel through time at all. And if he ''is'' fast enough to break through the time barrier, then why is he stuck in the past? I think we're still missing something about Wells' powers and his plans, which will hopefully be expanded on later.
** Well, think about it. Einstein posited that anything that goes faster than light will go backwards in time. BACKWARDS. So how does one travel far ''forward'' in time, even with super-speed at their disposal? Wells and Barry may be able to go backward in time, but neither are yet able to fling themselves to the future.
** Traveling forward in time with relativity is actually easier than going backward -- you just move slightly slower than light. Time slows down for you so that much more time passes for the rest of the world than for you, effectively sending you into the future.
** Wells' power is shown to be sporadic, but he also explained to Barry that he would be able to go back further in time as his power and proficiency grew. It could be that Wells can travel a day or a couple hours back in time with his limited power. He also has a better understanding of what he's doing, so it's possible he knows how to use a time loop to coexist with himself by maintaining the time line where Barry displaced himself by changing the events that made him go back in time. Wells might have even known Barry would do it because there weren't two of him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: "How fast would I have to go to...?"]]
* Is it really necessary for Barry to keep asking how fast he has to go to do whatever stunt he needs to do that week? He's just wasting precious seconds doing that, and it doesn't usually seem like there would be any penalty for going ''too'' fast. Does he even have a speedometer in the suit? Why does he keep worrying about hitting exactly the right speed? Why don't they ever just say, "I don't know, just fucking floor it already!"
** Well, ''now'' we know there's a penalty for going too fast (accidental time travel), but there is another problem: Endurance. He usually needs to run very very fast for an extended period of time. Knowing how fast he needs to go would let him save some energy, while just running as fast as possible could result in him collapsing halfway through.
** It's probably mostly so the viewers know how fast he's going, and what his top speed is now. I doubt they bothered to devise an in-universe explanation.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: "To me, you've been dead for centuries."]]
* This line implies that Eobard Thawne is from ''very'' far in the future. Far enough that Barry should be dead, at least based on what we've seen so far. While Barry does have a HealingFactor, Cisco's analysis of Future!Barry's blood suggests that it doesn't prevent him from aging, at least internally. If Thawne really is from centuries in the future, it seems unlikely that he knew Barry personally, which raises the question of why he went to the trouble of travelling back through time to kill Barry.
** If we're going by the comics, then Eobard is from the 25th century. As for his interest in Barry, he's been both a Barry Allen fan, and also a scientist studying the Speed Force. If Barry's the first to really harness it in the timeline, he's a person of interest to Eobard. Plus there's a blood feud thing.
** All Cisco concluded from Future!Barry's blood was that it was from Barry as an adult, not as a child. Since Barry didn't acquire his powers until he was an adult, the blood analysis tells us nothing about how Barry's powers will affect his aging. We also don't know when Barry is going to travel back to that night. There's currently nothing in the show that rules out Future!Barry having lived for centuries ''before'' returning to that night.
** Either that or speedsters hop around time so much that it seems less fantastic to them than it really is. Wells claims here that Cisco has been dead for centuries to him, which is to say the least an odd phrase if not meant literally. In the Season 1 Finale he claims that he'll be born some hundred thirty years from then. So if all this is accurate, and Eobard has no motivation to lie in either Barry lives to be well over one hundred and fifty years (assuming he's twenty something as of the start of the series) or both he and Wells pop around time like Dr. Who.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Just grab Cold's and Heatwave's guns]]
* Why did Barry have to do the whole "cross fire " thing with Cold and Heatwave when he could have simply grabbed their guns and ended the fight in 2 seconds? He's disarmed criminals before and it shouldn't have been difficult at all.
** I'm assuming that even if Barry took away their guns, Cold and Heatwave are still dangerous criminals that have backup plans to hold the police hostage, escape and regroup. As decreed by the RuleOfCool , Barry made a high-risk-high-reward gambit by intentionally letting the guns hit him, and then letting the cross streaming knock out both Cold and Heatwave. Not only does that destroy their weapons, the police have the chance to arrest both criminals. [[spoiler: Though we know that didn't last long.]]
** Chalk it up to caution. There's no way Barry or anyone else would know if Cold or Heatwave tampered with their guns to include some kind of safety feature to prevent them from being defeated that easily. Considering how smart Cold is it's not an unreasonable assumption for them to think he did. In the comics Cold actually does have such a feature in his gun which Johnny Quick experienced first hand in the New 52 continuity.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Lisa's gold gun]]
* If anybody has Lisa's gun that can turn anything into gold, I'm pretty sure they don't need to rob banks anymore to get rich. Instead, why not just go to a garbage pile or any abandoned site and shoot any trash in sight? If they cash in the gold with enough weight, the Snart family won't ever need to commit crimes ever again.
** It's probably not really gold, but a compound that looks similar enough for her liking.
** It's probably a little obvious by now, but I don't think the Snart family are committing crimes for the money. I think they're doing it for the adrenaline rush.
** Hell, Snart outright says that during the latest episode.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: A ton of cold cases?]]
* Yes the cases have actually been solved...by Team Flash. But with Joe and Barry covering up how metahumans are committing these crimes (and not likely to 'fess up to it, what with incarcerating the metahumans in the particle accelerator), are these cases just going to end up as cold cases? And does this start affecting their performance record with the precinct?
** To some extent it likely does but remember this is the DC Verse. Even if it was a Stealth Cameo due to later legal issues Waynetech is around which makes Batman highly probable and that's just who's been shown or hinted at. One would expect that in cities that have active vigilantes that the hit the precinct comes not from the number of cold cases. They know good and well what happened but as was shown in Batman No Man's Land that cops who can't solve crimes without the help of a masked vigilante obviously aren't worth a damn no matter how tough a town they might work. In the case of the Flash there is also possibly the case that while they seem to trust him they must have IDed some of these people who just turn up missing after their battles with the Flash. Considering that Eiling has stepped in twice someone in the government may be helping in some ways.
** Any police department in a city the size of Central City is bound to have a significant number of cold cases. The few cases Team Flash has handled so far won't negatively impact the department's reputation.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Red eyes]]
* How does the Reverse Flash make those red eyes? Is that part of his suit? Is that a power of his?
** It's probably part of the suit. He has an AI integrated in somehow, after all, so glowing red eyes wouldn't be a difficult addition, and we've never seen him doing it outside the suit. Admittedly, we haven't seen him using his powers outside the suit much at all, but still.
** The red eyes are probably caused by his suit, as with his distorted voice and blurred body, considering that [[spoiler: Reverse-Flash lost his powers right after he murdered Barry's mother]] and yet his body was still vibrating and his eyes were glowing red. The costume probably has those features built in to better disguise the wearer.
** In Grodd Lives it shows that [[spoiler: they are natural when he uses his powers.]]
** Barry's eyes often glow with yellow lightning for a few moments when he's about to use his powers, Reverse-Flash's red eyes are probably a sustained version of that.
** It's similar to how Zoom is later able to turn his eyes completely black.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Isn't Wells giving away too much?]]
* Hasn't Wells been giving away too much info without anyone noticing? When Barry reported seeing "another Flash" running next to him, Wells suggested it could be a "speed mirage". Later in the episode, it's explained that "speed mirages" are when someone runs back and forth so fast that it looks like there are two of them. Since Barry wasn't going back and forth like that, why would Wells think it was a speed mirage, and why wouldn't anybody else wonder how he would know about them? Then when Wells was talking about the dangers of changing the past, shouldn't Barry have been wondering how Wells would know time travel works like that?
** Well, as for the speed mirage, Barry has absolutely no idea how it works. Wells provided a theory, Barry pointed out that it didn't make much sense (the "mirage" reacted to him), and they both shrugged and forgot about it until he time-traveled. As for Wells and time-travel, from our point of view it's obvious something is up--compare his vague "I have no idea how time travel works, here are a bunch of possibilities" in an earlier episode to "Don't screw with time or it will screw with you" in this one--but Barry is repeatedly stated to be overly trusting, especially of Wells. He was just happy to have someone he could talk to about it, and he didn't think about it. Plus, since no one else knew, it's not like Cisco could say "You know, this is sort of the exact opposite of what he said last time we discussed time travel..."
** Wells provide a few theories and then offered to work on it with Barry after Weather Wizard was captured. Barry time travels back before that happens so they didn't forget about it, the time to address it never game. It doesn't require you being 'trusting' or Wells having future knowledge for this scenario to play out as it does. I could have plenty of theories about time travel but a theory is entirely different from a fact. Think of all the shows and movies you've seen with Time Travel that all have differing sometimes radically so rules. Lets say you were 90% certain that if you met your past self you could just team up with them and 10% that if you came within a mile of yourself that the universe would be torn apart on a sub-atomic level. Do you take that gamble or move to the other side of the planet?
** But that's the point. Originally, Wells was just providing a few plausible theories, based on a lack of concrete evidence. His theories didn't sound that different from what the audience or anyone else would come up with if they haven't actually experienced it first-hand. After Barry time-traveled, Wells stopped pretending to not know what he was talking about, and flat-out told Barry "THIS is how time-travel works: You screw with time, it screws with you." His advice to follow his every motion exactly especially sounds like "I tried screwing with time once, and it screwed with me, learn from my mistakes" It's all vague enough that it's far from implausible Barry didn't pick up on it, but there is still a strong distinction between Wells pretending he doesn't understand time travel and him lecturing Barry on the matter.
** Wells wasn't telling Barry that his changing things was going to screw things up ''for a fact''. He was, however, facing a far less theoretical situation, and therefore far less willing to take the risk of anything going wrong. I personally didn't get the impression that he was stating exactly what ''would'' happen, only what he was afraid ''could'' happen.
** Creator/ScottAdams once discussed the difficulty of telling the difference between someone 1% smarter than yourself and someone 100% smarter than you. Along similar lines, if you had no knowledge of comics and no reason to suspect him of anything sinister, could you really tell the difference between a brilliant physicist throwing out a plausible educated guess about Speed Force time travel and the same physicist giving a fist-hand account of it?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The Reverse-Flash and the Speed Force]]
* Since Eobard Thawne essentially stole Wells's genetic code from him, and then turned his body into a copy of Wells's, why does Thawne keep his (sporadic) connection to the Speed Force? Especially since Wells was just an ordinary scientist before Thawne found him.
** Whatever super-science device he's using was clearly meant for disguise, not actually turning one person into another on every single level. He still has his memories and possibly his undamaged eyesight, it's not a stretch to assume that he kept whatever small connection to the Speed Force he still had.
** In "Series/{{Legends of Tomorrow}}", Thawne kidnapped and used the same machine he used on Wells on Martin Stein (without killing him, mind you), temporarily taking his appearance. Once his identity was revealed, Thawne simply vibrated out of his Stein disguise and became his true form. I assumed that Thawne's shapeshifting machine was only temporary, and once Thawne returned to the future in Season One, he would simply vibrate out of his Wells disguise.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Defeating the kinetic bomb]]
* In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E17Tricksters "Tricksters"]], for Barry to get rid of the bomb, he [[spoiler: vibrated his body to phase through a wall, leaving the bomb on the other side]], right? But if the bomb is attached to him, then shouldn't it [[spoiler: also vibrate at the same frequency, meaning it would follow him?]]
** No. As was explained back in ''The Sound and The Fury'' each object, and in fact each person it seems, has their own specific vibrational frequency. That's why Hartley had to find the frequency specific to the Flash instead of just killing a few random people until he got it right. Presumably everything made of the same substance is within a fairly narrow window of frequencies. Flesh and metal however are entirely different. If it weren't just because the Speed Force does what it wants because reasons a better question would be why doesn't vibrating through the wall leave Barry nude?
** He vibrated his clothes at the same frequency.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Barry's friends]]
* Did Barry not have ''any'' friends other than Iris before he fell into the coma? If he did, where are they now and where were they during those 9 months?
** It's possible he might have, albeit no one as close as Iris. It's worth noting that Iris was practically family and as such, she may have had more access to him at the hospital and at STAR Labs than any other friends (though Felicity visited quite regularly, apparently).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Laundry truck man]]
* How did Barry explain himself to the man who was driving the laundry truck that Barry accidentally landed in when he was first discovering/testing out his superspeed?
** Probably awkwardly and very quickly, before getting out of their urgently. It probably wasn't that much of a big deal as the guy was probably busy himself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: What was Wells planning in "Out Of Time"?]]
* He figured out that Caitlin was stalling him and rushed to kill Cisco, who still probably thought that the Reverse Flash had somehow blackmailed Wells or something to prevent needing to kill him. Wells left Caitlin in a position where there was no way she wouldn't have figured out that he was the Reverse Flash. I'm amazed he let her live long enough to take a call from Barry, as she would have known too much by then. At this point, Joe's suspicions would have come to a head, and Barry is trusting, but not pants-on-head stupid. Wells might have had little choice, but it seems very much like he backed himself into a corner where his only advantage was being a more experienced Flash.
** The two best explanations that come to mind are either that he panicked/ acted without thinking or had some contingency plan. I think the plan makes more sense because it would be more in character, though the exact details are unclear. On the other hand how Joe figured his identity in the first place is when Wells dodged the glass with no explanation, so maybe he just didn't think about Caitlin's presence and was focused on stopping Cisco.
** Another theory is that he just wanted to stop Cisco and left as fast as he could (pun intended) in order to do it, he also could have been thinking that he would just deal with Cisco first, and then Caitlin. In addition, he could have been very reluctant to kill Caitlin. He's admitted several times that he regards Cisco as a son, and therefore it's almost certain he has paternal feelings towards Caitlin as well. Not to say he wouldn't kill both of them, but it would be a very difficult thing to do as a spur-of-the-moment decision and he probably has to mentally psych himself up to do it. His relationship with them is different from almost everyone else he's killed or tried to kill. Most of them he either didn't know (Barry's mom)or actively hated (Simon Stagg).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why don't they tell Iris?]]
* Perhaps they want to keep her as far away from the Harrison Wells investigation as possible to prevent her from being kidnapped like Cisco was if it becomes known that she's an ally of the Flash. Not a great reason, but it can be assumed that no one is dealing with this rationally because how big a threat the Reverse Flash is.
** So it's okay to tell Eddie, Stein's wife, Joe, his own dad, and CRIMINALS, but suddenly Iris is too important?
** That doesn't explain why they didn't tell her before they got suspicious of Wells. Literally, in the first episode Joe tells Barry that Iris can never know, before he even becomes the Flash.
** They are not thinking rationally and somehow think that withholding the truth will help keep Iris safe. I think it could be an intentional character flaw that might play into the story.
** Iris should find out now and give a massive WhatTheHellHero. In fact, in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E18AllStarTeamUp "All Star Team Up"]], Barry knows that his secret is ruining Iris's relationship with Eddie. However, instead of having a CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming where he tells Iris [[IJustWantMyBelovedToBeHappy for her own happiness' sake]], he just runs away to tell more people, instead of the person he supposedly loves and trusts more then anyone. Wow. I don't know what's dumber. Team Arrow, for keeping a complete monster under their roof, or Team Flash, for being complete douches to Iris, someone who doesn't deserve it.
** This is going to turn out to be a problem, but they are not doing this to hurt Iris. They are genuinely just attempting to protect her. She would, though, be justified in telling them off. I think part of the problem is that the writers want her to find out Barry's secret for herself either during, or a few episodes ahead of the finale. In order to have that happen, they can't have other characters just tell her. It also possible the writers want a rift between Iris and Barry, Joe, and/or Eddie as part of some season two plot they're setting up, so I think by the end of season it will be more clear why they took this route.
** There is some Fridge Brilliance in that Iris is the only person on the show who Barry has an important relationship with that ''doesn't'' revolve around him being the Flash. For the most part, the ones who he actually told were ones who he either met as The Flash or as a result of his work in dealing with metahumans (which combined with Barry's trusting nature and the fact keeping his mask on constantly around them would be awkward, would make him willing to let them know his name to make things more casual), or in the case of Eddie, were told because he needed to work with him as The Flash, and it'd be much easier to do that if he knew he was Barry. The only other people who know either figured it out themselves (like Joe, or his dad), or in the case of Cold, tortured it out of Cisco; there is Tony/Girder, which was admittedly an idiot move on Barry's part, but he's the only exception. Iris is, literally, the only person who Barry can be ''just'' Barry around, without needing to bring in anything related to the Flash, work, or metahumans in general, and given their belief that letting her know would put her in danger (reasonable fear, given Iris is headstrong and would want to be involved in the Flash side of things, which would put her in more danger), obviously Barry would want to keep that normalcy with her.
** Good point! On ''Arrow'', one of the reasons Oliver doesn't really have much of a normal life as 'Oliver Queen' anymore is likely the fact that practically everyone he knows and spends any significant time with these days knows he's the Arrow [[spoiler: including his sister, the one person close to him who didn't know until very recently]]. Plus, all these people are either on Team Arrow or connected to it in some capacity. On some level, Iris may well be Barry's anchor to normalcy, the one person with whom he can just be 'Barry Allen' and not the Flash.
** However, not telling Iris makes little sense plot-wise. Not telling Iris that Barry is the Flash does little to reduce any potential danger she might be in, considering that she's known to be the blogger/reporter who has some connection to the Flash (she's already been kidnapped once for that reason). Plus, Harrison Wells, the man whom Joe, Barry and Eddie KNOW is Barry's arch-nemesis, the Reverse-Flash, knows all about Iris and how special she is for Barry. So Iris is potentially in danger no matter what - getting her into the fold would be the smartest move right about now.
** It actually makes a lot of sense and not just from a protect Iris standpoint. If she doesn't know then people might kidnap her but they can't get anything of use out of her. Oliver has been seen in public with Barry Allen when Arrow visited Central City as now has Ray Palmer making an even bigger spectacle. Iris would have to be a special kind of stupid not to immediately piece together the puzzle of The Arrow and the Atom once she knows who the Flash is. Finally Iris not knowing probably keeps both the people coming after to a minimum because she can't really write about him at personal level and keeps her from doing stupid stuff. A Lois Lane clearly demonstrates once a reporter is 100% certain that they have a super being looking over their shoulder they get real dumb, real fast.
** Why not tell Iris a half truth? When she starts pulling away from Eddie she was already on the right path and should have known it. Somehow his 'I'm just that good' line convinced her that instead of the obvious answer. That the Flash is somehow working directly with the CCPD in general (he's been there enough times to help defend against Weather Wizard and Captain Cold) and Eddie in particular probably would have been a satisfactory answer. It wouldn't be a lie. Sure there would be the omission of Barry's secret but even if she asked he could still tell the truth. I know who he is but it's not my secret to divulge. She seems like an honorable enough woman that she would understand that sort of loyalty and if she knew she likely wouldn't tell him for the exact same reason unless it was a life or death scenario.
** In "Who is Harrison Wells?" (1x19) [[spoiler: that's ''precisely'' what he does. He tells her that the great secret he's hiding is that he's working with the Flash.]]
** Letting Iris know who he is would be essentially inviting her into the case. Iris is pretty ambitious and stubborn, so if they let her know he was the Flash, she would insist on getting involved (she did want to be a cop), and with that it'd put her in more danger. Think, they tell her he's the Flash, she starts getting involved in his Flash work (either they let her involved, or they tell her no and she goes behind their backs to get involved, either way she's involved), and she starts investigating something dangerous they're investigating (be it the Rogues, a particularly dangerous Meta, or the Reverse-Flash himself), and so, she's in the crosshairs of Harrison. Given Joe didn't want her to be investigating the reporters death, he's not going to want her involved in anything else big.
** But they are putting themselves in danger everyday. To not let Iris do so when they do so is foolish as she points out to them after [[spoiler: finding out Barry's secret idenity and confronting on it in Grodd Lives.]] I think the best way for them to have done would be to tell her that Barry's the Flash and that if she sees something dangerous that they are investigating she call either Barry or them. Because as it stands keeping the secret damaged her relationship with them.
** With hindsight, it seems keeping her out of the loop was meant by the writers to be a bad idea from the start, Barry and Eddie want to tell because her they love her and want to keep her safe, Joe's the same, only he's her father and has the traditional "can't see her as anything but my baby girl" problem, and his dad instincts are overriding his common sense telling him that she's a grown woman and is reasonably capable of handling herself. Eddie and Barry are doing what he says because they trust in his greater life experience and that he should know best. Misguided and stupid? Yeah, but also understandable.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Should Wells be shipping Eddie?]]
* Since Eobard Thawne is a distant descendant of Eddie Thawne, should Wells be trying to make sure his 15x great great grandparents still get together with all the changes he is making to the timeline, [[Film/BackToTheFuture "Back to the Future"]] style?
** Maybe he is, but the show probably doesn't want us to know who his future wife is. Either it's Iris or it's not, but either way it's a minor spoiler.
** There are a few reasons why Wells may not be particularly interested in shipping Eddie. First he makes a passing remark about Eddie being a distant relation but he might not be Wells actual ancestor. A lot of our grandparents were child four of nine. A passing statement to a person you're about to murder you might not bother making the distinction. Does Wells actually know who Eddie will end up with? Even the future machine doesn't seem to be omnipotent so much as able to access known information. Given they are separated by centuries those records may either be impossible to find. Finally it's unclear how exactly time travel functions in this universe. If it's an alternate timeline and not actually his past he might not care if he's born to this universe. It doesn't effect him either way.
** Given he spared him, he definitely needs him alive. Most likely, Eddie doesn't hook up with his future wife until much later in time, so he doesn't have to worry about it.
** In "The Trap" we find out that Eddie dating Iris was caused by the changes to the timeline, that they aren't married in the future, and we see Eobard Thawne interrupts Eddie when he was about to propose to Iris. Still, Reverse Flash seems to only care about his own goal of defeating the Flash and getting himself Back to the Future.
** In BTTF, Marty Mc Fly has to actively engineer his parents' meeting because when he travelled back, he directly interrupted the original events leading to their meeting, by saving George Mc Fly from being hit by his future father-in-law's car and having Lorraine fall for him while nursing him back to health. Eobard Thawne did no such meddling to his family tree, and his presence in the past isn't also further hindering the natural progression of things, as Marty's was when he drew Lorraine's attention from George. Basically Thawne didn't break his own history, so he doesn't need to fix things as Marty did.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Cisco's memory of the original timeline]]
* Cisco seems to keep having visions of himself getting killed by the Reverse Flash when others (aside from Barry who altered the timeline) don't even have a recollection of anything that has changed. What exactly allows only Cisco to have the RippleProofMemory? Could it be the result of Dr. Wells (who doesn't originally belong to the current era) using the Speed Force to physically maim Cisco?
** Possibly the result that he died in the old timeline; maybe doing so made some kind of mental ghost-type deal where his memories got absorbed by his new timeline self.
** In the comics, Francisco Ramon is the superhero Vibe. When he was introduced into the New 52 in 2013, the new (absurd) explanation for his powers has something to do with interdimensional physics. If the show operates on the multiverse principle theory of time travel (every decision you make creates a reality where every possible choice is played out), then the nature of Cisco's latent abilities could be used as an explanation for how he can recall things that occurred in timelines that no longer exist.
** It might also have something to do with tachyons. The area around the real Wells's corpse had them and affected Lance's coffee, so some might have affected Cisco in some way.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Time travel discrepancy]]
* In "Out of Time", Barry travels back in time a couple of days, but instead of there being two Flashes at the same time, he replaces his past self. Okay, maybe that's how time travel works in this universe: even if you travel back in time, there can only be one version of you in existence... But if that is true, how can the adult Barry travel back in time to night of his mother's death, where the kid version of him sees the adult version trying to save her? When the he traveled back into that time, shouldn't he have turned into the 10 year old Barry, just like traveling back two days turned him into the two days younger version of him?
** Maybe it has to do with speed force: If you travel back in time where your past self exist, if this past self can use speed force, you fuse with him. If not you become a double.
** Maybe the reason is physical : If you are only a few hours older than your past self, you fuse. If you are, say, 15 years older, both bodies are too different and cannot fuse.
** Maybe the rules of time travel when two speedsters travel together are different than when only one speedster does it.
** This Youtuber's dad explains here between 4:56-5:50 https://youtu.be/7WbVemNkO28?t=4m55s
** By that logic, 2024 Barry still [[IncrediblyLamePun runs]] the risk of creating a timeline without a child Barry. Maybe that's why the Flash was nowhere to be seen after the fight inside the house. He had a limited window of action before his presence would conflict with that of child Barry.
** The simple answer is that he created another timeline. In one moment, there were two flashes, but then one Flash ended up living the timeline of the previous episode while the other lives out the current timeline.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: What's the point of the Reverse-Flash's ring?]]
* So, Eobard Thawne has a secret room inside STAR Labs to check the future newspaper. This room can be opened by pressing the right place in a wall. Inside this room there is a secret secret room that can be only opened with the Reverse-Flash's ring. Inside there is the Reverse-Flash uniform. I have no problem with this: If the first room is discovered he can still pretend he wants to help Barry to survive and solve the future crisis while protecting his Reverse-Flash identity. So why the frack did he stop using the ring and start leaving his uniform in the open? He knows that Barry suspects something about him. Stopping using his most efficient security system is plain dumb. It's not like he has to check on his uniform five times a day, right?
** Maybe the mechanism on the secret secret room broke. Maybe he misplaced the ring, managed to jimmy the lock, and leaves it open rather than go through the hassle.
** There's also a theory that he let them in on purpose for some reason. There was a suspicious lack of Gideon, for example, not to mention that it seems implausible that his SinisterSurveillance has suddenly failed.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Yellow suit and mannequin]]

* When it was first revealed in the Christmas episode, why does the Yellow suit seem to appear from nowhere on the empty mannequin after Wells uses the ring?
** It's probably an effect similar to [[http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120217152623/marvel_dc/images/b/b8/Flash_Wally_West_0060.jpg how it is in the comics]].
** There's a split second shot of that in the trailer for Ep.122 Rogue Air. The suit can come out of the ring.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The slogan "fastest man alive"]]
* Why does Barry call himself "the fastest man ''alive''". Using the word "alive" seems to imply there may have been others who are not alive anymore (or not alive yet) who were faster... The slogan comes from the comics, where it makes more sense, because there's a whole lineage of speedsters, both in the past and in the future. But in the series, Barry starts using the slogan before he learns about any such lineage. Wouldn't it make more sense to call himself "the fastest man ever", or something like that?
** It's just supposed to be a catchy slogan. But if you wanna take it really literal, he's saying that out of all the men alive, he is the fastest. He'll die someday, then he won't. But for now he's the fastest man alive.
** Also, he kinda is by Season 3. Thawne got Retgoned, Zoom is the Black Flash, which... is ''something'', Savitar also retgoned, and I'm fairly certain he's faster than Wally, Jesse and Jay. Maybe Acclerated Man?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Wells and the accidental birth of the Flash]]
* In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E17Tricksters "Tricksters"]] we learn that in the timeline Eobard Thawne originally comes from, Harrison Wells launches his particle accelerator in 2020, and Barry Allen only becomes the Flash then. But in the show's main timeline Thawne takes Wells' place and speeds up the whole process, because he wants the Flash to be born as soon as possible, so he can use Barry's power to return to the future. However, what this means is that the circumstances that lead to the birth of the Flash in this timeline are not identical to those in Thawne's timeline, and Thawne should know that, since he's actively changing the timeline. But if this is true, why doesn't Thawne make absolutely sure Barry gets hit by the energy wave from the particle accelerator explosion? The way it happens now, Barry gets hit by because he happens to be on its way when it hits the Central City police building, but what if he had been in building's cellar at the time, or someplace else the wave won't reach him? Since Thawne's plan hinge's on Barry becoming the Flash, why doesn't Thawne simply kidnap Barry and tie him up to a place where the energy wave is sure to hit him? Based on the [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E7PowerOutage the changing headlines]] of his future newspaper, Thawne know the future isn't fixed, so he can't just assume things will automatically play out as they did in his timeline, that Flash will be born in the accident no matter what. Thawne's whole plan is based on turning Barry into the Flash, and he's had 15 year to prepare for it, so why does he leave such a crucial part of it up to chance?
** [[SinisterSurveillance He had a camera pointed directly at the spot where Barry got hit by lightning.]] It's safe to say he arranged for Barry to get hit by lightning.
** Yes, he had a camera there, but that doesn't explain how he arranged for the lightning to strike Barry. What if Barry had decided not to go to his lab that night? Or what if he had decided to go downstairs just before energy wave hit? What would Thawne have done then?
** He knows more about how time works than we do. Apparently, if you set things up mostly right, fate will take care of the rest. Once Wells knew Barry was in the lab, he knew everything was on track (though he would have immediately checked again after the strike to make sure). What would he have done if Barry wasn't in the lab? We don't know, because he didn't have to resort to it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: No due process for metahumans?]]
* The main characters are depicted as fairly liberal folks, yet none of them seems to find it problematic that they are keeping the metahumans they capture locked up in a private prison for an indefinite time without a trial or any kind of due process. Sure, this is motivated by the fact that many of the metahumans could easily escape regular prison cells... But why can't the S.T.A.R. Labs team simply work with the proper authorities to build specialized, lawful prisons for metahumans? Such prisons are commonplace in superhero comics. What makes it even it worse is that Joe and Barry and Eddie are cops, and apparently they're a-okay with this. If it would ever become public knowledge that they are involved in illegally imprisoning people, they would lose their jobs. Also, at some point during season 1 Captain Singh finds out that some of his men are working with the Flash in fighting metahuman crime. What does Singh think happens to the metahuman criminals once the Flash has caught them? Even if Team Flash hasn't told him about their private prison, he must have figured out that they are either executing the metahumans or imprisoning them, since they are not seen anymore after the Flash has defeated them. So it seems no one in the show has any problem with this kind of violation of basic human rights.
** After the episode with the shapeshifter, Singh and the D.A acknowledge that the current laws and law enforcers aren't capable of dealing with the metahumans, Singh is even grateful that the Flash is around to handle cases like these and just leaves it up to him.
** True, but that doesn't really solve the problem the OP is talking about. It just means the DA and the chief of police are knowingly complicit in the abrogation of these men's civil rights. If this gets out they'll have ''federal'' authorities on all their asses.
** Correct. It's a major violation of constitutional rights.
** Not after they see what some of these people are capable of. Several of the characters who would remain in prison just slightly longer than they felt like getting free food. One can teleport, one can turn into gas, and several are sufficiently powerful weapons that a prison wouldn't be able to handle. Its worth remembering as well that as far as we can tell the Arrow/Flashverse is considerably younger and weaker than DC proper. There was no Justice Society running around in the thirties. There were a few very human vigilantes, a few fairly lower powered beings. Ra's is around but his power comes from his influence and ninja army. Being immortal is just a perk. And Bullets would probably stop him just fine. The Mirakuru is out of circulation so basically those high power prisons don't exist because there has been no need for them yet. The feds would almost definitely turn a blind eye at least until they had some means of controlling these people.
** "Not after they see what some of these people are capable of." The fact that they are unusually dangerous is no excuse. These men and women are still American citizens and therefore have certain rights, which Team Flash has flagrantly violated. The government would have no choice but to press charges against all of Team Flash for, at the very least, wrongful imprisonment and kidnapping. All the metahuman criminals would have to be hastily put on trial, and considering what's been done to them it's very probable that most of them would be granted a mistrial and released.
** Legally what they're doing is unforgivable. But since, as was pointed out above, there really is no decent alternative (except kill every VillainOfTheWeek as they come up and call it self-defense), this effectively becomes a case of ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight. As distasteful an option as a private trial-free prison is, it's a lot better than tossing these guys in a regular prison and watching them slaughter their way out the next day on the evening news.
** The plan for the Pipeline prison was to keep the metahumans there until their powers could be removed or neutralized, at which point they could be turned over to the authorities. Obviously, having the government handle that task with official oversight would be preferable to a group of private citizens doing it, but it's not until near the end of the season that anyone in a position of authority is willing to acknowledge that metahuman criminals even exist. Until there's an official response to the metahuman problem, STAR Labs is justified in taking necessary measures to prevent themselves and the people around them from being killed. Imagine you're living in a war zone or disaster area where the legal authorities have little to no ability to respond to civil disturbances; if someone starts violently attacking people, do you let them run amok because you don't have the authority to hold them, or do you lock them up in a basement or something until the government gets around to reasserting order?
** The season 2 episode [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E4TheFuryOfFirestorm "The Fury of Firestorm"]] shows that Team Flash is ''still'' illegally imprisoning people in the Pipeline, as they put Hewitt there. At this point everyone in Central City knows metahumans exist, and the police even have a task force which specializes in handling them... So how hard would it be for Team Flash to contact the city authorities and say, "we have ways of imprisoning these metahuman criminals who keep popping up, maybe we could build you special prison for them, so you could give them their due process?".
** They do. Several previous episodes mention that Iron Heights now has a wing capable of holding metahumans. Hewitt was imprisoned in the Pipeline because [[HeKnowsTooMuch he knew that the team in S.T.A.R. Labs was working with Firestorm and the Flash.]]
** So they're willing to violate Hewitt's basic legal rights for the sake of their own convenience? I wouldn't want to live in a city where people with such a crooked sense of justice work as cops.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The camera in Barry's lab?]]
* What happened to the camera Eobard had in Barry's lab? Is it still there? And does that mean he knows all about Barry suspecting him and collecting evidence on him?
** For me, it was way too dangerous to leave it here: Even if Barry couldn't determine who spies on him, the fact that someone unknown knows his secret can be a major problem. I think that 'Retrieve the cam' was one of the first missions of the Reverse-Flash once his powers began to come back.
** In "The Trap", we learn that not only was the camera at Barry's lab still active, but that Thawne has cameras everywhere, at Picture News, the West House, Cisco and Caitlin's homes, Eddie's apartment etc. to keep an eye on all the major characters.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Captain Cold's cold gun]]
* Why can't he build one on his own? We know from previous episodes that he wasn't bluffing Cisco when he said he'd took the original apart and put it back together dozens of times and would know if he'd tinkered with it in someway. As far as we can tell Cisco builds the gun in that mansion they are squatting in so it's not like it requires fancy tools only found in Star Labs, nor does it seems to require anything you can't acquire without too much difficulty. That's what stops most people from making the things that they can take apart and put back together is a a lack of appropriate resources but Cold has the resources and should have the expertise.
** Cold is much smarter than his education would indicate, but he's not an engineer. He is, at best, a self-trained mechanic. He wouldn't know how to use most of the engineering tools he provided for Cisco, while at the same time would know that most of them are too dangerous to just start playing around with.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Caitlin's relationship with Ronnie]]
* What's the deal with Caitlin? When Ronnie first appeared to die, she was forlorn and slowly getting over it. Then it turns out he's alive and looks like in need of serious help in the mid-season finale and she just ignores him. It felt like Cisco was doing more to help him than his so-called fiance did. Then when he gets split apart from Doctor Stein but then he has to merge with him to form Firestorm again, she seems to forgot about him yet again (along with having some shippy moments with Barry, including making out with an imposter that looked like Barry and looking like she enjoyed it). What gives?
** Firestorm told her Ronnie was dead, and flew off. He clearly didn't want her help, and it's not like she could do anything about it anyway. She was lucky to find him the first time. When they actually did get their hands on him and realize what was really going on, she does everything in her power to help, and once he's separated from Stein they're SickeninglySweethearts. But in the end, she's only so much help (she's a medical doctor, not a psychiatrist/nuclear physicist), so he has to leave to find an expert. Their current relationship seems to be "engaged, but separated due to events beyond their control;" note that the ShipTease with Barry drops dramatically after the full details of Ronnie's condition come to light. The shapeshifter doesn't really count, as it was a heat of the moment thing and she didn't initiate it. Maybe if Iris hadn't walked in, she would have started yelling at him, but she realized it was the shapeshifter before she had a chance to get him alone again.
** In Caitlin's defense regarding the kiss: You have to remember that she spent months and months stuck in a depression thinking her fiance was dead, and then who knows how long thinking her fiance was alive but now crazy and wanting nothing to do with her. The point is she's been in the center of a ''massive'' emotional turmoil for a very long time, and during that turmoil along comes this handsome young man, Barry Allen. Barry is roughly the same age as her, he's nice, he's funny, he's good-looking, they spend a lot of time together, and they have a lot of things in common. Plus he's a brave hero who puts his skin on the line to save lives every day. It would be more strange if she ''didn't'' become a little attracted to him, in spite of her feelings for Ronnie. The kiss just blindsided her for a minute.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Where did Gideon come from?]]
* Gideon tells Barry it obeys his commands because he created her. So it stands to reason that Gideon was built in the future. But how did it get to the present? The one time we see Eobard Thawne prior to his theft of Harrison Wells' identity doesn't show him carrying anything. He couldn't have created this version of the Gideon in the present. So how did he get her here?
** We see him talking to her through his suit after the attack on Barry's mother. It could be that she was just a minor version integrated into the suit, and then he built her into the particle accelerator for more processing power, likely in order to keep an eye on the future.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Timeline of Gideon's creation]]
* Gideon must be from the far future (25th century like Eobard Thawne) instead of the near future (2024 newspaper), but claims to be created by Barry. Does this mean Barry will travel to the 25th Century at some point?
** Yes.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Hannibal Bates, too good comedian, too dumb to live]]
* Mr Bates can copy the appearance of someone, but do not gain his powers and more importantly his memory. Yet, his impersonation of Mr Wells is near perfect, from the gestures, the tone of the voice and what he said (like 'dead for centuries'). How is that possible? Wells has very little time to prepare him, not enough to explain how to behave, what to tell, what to do. And Bates agreed to do it in exchange for his freedom. How did he expect to get his freedom once he failed to kill Cisco?
** It's possible that Wells had some kind of brainwashing agent, or future tech that allowed him to completely control Everyman, to the point it was as if Everyman thought he ''was'' Wells, or something.
** Or Wells had just been preparing for this pretty much ever since they had Bates. With the cameras, he knew exactly what everyone was up to the entire time, so it could have been that the second everyone left, he walked up to Bates, made the offer, and started coaching him through acting like him. Also note that his impression, while not bad, wasn't really that great when you get down to it. A little too angry, more clownishly amused than proud and fatherly. And finally, he probably thought he was going to succeed in killing Cisco. Wells would have left off the part about Barry and Joe waiting around the corner.
** And then the next episode demonstrates Grodd, who's working with Wells, is capable of projecting his own mind, voice, and even his powers through others. Its not hard to imagine he linked Wells and Bates telepathically in order for them to do this.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Gideon can help too?]]
* After "The Trap", its established that A) Gideon, an AI is programmed into Wells' secret chamber in STAR Labs and B) that Gideon is loyal to Barry above all others, since he created her. With those two pieces in mind, ''why not just ask the AI what Wells has been planning''? I'm guessing even a guy as smart as Wells would have needed some assistance over the past 15 years, with all of the questions he's asked her over the course of the series and using her advice. You'd think her processing memory would at least have a good outline, if not a complete picture of what Wells is trying to do. This includes the second secret chamber beneath the pipeline that Wells hides Eddie in at the end of "The Trap". They could have confronted Wells directly, before his plan went through instead of just ignoring the presence of the AI.
** Who say's they haven't? Gideon may be loyal to Barry, but as a program, its not hard to assume Eobard has reprogrammed her in a manner to make her unable to answer questions about this kind of information. After all, she was unable to answer Barry's question about who Wells really was, so its likely she can't answer questions like 'what his evil plan is'.
** They didn't have time to question Gideon about Thawne's plans before he returned to the room. And later, when he fled STAR Labs for good, its likely he removed the computer with Gideon, along with the Reverse-Flash suit, from the vault.
** Eobard had the future newspaper with him in the secret room and he used to have Gideon literally in the palm of his suit. So it is very likely that she was removed from the Time Vault.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Grodd's durability]]
* I get that Grodd is a gorilla with a telepathy thanks to the explosion of the particle accelerator, but how does Grodd [[spoiler: survive being hit by Barry's supersonic punch, let alone the impact of a full speed subway train]]? I thought that the only part of Grodd being enhanced is [[SquishyWizard his brain, not his body]].
** Um....no, its shown very clearly that Grodd's body has also been enhanced, given he's ''tripled in size'', and Joe outright brings up the fact that he was probably getting bigger as well as smarter. Grodd isn't just smarter than a normal gorilla, he's very clearly a ''lot'' bigger, and most of that is probably all-muscle.
** Just for comparison, the tallest gorilla ever recorded (standing totally upright) was about 6'5". Grodd, when he stands upright while facing Joe, looks to be over 9 feet tall. That's a lotta monkey.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: S.T.A.R. Labs Finances]]
* How do the finances of S.T.A.R. Labs work? Does Harrison Wells own all of S.T.A.R? Is there just this one facility? Are there shareholders and a board? How did Wells raise the funds to build this? If it was deemed a disaster, was the surrounding area of Portland...er...I mean Central City also deemed as such? Now that they have no more funding, are Cisco and Caitlin still getting paid? How are the lights still on, let alone the Pipeline/Accelerator?
** They probably had investors interested in the research applications of the Particle Accelerator, as a start, and later, after the accident, they probably get their funding through the sale of their inventions and grant money. Its shown they've worked in developing tech for the cops, so its likely they do other R&D projects in order to fund what they do.
** Also, its very likely that the real Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan were independently wealthy. When Thawne killed Wells, he acquired that fortune and its very likely that he would inherit Tess' money too (Tess is implied to be an orphan). That money may well have been used to set-up STAR Labs, and since then Thawne/Wells may well have doubled/tripled that fortune through his inventions and R&D projects, and very likely, wise investments (remember, Wells is from the future, and he has Gideon who has access to information from the future!). Thus, after the explosion, even without a steady revenue stream, he probably had more than enough money to keep the place running (plus the cost of running STAR Labs with a skeleton staff of himself, Cisco and Caitlin is probably a fraction of the cost of running it at full capacity anyway).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Does Grodd have telekinesis too?]]
* In the part where Catelyn and Cisco are briefing Barry about Grodd's history, they mention that Eisling's goal was telepathy and telekinesis for his soldiers. So is Grodd telekinetic as well as telepathic? A pair of sequences can go either way - costumeless Barry was sent crashing into the wall when he was under psychic attack in the sewers, but that could be just a major spasm. Then there was the part where Grodd was forcing Joe to turn his gun on himself, Joe didn't display the loss of cognitive function that Eisling and Barry had when they were mind-controlled though it could have just been a more subtle display of puppeting someone.
** As more evidence in the telekinesis pile: even if Grodd was capable of withstanding the supersonic punch, it should have created a tremendous impact and badly damaged Barry's hand. Since none of that was seen to happen, it's quite possible that Grodd bled off the extra momentum telekinetically.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why Does Grodd Need Gold?]]
* It was never explained WHY Grodd was robbing armored trucks to begin with. Is there some reason he needs gold? And where did he get that armor for Eiling?
** The gold was probably just something big and flashy to make everyone sit up and take notice. It was all a distraction, after all. As for the armor, Eiling is involved in all sorts of experimental defense contracts, so they probably found some sort of cache he knew about and grabbed it for him.
** That is all but flat out stated in the episode. Grodd refers to Wells/Thawn as father and lured Flash and the others into a trap. Wells most likely just told Grodd go make noise and he chose gold. It never hurts to have some lying around either.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why were Barry and Co complete morons in "Rogue Air"?]]
* Geez trusting Snart with a bunch of supervillains and allowing him to keep his weapons. What could possibly go wrong? I mean it's explicitly stated that this is a stupid idea, and there's no reason why Cisco, Joe and Cait couldn't wield hi-tech weaponry, which takes them only a few hours to make if "Rogue Time" is any indication.
** Because Cisco was busy trying to set up a power dampener for the truck and probably didn't have the time to build 3 new weapons from scratch. Plus they might not even have the tools for it, iirc Cold made sure Cisco had the parts he needed in Rogue Time. In addition to that the Rogues are already used to their weapons and would be more efficient at fighting the metas if the situation came up. And Snart had shown that he keeps his word, to the point of not even telling Lisa Barry's identity.
** Cisco and Cait are both explicitly not warriors of any size shape or form. I personally wouldn't trust them to have my back in a pen full of kittens much less against full blown supervillians. Which leaves just Joe who has training and has been shown to be some level of warrior. Snart really was rather trusting of the rogues as well. That was a pretty close to a genuine enemy mine scenario.
** Why not just keep them under knockout gas for the whole time until they're on the plane? The only help they actually got from the Rogues was Lisa Snart driving the truck.
** Because gases that knock people out also tend to be toxic at some level. So prolonged exposure might risk killing them, which is the whole reason they're being moved.
** All season long, the solution to the problem has usually been "more speed". Yet this was one of the few episodes where "more speed" was the answer. Why not have Barry transport the prisoners at super speed, one at a time, from STAR Labs to the transport? It's much faster than a transport truck and more secure.
** Except Reverse Flash was loose and if he interfered that would've let the prisoners loose. Barry seemed to think the prisoners escaping was part of Thawne's plan so it's likely he'd want to avert this.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Lucky he happened to have it on him]]
* [[spoiler: So, Thawne just ''happened'' to have a "kill and replace" machine on him when he was trapped in the past without knowing before-hand that he'd need it?]]
** What, you don't have [[spoiler: a "kill and replace" device? All my friends have one and I keep one on my person wherever I go.]] In all seriousness, [[spoiler: for all we know, Thawne actually carries that device with him at all times. It makes sense, as well: if you're an immoral, murderous sociopath with no regard for human life, the ability to swap appearances right down to the genetic level would be a useful tool.]]
** [[spoiler: Indeed, given that these devices apparently exist in the future, there's no telling whether the face we saw on Thawne when he first traveled back in time was his original face at all. With a gadget like that he could get himself a new face every month. Or every week. For a super criminal, that's a damn handy tool to have.]]
** He's also from a future of superscience with an AI in his pocket. Maybe Gideon had a blueprint on file, and was able to build it one way or another. Nanites are already becoming a thing in the modern timeline, give it a few hundred years and using a 3D printer to spit out highly advanced specialized devices will probably be commonplace.
** Go back 50 years and try to sell people on the idea you'd be carrying a miniature computer in your pocket, which makes phone (and video) calls, is connected to a vast information network, does complex math, plays games, plays music, plays movies, navigates, and much more 0 - and is inexpensive enough to be carried by almost every American. Gideon's device might be a multiple use tool like our smartphones.
** Considering that Thawne's little gadget had the nasty side effect of [[spoiler: ''sucking the original Harrison Wells dry'',]] maybe iPhones aren't a perfect analogy. But yes, it's probably well within the 25th century's capabilities, and fits with Thawne's disregard for human life.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Arrow's Appearance in Rogue Air]]
* Since Oliver was [[spoiler: working undercover]] in League of Assassins, at what point would he have time to travel from Nanda Parbat to Central City [[spoiler: without blowing his cover]]? And if he got the nanite arrows from Ray Palmer, would that mean he knew Oliver [[spoiler: was working undercover]]? Because on Arrow he found out Oliver [[spoiler: wasn't brainwashed]] around the same time as Team Arrow.
** Knowing Oliver, he probably has had the nanite arrows on him ever since Ray invented them (which we don't know when it was, but was probably after he visited Star Labs the first time). The rest... is difficult. There are a few trips he made to Starling roughly in the right timeline, but he shouldn't have been able to slip away without being extremely suspicious.
** We don't actually know how long Oliver was there. He could have [[spoiler:completed his "training" and asked for leave"]]. Or, as you said, he could have [[spoiler:made a quick stop on his way to or from Starling]].
** One thing to think about is that both shows have timelines that are probably pretty slippery. In general the writing probably causes them to weave back and forth (one episode might take place over three days, another over a week, etc., to say nothing of how much downtime happens between episodes, unless crime only happens on Tuesday/Wednesday night in each city.) It's entirely possible that Oliver's appearance in ''The Flash'' happened a good time before or after the events in ''Arrow.'' Especially now with the inclusion of time travel, it's probably best to think of the show's timelines as independent of each other, because they probably end a very different points in time by the finales.
** Personally I figured he just told Ra's he had to go help his buddy avenge his mother's death in Central City and he'd be right back. Ra's is decently honorable about stuff like that, and Central City wasn't a target he wanted destroyed so he let him go do his thing. It's implied that immediately after locking up Thawne is when Barry heads over for his appearance on Arrow so I'm guessing Oliver heads over [spoiler:between Team Arrow getting locked up and infected and his "wedding" to Nyssa.]] which gives him several hours at least. That would also explain why Ray and Laurel don't show up to help as well. As for the nanite arrows, they could have been made well in advance maybe not even for Thawne but for Barry in case he needed to take him out again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Doesn't S.T.A.R. Labs have any security?]]
* The latest episode ("Rogue Air") alone shows both Iris and Captain Cold walking into S.T.A.R. Labs without anyone knowing or noticing it until they're inside, and the same has happened several times before in earlier episodes. Considering the sort of dangerous and confidential things they keep there (a secret prison for metahumans, various kind of superweapons, stuff that could reveal the identity of the Flash, etc.), shouldn't they make it a bit more difficult to get inside the building, so that people can't just waltz in anytime they want?
** First of all, there probably aren't many people willing to work security for such an infamous company (or at least not at that facility). If they have any security it's probably electronic and high-tech. They could have told it to recognize Iris and let her in. And Cold is a super-thief.
** Of course, this also begs the question as to what is the exact status of S.T.A.R. Labs? The show portrays it as a bombed-out husk that only team Team Flash uses and basically squats in, which explains the [[https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/lU5ojmBylC_RQZwMnylBqss1h4lYqWjexcscC3BN4n12Ar41Lzo3v1anQpfJ4yspSV3V28tThtDwRXELjeOOyXnETethKlHSsizrl3QcZJs9xQeVTEZDWBUOCuLQI2YJpA "No Tresspassing" sign]] and the lack of security, but doesn't explain how the building's infrastructure (heat, electricity, plumbing, etc.,) is still operational and who actually pays for all of it, not to mention who actually pays Cisco and Caitlin.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Time Travel Confusion]]
* So Gideon was [[spoiler: made by Barry in the future.]] And Wells is from the future and is only back here because he chased Barry back. So how come, in the episode where Barry loses his powers and Gideon says there are no references to the Flash in the future now, both Gideon and Wells are even there? How could a future speedster and future computer [[spoiler: made by future Flash Barry]] be around now if there is no Flash in the future? How does time travel work in this show?
** Barry made it before [[spoiler:he disappeared]]? Wells likely traveled back and stole it.
** Barry creating Gideon may have been a lie. Wells could have instructed Gideon to say that if Barry ever found the secret room, so that Barry would have reason to believe he could order Gideon to keep quiet, giving him a false sense of security.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Stein is a Rabbi]]
* In the season finale, Stein says [[spoiler:Ronnie and Caitlin's marriage is "legit"]] because he's a rabbi. But, [[spoiler:Ronnie and Caitlin are likely both Christian (or at least not Jewish). "Snow" and "Raymond" are not Jewish names.]]
** Legally, in the American states (and many countries) there is no requirement that the officiant at a marriage has to be of the same religion as the couple getting married, or even a member of the clergy/priest as long as they are registered as being able to officiate at weddings, as noted by Ray Palmer who performed Diggle and Lyla's wedding. Even if most rabbis won't officiate at a non-Jewish or mixed-faith wedding, there's nothing ''prohibiting'' them from doing it.
** While "Raymond" and "Snow" may not be "traditional" Jewish names, neither is Wolf, Jenkins, Potter, Fox, Garfield, Hill, Heatherton, Porter, Portman, Thomas, Reed, Arquette, Black, Connelly, Dane, Hannigan, Goodwin, Harris, Hudson, Moore, Downey, Gray, Gilbert, Kent, Parker, Miller, Patterson...
** Remember that, as far as Jewish tradition is concerned, you're Jewish if your mother is.
** however, it's still not a binding wedding, legally speaking, unless they got Ronnie un-legally-declared-dead and got a new marriage license in the space of a few hours...though they could have done that without showing us, I suppose.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Eddie-Eobard Grandfather Paradox]]
* In "Fast Enough", Eddie kills himself to prevent Eobard from ever being born. However, if Eobard was never born, he couldn't travel back in time to cause the events that would lead to Eddie deciding to commit suicide to save his friends, meaning Eobard would be born, allowing him to mess with history, so Eddie stops him, and so on, ad infinitum. A Grandfather Paradox by most definitions. How exactly does time travel work in this 'verse? Terminator style?
** It's possible the person's actions (or the consequences of their actions) remain. Presumably, this is what ''Legends'' will deal with.
** The fact that Barry still has his super-speed after Eobard fades away supports this idea. If the consequences didn't remain, than it would mean that the Particle Accelerator wouldn't be built for another five years, delaying the creation of The Flash. So obviously everything Eobard did still happened...somehow.
** It's possible that it's because the version of Eobard we've been dealing with is from the timeline when the particle accelerator goes online in 2020, he's an echo of the 'old' version of history - he still needs Eddie alive to ensure the existence of himself, but Eddie removing himself removes both versions of Eobard, while the actions of the 'old' Eobard still stick due to him not being native to the timeline.
** OP Here. I think this theory makes sense. Seems logical enough. I can sleep now.
** The Flash follows the Terminator school of time travel; multiple parallel timelines (imagine holding a handful of uncooked spaghetti), where some are near-identical barring the most minor change, and some are vastly different. Going back in time branches off a new timeline, as Eobard killing Nora Allen did. The Flash also followers the ''Film/{{Looper}}'' corollary to the Terminator rules: If an alternate/older version of someone appears in the local/younger version's timeline, the alt/older version is reactionary to any changes the local/younger makes, instantly. So even though Eobard is not the descendant of this timeline's Eddie, he can be erased by Eddie offing himself.
** That corollary didn't make sense in ''Looper'' though, and it doesn't make sense here either. If ''The Flash'' has multiple timelines, then Eddie shooting himself would not erase Eobard; it would only mean that Eobard isn't born in this timeline, but the parallel timeline where he came from would still exist, and he would not be erased. The parallel timeline concept and the concept that you can affect a time travelever from the future by changing the present can't coexist, because parallel timeline theory was conceived specifically to explain away the grandfather paradox created by a time traveler from the future changing his own past.
** My theory is that the timeline was already hanging by a thread due to Thawne's actions when he initially travelled through time. Everything that happened afterwards allowed the timeline to fix itself somewhat, but Eddie killing himself and therefore ensuring Thawne would never be born, caused time to just shatter due to the massive paradox that resulted from that action, and the black hole was basically an attempt to rectify that by making a clean slate. It seems likely considering they successfully shut the wormhole down, but the singularity only appears after Thawne faded from existence.
** "The Reverse-Flash Returns" seems to have been written [[AuthorsSavingThrow specifically to clear up this point]]: The "temporal echo" of Thawne was created (possibly by [[SentientCosmicForce the Speed Force]]) to resolve an otherwise unresolvable paradox. It's a bit of a HandWave, but it nicely ties up the loose ends.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Caitlin the GeniusDitz?]]
* How in the hell does Caitlin not know what a singularity is? It's especially frustrating given there were numerous other characters there who could have said it but they decide to give the line to the woman shown to be an expert in numerous types of fields?
** Agreed that having Caitlin be the one to ask was stupid, but isn't she supposed to be a neuroscientist and another biology-related position I'm forgetting, not a physicist? She's a neuroscientist, Ronnie and Cisco are mechanical engineers, and Wells and Hartley were physicists, right?
** Yeah, Caitlin is not an OmnidisciplinaryScientist.
** CripplingOverspecialization. If you ask a random person off the street what a singularity is, it's very possible they wouldn't know. Caitlin may simply have taken ''only'' biology & medicine and never bothered to learn more about physics than "F=MA".
** According to her character page here, she's a bioengineer. Granted, she could have picked up on physics from working with Wells and others, but it's not her area of focus.
** So even though she's an accomplished scientist who's spent a lot of time working with people who would be an expert in it, she doesn't know a term that can be learned from watching a Star Trek movie just because it's not her specific field?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why stop Eobard?]]
* It seems unlikely that Barry actually had it in him to kill Eobard, so why stop him at all? Barry in the year 21XX is almost definitely better equipped to deal with Eobard emotionally he's been a hero at that point for going on a century assuming he didn't time travel to the future. Physically it took a super hero team up to defeat Eobard and even then he gave them a run for their money where as Eobard admits future Barry was his equal. Given the sheer number of masks that have started popping up there is a good chance by that time some form of the Justice League has been started and is probably equipped well enough to deal with imprisoning people. Alternatively why even continue the charade that you intended to keep your word. Eobard has zero leverage and had already told them how to time travel intentionally. Given the circumstances I doubt anybody would call Barry out if he'd simply said, oh yeah, that whole helping you thing? I had my fingers crossed.
** After Barry saw his mother die, he made a split-second decision to make Eobard pay. He was originally planning to let him get away with everything, but in the end he couldn't. And of course, he's completely unaware of the Justice League, so he didn't know that the future would have a better chance of handling him.
** The heat of the moment is probably the best answer. He doesn't need to know specifically about the Justice League, he needs to know two major things. That over the next century plus technology will improve and two that future Barry is more experienced than he is and a better fighter if he was keeping up routinely with Eobard.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why would ARGUS not just handle the prisoner transport?]]
* So the whole plot of "Rogue Air" is based on the logistical problems involved in transporting the metahuman prisoners to Ferris airfield so that the ARGUS transport plane can pick them up. Barry and Joe first seek help from the District Attorney (bad move!) and then Barry seeks help from Captain Cold (worse move!) But why do they have to go to all this trouble? Why not just let ARGUS handle everything? In fact, why did ARGUS not offer to pick the metahumans up from STAR Labs directly anyway? They probably have more than enough legal/official authority to clear a route to the airfield or find some other method of covertly transporting the prisoners. Considering the fact that Amanda Waller was prepared to level Starling City to stop the Mirakuru soldiers, I'm pretty sure she would do everything in her power to ensure that the prisoners were safely extracted from STAR Labs and put on the plane. Instead, the STAR Labs team is forced to put together their own makeshift illegal prisoner transport and rely on two dangerous criminals to serve as security!
** There are a few possible reasons. The accelerator was going to blow that night (IIRC), so ARGUS may not have had enough time to make it to STAR Labs from the airfield. Alternatively, the only reason ARGUS was there was because Lyla called in some favors; she might not have had enough pull to get them to commit enough resources to transport them to the airfield. Lastly, ARGUS' power may have been curbed since ''Arrow'' Season 2, and they wouldn't have been able to clear a path in 3 hours.
** Even if Lyla called in a favor, once ARGUS found out about dangerous metahuman prisoners, they should ideally themselves have been desperate to take them into custody and contain them as swiftly as possible. Also, if ARGUS had enough time to send a transport ship, the trip to STAR Labs and back wouldn't add that much more time to the schedule...a couple of extra hours is worth the assurance of security. Instead, the episode makes it sound like ARGUS is doing Team Flash a favor by sending the transport plane, when in fact, they'd simply be doing their job (and as it stands, they're not doing it very well!)
** Starling City was arguably a different situation because Slade was an international terrorist who was stockpiling a dangerous bioweapon and building an army of superhuman killing machines. The half dozen metas in Central City are mere criminals. Dangerous criminals, certainly, but small-time compared to Slade and his army. And don't forget, each and every one of the Rogues had the crap personally beaten out of them by one guy (well, one superfast guy plus a support team, but still). If Team Flash was able to take them down before then surely they can do it again, ARGUS is probably thinking.
** Why didn't Barry transport them himself? They could be transferred from one secure holding area to another much faster by the Flash than by ground transport, and without needing security. The whole plot could have been avoided.
** True, but A. Barry might not be able to constantly hold all of them back and forth and B. They were all metahumans with powers, it's not out of the realm of reason to think that they could escape or cause trouble.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Eddie and Eobard]]
* In the Season Finale, [[spoiler: Eddie sacrifices himself so that the Reverse Flash was never born. But couldn't he have just gotten a vasectomy? Or shot himself in the family jewels?]]
** He could've, but since Eobard has access to future medical technology, and Eddie knows this, he couldn't have been sure Eobard couldn't still have somehow extracted his sperm or DNA to conceive a child. Also, Eddie was in a situation where Eobard was about to kill everyone right then and there, so there was no time to shoot himself in the balls and see whether that would work, because if it wouldn't, everyone would be dead. Eddie had to make a quick decision that would absolutely ensure Eobard wouldn't be born, and killing himself was the only way to do that.
** It's actually more puzzling that he came to that conclusion in the heat of the moment. Everything Eobard did as Wells appears to have stuck so he could easily have gotten unlucky and been in a multiverse where nothing he does to him in this world has any effect on Eobard. Or the GrandfatherParadox could have reared it's ugly head and for various reasons he'd survive shooting himself. Black hole that he may not have caused aside that worked out much better than he had any reason to expect it would.
** I don't know any man who wouldn't rather commit suicide than shoot himself in the nuts.
** Plus, as a lower post notes, Reverse-Flash was about to kill Barry, the only one of them with powers (barring Cisco, but he couldn't really control them). After him, killing everyone else and taking Eddie would have been easy. It was a split second decision, where there was no time to think about alternates that ''might'' work (Eobard could collect sperm sample or something as noted.) if I had to chose between emergency vasectomy or whatever or killing myself in this context, I would just kill myself. Sucks, but the best at the moment of time.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why did Reverse Flash lose his time travel ability?]]
* In "Fast Enough", Eobard explains to Barry that when he traveled to the past and killed Barry's mom, he suddenly couldn't time travel anymore. But there's no explanation at all why he lost that ability... So what exactly happened there?
** He didn't lose his ability to time travel. His connection to the Speed Force is spotty hence him charging himself up with his wheelchair. So it's not that he doesn't still have time traveling potential it's that he's highly skeptical he can go Mach 2 and maintain it long enough to open the wormhole. Barry actually explains that when they suggest letting Eobard perform the trick.
** In the beginning of the episode, Eobard explicitly states that "in traveling back I lost my way home, lost my ability to harness the Speed Force". As Barry explains, after that Eobard was still able to get his speed back sporadically, by using the device in his wheelchair... But it's never explained why he lost the permanent connection to the Speed Force.
** Maybe he lost it because he altered the timeline and stopped Barry from becoming the Flash. It would follow that without the Flash there would be no Reverse Flash or even any knowledge of the Speed Force at all, so Eobard would have no way or reason to gain his powers thus he lost them. Then he regained them sporadically as he put the timeline back on track. His powers did seem to become more reliable the more Barry came into his own as the Flash.
** While that is a good explanation it doesn't stand scrutiny beyond a point. If preventing Barry from becoming the Flash could physically affect Thawne like that via some kind of 'ripple effect', then Thawne should logically have been RetGone the moment he killed Nora... because in the new timeline he would never have become the Reverse-Flash or traveled back in time. Instead he simply loses his powers. So in that context, the explanation given in the show makes more sense... that he used up all the Speed Force energy he had and with no Flash to siphon it off from, he was stuck. Once he engineers the origin of the Flash in the new timeline and Barry's powers start evolving, he starts regaining his own abilities.
** In the comics, at least, the Speed Force isn't some kind of finite, individual power source you can just "use up". It's a universal, omnipresent force the speedsters tap into. While the TV series hasn't explicitly explained what the Speed Force is in its universe, whenever it has been mentioned the implication has been that it's the same as in the comics, i.e. an universal force, not a battery with finite power. Note that Eobard says that he "lost his ability to harness the Speed Force", not that he used up his individual power or anything. So there's still no explanation given why his ability to tap into the Speed Force was lost.
** Except Ret Gone doesn't work that way in this series, as evidenced in the finale when Eddie's death can Ret Gone Eobard out of existence but leave everything he did (such as the particle accelerator and the Flash) intact.
** That's a bad example, as it's implied that Eddie's suicide caused a paradox that ripped open space-time (already weakened by the recent time travel) and created the black hole.
** Not a bad example at all. The point is that the rules of time travel and how they apply to Ret Gone in this show are incredibly unclear at this point (in fact the writers most lkely have not codified the time travel rules as yet). Just look at all the various examples on this very page.
** From what I recall of the comics, Barry generates the Speed Force when he runs. So, no Barry, no Speed Force.
** This is not the case in the comics: Speed Force is an universal energy field that predates Barry. And based on what we learn about it in the second season, the same seems to apply to the TV series as well. So there's still no explanation why Eobard lost his connection to the Speed Force.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:SanDimasTime]]
* In "Fast Enough", a big deal is made of the fact that Barry has only two minutes to return back to the present from the past, before the wormhole needs to be closed. But he's traveling in time, so it shouldn't matter how long he spends in the past, he can always return right after he left. Yet we're shown a ticking clock and everything, and Barry doesn't return until a few seconds before the time runs out, even though there isn't any reason or any explanation why SanDimasTime would be in effect here.
** San Dimas Time is very rarely explained mechanically in any story, it's just a rule of the universe. Though best guess is the wormhole on both ends is connected to a very specific moment and when it opens both time periods lock into sync. Without a particle accelerator on the other end Barry had no way of traveling back to just before he left either. He's stuck with the portal he created or waiting another however many years between the death of his mother and the present before he could even attempt such a thing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:How come Wells didn't know?]]
* In the Season 1 Finale, when Cisco approaches Wells and they have the whole conversation regarding Cisco remembering the events of the previous timeline, Wells seems genuinely surprised and that leads into the revelation that Cisco himself has the metahuman ability to tap into the vibrations of the universe. Okay, but in "The Trap", there is an entire scene devoted to recovering Cisco's memories from the alternate timeline, and this scene occurs in Barry's lab, which is explicitly noted within the same episode to be under Wells' surveillance network. So how did Wells not know that Cisco remembered all of this? He certainly had the time and patience to record the feeds, so presumably he watched it. It's not like he had much else to do this episode, besides [[spoiler: persuade Hannibal Bates into impersonating himself]]. Is he just playing along in the finale, to mess with Cisco's head?
** It's highly unlikely he spends all his time watching video feeds. He likely just goes over it at the end of each day. If he was busy [[spoiler:coaching Bates]] he wouldn't have had time to check the feeds. By the time he was done with that, he already had to flee.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Eobard, the Genius and Eddie, the Failure]]
* What was the point for Eobard to capture Eddie ? Apart for taunting him saying 'You are my great great great great grandfather and you suck, loser.' All Eobard does is giving Eddie the way to defeat him by[[spoiler: Heroic Sacrifice]]. He can't even use Eddie as an hostage, because he can't kill him. For a genius like Eobard, this seems to have been a very stupid move.
** Two main reasons come to mind. First he ''can'' use Eddie as a hostage. At that point nobody else was aware of their relationship. So while he'd never actually kill Eddie he can still tell Team Flash he intends to if it comes to that. Second considering the odd way time travel functions in Flash he may have been concerned that Eddie and Iris were getting too close. The future isn't actually written in stone so he may have been concerned that some action that had been taken would cause Iris and Eddie to get together and that would probably erase him every bit as well as what actually happens. Finally kidnapped Eddie serves his purpose perfectly well as a huge distraction for Team Flash. So while kidnapping Iris would probably have been a better plan Eobard's plan isn't actually bad.
** It's pretty obvious that the main reason for kidnapping Eddie is preventing him from marrying and having kids with Iris. Eobard has been checking up Iris and Eddie via his hidden cameras, and he kidnaps Eddie ''just as he's about to propose to Iris''. In "Fast Enough", Barry speculates that in the original timeline where Nora wasn't killed, he and Iris probably hooked up earlier, because Barry didn't grow up with Iris and thus didn't feel inhibited in expressing his true feelings towards her. Eobard must have figured out that him changing Barry's past fucked up the Iris/Barry romance of his original timeline, so when Eddie, an ancestor of his, starts wooing Iris, Eobard gets nervous. And when he finds out Eddie is about to propose to Iris, he realizes that he must do something, because if Eddie has kids with Iris, then he probably doesn't have them with the woman he hooked up in Eobard's original timeline, which means Eobard himself won't be born. So Eobard kidnaps Eddie and taunts him with the future newspaper that proves Barry will marry Iris, not him. This causes Eddie to break up with Iris, which is exactly what Eobard wanted.
** All true, but off subject. The original question was why did Eddie kill himself to erase Eobard, instead of any number other options that would/could lead to the same outcome. Not why did Eobard take steps to ruin their relationship. Which frankly he seemed terribly uninterested in until far later. Given his powers he could and should have nipped that in the bud early.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Nora ('''Unmarked Spoilers for Season 1 finale''')]]
* So I get the idea that, since Barry is happy with how his life turned out, he chose not to erase it by saving his mom, but there's three problems with this that bug me. \\
1) Both his dad and the Barry from the previous timeline basically tell him not to do it, under the assumption it would be playing god and changing the timeline and all that...except that time had ''already'' been changed by Thawne, so all they were doing is undoing his change and SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong. This is what bugged me about ''Flashpoint''; they're not breaking time, they're ''fixing it''. \\
2) Even if Barry is content with his life, he's still letting his mom get killed and condemning his father to a lifetime of prison for a crime he didn't commit. His dad might be willing to do the time for some self-sacrificing BS to 'keep Barry the way he is' (which is pretty weak logic to justify why his dad is OK with not saving Nora), but Barry shouldn't let him make that sacrifice if he can save him, nor should he have left his mom to die, or let the others Thawne killed (original Doc Wells and Tess come to mind) basically be damned to die as well when he could have stopped him. Basically, Barry is letting a lot of good people suffer because he's OK with how his life went. And...\\
3) In the end, all their fucking with time to ultimately do nothing different, in particular Eddie killing himself to erase the Thawne clan from existence, results in a black hole opening and risking to destroy the city. So, in the end, they accomplished nothing, put the city, if not the world in danger, and now even if they stop it people are still going to have been killed or injured... WayToBreakItHero doesn't even begin to cover that. That final black hole isn't on any badguys, its completely on Team Flash for choosing to change time and then ultimately not do it.
** Let's cover this, to your first point Time Travel is extremely wonky in Flash. Killing Eddie kills Eobard, but Eobard never being born (until we see S2) apparently didn't undo anything he did in the past. His father's logic is bad though, Future Barry has probably been through this and just knows that you don't fuck time travel. To your second point Barry really hadn't thought this part through at all. Barry has never won a singles bout with Reverse Flash and this is Reverse Flash before his powers start coming and going, he would have been slaughtered. Assuming he DID manage to both save his mother and get back to his time what's to stop Eobard from doing the exact same thing next Tuesday? He's trapped in the past with fifteen years to kill before he can enact his plan to create the flash and escape. To your final point it really was a waste.
** Except, its apparent that Thawne was depowered very shortly after murdering Nora, so Barry didn't need to beat him in the past, he just needed to hold him off until his connection to the Speed Force burnt up, ''then'' beat him. Hell, just grabbing kid!Barry and running was enough to stop him killing Barry, all Barry had to do was grab Nora and run (and probably grab Henry too), and the Allens would be safe.
** For the final point, remember that the black hole wasn't really their fault. It's implied to be a result of the paradox from Eddie's suicide ripping open the already weakened space-time continuum. That's not really something they could have reasonably seen coming with their limited understanding of time travel. Maybe Eobard should have given them a quick rundown on paradoxes just to be on the safe side, but he clearly wasn't giving them more information than was absolutely necessary to accomplish his goals.
** Yeah, it kinda was their fault. They chose to accept Thawne's deal and let him go before Barry changed his mind and attacked him, forcing Eddie to kill himself to save Barry's ass. If they never agreed to it in the first place, or were just more pragmatic and not give the psychopath a Get Out of Jail Free card with the time machine, no paradox would have happened. Not to mention, they were aware that a Black Hole could be created by the use of time travel in the first place, meaning this isn't something they just didn't predict, it was something they knew would happen if they didn't stick to their precise plan.
** Eobard probably doesn't have a lot of information on paradoxes in particular. His goal was to travel to the past and kill young Barry so he'd never become the Flash which is a classic GrandfatherParadox. He never comes across as irrational so you have to assume that if he'd known this was a predictable consequence he would have found some other way to deal with future Barry.
** One thing to consider is the original comic story this is drawn from, which suggests that tampering with time is not predictable and attempts to fix things don't always work. Barry goes back to save his mother there as well. The thing is, the timeline at that point has already been changed - until "Flashpoint" was published, Barry's parents survived past his own death in the Crisis. His parents dying when he was young in this story indicates the timeline was already tampered with. Barry saves his mother, and history is changed drastically for the worse. He goes back to stop himself from saving his mom, and succeeds. But this doesn't restore the timeline - it creates yet another version of things. So Barry has no way of knowing if his changing the past will set things right or make them worse. And it seems White Logo Flash understands this, since he warns his younger alternate self not to interfere. WLF is there to prevent tampering, rather than tamper himself. We know he fails, but that's beside the point.
** But that doesn't really make any sense; like, the big problem with ''Flashpoint'' as a story was how none of the things going wrong because Barry stopped Thawne's changes should have effected the things it did, and its never explained how or why these things occurred; the 'don't mess with time travel because it might make things go awry' only works if the changes you make would directly lead to these things happening. I mean, that's like having an anti-drugs aesop where someone buys drugs then gets hit by a bus; the bad thing isn't linked to what you did, so why is doing it bad?
** You're forgetting that the whole point of these "don't mess with time travel" stories is that ''you can't predict'' what might happen if you change the past. So saying "it doesn't follow logically that this would happen if that was different" isn't a great argument because "logic" isn't really a factor here. It's all just one change propagating out to change a million-billion other things in ways no one can possibly foresee. Not without total omniscient knowledge of reality.
** But the problem is that the 'you can't predict what might happen' aesop is in itself complete BS, at least when it comes to this kind of situation where you're ''removing an interfering variable that isn't supposed to be there''. Again, if Barry's mom was always meant to die then and Barry just decided to change it, then sure, he's doing something stupid that's going to cause unforseen issues. But she wasn't, she was meant to ''live'' until Thawne ''changed'' it. Barry would therefore be stopping Thawne's change, and thus stopping him from interfering in the first place; if he went to a few seconds before everything kicked off and cut off Thawne before he got to the Allen family (ideally tag-teaming him with his future self), then the only things that would change would be things Thawne himself changed, which we have no way to indicate would cause anything harmful (from what we know, Barry still became the Flash, Iris and Barry still got together, and Wells and his wife would have lived). In other words, this whole 'changing it would cause unforseen problems' because 'time travel is unpredictable' doesn't explain why Barry not saving his mom was a good idea.
** Barry, being inexperienced with time travel, has to use his own memories of that night to get to the right point, meaning he can't actually get there before Thawn arrives and still leave himself enough time. However, even assuming he could get through that night without any effect on Nora or Young Barry, let's say he and White Logo Flash team up against Thawn, get him out of the house. In the ensuing fight, the noise wakes up one of the neighbors. The neighbor looks outside, doesn't see anything because their fight has already taken them a mile away, gives up and goes back to bed. The interruption to his sleep causes him to wake up grouchier in the morning. He goes to work, is a lot more grating to his employees than normal, and one of them decides screw it, I'm quitting. Can't get a new job, but hears about an offer in Starling City. This guy moves to Starling, has a good new job, meets a pretty girl and marries her. They have a kid. Fast forward some ten years or so, it's Oliver's first year being the Arrow, and the guy's kid just happens to be in the right place at the right time to see Oliver changing into his costume without being noticed. Recognizes him as Oliver Queen from the newspapers, tells her dad, her dad tells the police, suddenly Ollie's under even more scrutiny for much longer than he was originally, and all of a sudden the Arrow's career is altered. ForWantOfANail is a cruel and unpredictable mistress, as Eobard Thawn can attest to, and the fact that Thawn already went back means that something is guaranteed to change that night. The only way you could reset time would be to jump both forward and horizontally onto the original timeline and stop Thawn from going back in the first place.
** It seems Barry could have avoided any paradox conflicts by just taking a body double of Nora with him to the past. Caitlin should have been able to make something that would stand up to forensics of 15 year prior. Get there, swap the double for the stabbed Nora, and have Barry bring her back to a waiting medical team in the present. Then with the real Nora Not Dead, Henry has committed no crime, and is free to go. Nothing gets changed in any person's timeline. Sure, Henry still lived through 15 years of prison and Nora has to deal with 15 years passing in an instant, but it's a lot better than trying to actively change the past.
** Let's try this: White Logo Flash (WLF) comes from a different timeline than our Flash- probably a timeline more in line with the comics. The death of Nora Allen and Thawne's subsequent meddling spawned the creation of an alternate, stable timeline, which this show takes place in. There is nothing to fix, because those actions have always been a part of ''that particular timeline''. The timeline where Thawne and WLF come from is obviously different, but it is no less "fixed" or "broken" than the timeline where Nora Allen was murdered.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:What, no stasis tech in the future?]]
* Why bother with such an elaborate plan? Couldn't Eobard simply kill Barry and use future technology to take TheSlowPath?
** Probably not for several reasons. First Thawn is brilliant even by the standards of the future. That doesn't mean he knows everything or could even figure it out from scratch if need be. So even if there is Stasis Tech he might not know how to build it or the tools to make it might not exist yet either. Either way he's screwed. He's also far from omniscient. Where would you bury a stasis pod that absolutely cannot be discovered for centuries? Do you think he's committed to memory every discovery between now and his time? And finally it's not explained why he lost his connection to the Speed Force but he clearly wasn't expecting it. He had a plan on how to get home already and didn't prep for any other possibility.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:6.7 Teraelectron Volts (Unmarked S1 Finale Spoilers)]]
* In the Season 1 finale, the wormhole caused by [[spoiler:Eddie's death]] is about to swallow the city. Stein says it "cannot be stopped" because it has an energy level of 6.7 Teraelectron-volts. But 6.7 [=TeV=] is just over 1 microjoule. According to that calculation, the wormhole should be closing the first time it gets hit by a particle of dust. Am I missing something, or is this just an example of SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale?
** He's not talking about the energy of the entire phenomenon, he's talking about the amount of energy of ''each particle'' caught up in the phenomenon. 6.7 [=TeV=] is a tremendous amount of energy in particle physics. The Large Hadron Collider, with its miles of super-cooled superconducting magnets and phenomenal energy consumption which takes months of preparation, generates two proton beams of 6.5 [=TeV=] each. Which they then smash into each other to achieve an energy level of 13 [=TeV=] total. And that's the most powerful accelerator in the world acting on a relative handful of protons. The wormhole we see in the episode is gargantuan; its total energy would be astronomical.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:It doesn't really fit the theme]]
* I'm not saying poisoning a bunch of people and telling them they only get the antidote if they wire you all that money isn't a good plan. It is. But it really doesn't fit into the whole "Trickster" ''modus operandi''. Especially not like the exploding presents and all those crazy things we saw in the old hideout. Even Axel's bomb threat had a CartoonBomb on the crate, if I remember correctly. Bottom line, it's not really much of a "trick". More of a "threat".
** [[FridgeHorror The trick was that they would have gotten a fake antidote after wiring all their money to him.]] That said, I have to agree, for what was supposed to be his "Masterpiece," that little plan was seriously underwhelming. Personally, I thought it would involve more explosions. [[FridgeBrilliance However, it's possible that their little attack on the party may have been to acquire funds for his real "Perfect Trick."]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:The fate of Future!Barry]]
* If you guys remembered what happened during the season 1 finale, Future!Barry insisted to our present day Barry not to tamper with the timeline despite the fact that Nora will get murdered by the Reverse Flash. Now that the deed is done, does that mean that Future!Barry disappeared into entropy because the timeline where Nora didn't get killed no longer exists?
** Not necessarily. There might be a StableTimeLoop in effect. Note that Future!Barry didn't seem in the least bit surprised (at least as much as one could tell from the blurring) to see Barry there, obviously knew what he intended, and seemed confident that the warning to not interfere would work. This can all be explained if Future!Barry was Future!Barry from the timeline where Nora died, and who knew what would happen because it was in his past and was what he had done. If this is true, at some point in the future Barry will go back in time to save Young!Barry and during the fight see Past!Barry show up planning to interfere. Or not. It's like a big TimeyWimeyBall.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Al Rothstein, victim of the Particle Accelerator?]]
* Back in "Power Outage", Thawne named Al Rothstein as a victim of the Particle Accelerator, but "The Man Who Saved Central City" establishes that this is not possible, as the Al Rothstein of Barry's earth was in Hawaii at the time. What the hell was Thawne talking about? It doesn't seem like this is something he'd bother to lie about. Did he sincerely believe Rothstein had been among the victims?
** Central City's a big town. It's possible there's more than one person named Al Rothstein.
** It's also possible (though unlikely) that Rothstein was injured but not killed by the explosion. More plausibly, he was a victim originally, but the effect's of the Season 1 Finale's TimeTravel shenanigans changed time very slightly so that he's not [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble anymore]].
** And it's also possible, and even probable, that Thawne was just being a jackass and instead of "honoring the dead", he was remembering and listing civilian identities of superheroes based around Central City in his original timeline.
** He wasn't in Central City at all during the accelerator explosion, so he couldn't have been injured by it at all. The best explanation is the above: That Thawne was remembering him as having been affected by the explosion in the original timeline.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Henry Allen not sticking around]]
* Barry finally proven his father's innocence and got him out of jail the legal way. Being reunited with his own father as a free man is what motivated Barry to become the man he was today. From being a forensic scientist to becoming the Flash, all that Barry has done was to find out who murdered his mother and get justice for his father. Now that both are resolved, what was the main reason Henry didn't feel like staying with his son in Central City?
** This might cross the line into WMG territory, but it's established that the Iron Heights prisoners know Henry frequently talks to the cops. He may have made enemies whose reach extends into Central City itself.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The newspaper and Westallen's future relationship]]
* Barry found out that him and Iris would be married in the future shortly before finding out that Eddie wanted to propose to Iris. Why, then, did Barry encourage Joe to give Eddie his blessing to marry Iris?
** It's probably as simple as him not trusting the paper to be accurate.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Barry and Iris in season 2 premiere]]
* Barry and Iris aren't together by the season 2 premiere, even though, with Eddie now gone, it's almost certain that they'll one day be married. They both have feelings for each other, and they both know about the newspaper, so have they both just been awkwardly ignoring the elephant in the room for the past 6 months?
** At this point nothing is truly certain. Time travel in Flash is different from most established cannons. Eddie committing suicide does retroactively erase Eobard Thawn. But Eobard Thawn being erased didn't retroactively erase him creating the particle accelerator or any of the results of that world changing event. Given that they have little reason to trust it. Plus Barry and most of the cast are smart enough to put together that that Thawn came from a future where Nora Allen wasn't killed and Barry has already changed history once as of S1. S2 starts by introducing the Multiverse so all bets are off.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Changing byline]]

* Early the series, the newspaper's text was different and said "Evan Gibson" on the by line. Did the future change slightly throughout season 1 as a result of things Barry did?
** They didn't change slightly, they changed drastically. We see just the change between Barry and Iris over the course of a single day of mostly minor changes. A full year of Barry Allen happening six years prior to when he should have must have had tons of differences. Makes you wonder how Team Arrow escaped in the original timeline...

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Love Interests]]
* Now that Barry knows that him and Iris will one day be married, I don't see why he would even bother dating, let alone letting himself fall for Patty. I guess this one currently remains to be seen though.
** He doesn't actually know this. He knows that there is a world where he and Iris marry but it may not be this one.
** He also knows that the future can be changed, as Eddie's sacrifice demonstrated, he would have done had his future self not stopped his present self from interfering with his mother's murder, and Eobard Thrawne telling Barry he arranged for Barry to get his powers six years before he should have (and as the audience knows from the changing story when Barry was depowered). So Barry--and Iris, now that she's in on the information--are aware that the future isn't fixed. The newspaper byline shows a ''possible'' future, not a certain one.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Discussing Barry's secret identity while anyone can hear]]
* In the beginning of [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E1TheManWhoSavedCentralCity "The Man Who Saved Central City"]], Joe, Iris and Cisco openly discuss the fact that Barry is the Flash ''while standing in the middle of a crowded police station!'' Seriously? Okay, the people around them looked kinda busy, but what if someone had stopped to listen to what they're talking about?
** That was kind of a problem last season, but that episode really highlighted it. Might be stupid if they keep it up.
** Of course, Iris and Barry have some VERY Flash-related conversations [[spoiler: while he's in Iron Heights. Maybe that's how the warden learned his secret?]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why do they give up on Ronnie so easily?]]
* Martin and Ronnie go into the swirly thing, separate as planned to break it up, and only Martin comes out of the swirly thing. Everyone instantly concludes he's dead and asks no questions and never tries to check or confirm or ''anything'' despite it being that ambiguous.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Did Eobard Thawne predict his death?]]
* Why did Eobard think that he was dead when he made that recording for Barry? If things had gone according to plan Eobard would have gone back to the future and been just as ''gone'' as he is now. We don't see anything that suggests he had the means nor desire to kill Barry so long as he got to return to the future.
** Eobard is many things, but not stupid. And for all of his hatred of Barry, he still considers him something of a WorthyOpponent after the last 15 years. Eobard definitely considered the option that his plan could fail and he could die. He didn't expect it, nor did he plan for that to be the case, but he knew that was a distinct possibility. So he made that recording.
** That's not the question at hand. The recording was given to Barry because Eobard/Wells is dead. There is no body because he was erased. So he's dead because Team Flash told the police or whatever. That's what actually happened. His plan however was to return to the future. In which case he would be gone and Team Flash would be no more or less likely to tell the authorities that he died. He would still be out of the picture however. So why didn't he make a recording that said: "Well I got what I wanted I'm back in the future or maybe you got lucky and somehow killed me. I very much doubt that." That's the question, his plan involved him being unable to deliver this message personally ''either way'' yet he assumed he was dead. Why?
** If Wells had succeeded in going back to the future, why would Team Flash tell anyone he had died? Since they don't have a body, trying to convince people of his death would be both very difficult and very suspicious; better to just say he's gone missing, and they don't know why or where. I assume the only reason they ''did'' tell people about his death is because of the black hole; if anyone asks how he died or where his body is, they can just tell people he got sucked into the event horizon. Besides, Wells' plan was to return to the future ''and'' let Barry go back in time to save his mother; if Barry had gone through with his part of the plan, the timeline would have changed, Barry's father would never have been arrested, and Wells's recording never would've been made.
** Wells might have just said that he was dead on the off chance that someone not involved with Team Flash watched the video.
** The black hole is a convenient reason to declare him dead. Wells' recording may very well have still been made since Time Travel in Flash seems to do exactly what it wants because it wants. The death of Wells didn't retroactively undo the year of the Flash like it should have. Though the fact that the recording would have been worthless had that happened may come into play.
** Considering that Wells succeeding in going back to the future would have left similar circumstances to what happened after he was erased from existence, I assumed that he intended to kill Team Flash shortly before leaving; after all, why take chances? Hence, if Barry's seeing the video, he's still alive, which means Wells didn't win.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why isn't the real Wells isn't, and the timeline restored?]]
* Eddie kills himself to prevent Thawne from being born, implying that Thawne couldn't then replace Wells, kill Barry's mother, move the time of the accelerator accident forward, or land Barry's father in jail, because Thawne never existed. The real Wells would still be in charge of STAR Labs, and Barry would not be the Flash, yet. Of course, if he did not remember all the events of season 1, Eddie has no reason to kill himself (unless Cisco explained it to him, perhaps). The rules of series do imply that you can change the timeline, and change everything associated with that change. But, they never imply that Eddie could cause Thawne to have never been born, without retroactively changing everything that Thawne did. Did the singularity suck plot holes into it?
** Time travel seems to work a weird way in this universe. If you want to change the past you have to travel back in time. Eddie killed himself in the present. The present made a 'checkup' and saw Eobard isn't supposed to exist in the future and erased it. But all Eobard did in the past stayed and all memories of it stayed. To prevent Eobard from killing Barry's mother and the real Wells, Eddie should have traveled 15 years back, BEFORE Barry's mother died and then killed himself. In a way it's a logical way to treat time travel since it prevents the paradoxes you mentioned.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:No mention of Deathbolt]]
* In 'The Man Who Saved Central City', when investigating Atom Smasher's identity, they pull up the records on Al Rothstein, and mention that he was in Hawaii on the night of the particle accelerator explosion, as if that rules out the possibility of him being a metahuman (aside from being, you know, dead). But then more importantly, in the next episode, when Joe is interrogating the Earth-1 version of Eddie Slick/(not-)Sand Demon, thinking that he is a metahuman. Joe finds out that Eddie wasn't in Central City on the night of the explosion either, and Barry says that Eddie must be lying. But why have they forgotten about Jake Simmons/Deathbolt, who proved that even people who were not in Central City that night could become metahumans? As far as I know, they never determined the source of Deathbolt's abilities, so it seems very premature to continue using the suspect's location on the night of the explosion as a litmus test for whether or not they can be a metahuman. Yes, it is true of the broad majority of metahumans, but they never know when another Deathbolt-like character could show up.
** Metahumans are still very rare, they may think Deadbolt was a freak isolated accident since so far on Earth-1 all other metahumans encountered can be linked to the particule accelerator accident.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Snart's broadcast]]
* Who is stopping Captain Cold's broadcast for Barry's ID?
** For now, it is a combination of being incarcerated in Iron Heights Prison [[spoiler: (and perhaps gratitude of saving Lisa from the thermite bomb implanted in her neck)]]. Season 2 Episode 3 could easily foreshadow Snart's path to heroics as seen in Series/LegendsOfTomorrow.
** But how is he doing it? S1EP16 ''Rogue Time'' has Barry threaten to zoom Snart off to his personal prison which would prevent him from telling people his ID. Snart then counters that if Barry did that Snart would be incapable of preventing his message from uploading. [[spoiler: With him in Iron Heights it seems improbable that he can get to a computer regularly.]] All the evidence still points to the fact that he didn't tell his sister or his partner.
** No, the threat was "If you give up my secret identity or kill people, there will be nothing stopping me from ending our game by dumping you in prison." Barry doesn't care overmuch about his secret identity.
** Incorrect. The exact exchange is here:[[http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=17487]]
--->'''Snart''': Can't really stop me now that I know who you are.\\
'''Barry''': I could speed you to my own private prison where you'll never see the light of day. \\
'''Snart''': You could, but then I won't be around to stop my own private uplink that'll broadcast your identity to the world.
** Two options: either Snart was bluffing about the private uplink when Barry confronted him about it (Doubtful) or for whatever reason, Snart disabled the uplink at some point between ''Rogue Time'' and ''Family of Rogues''. The latter seems more likely, judging by the fact that Snart is in prison and not threatening the use of the uplink to release Barry's identity to the world.
** Considering the way Snart thinks, and knowing Barry was actively trying to save his sister's life, it wouldn't be out of the question for him to have remotely disabled the upload just before the attempted heist.
** It's also possible that Snart informed Barry and the others where to find and disable the uplink shortly before getting arrested.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: How does Jay Garrick's helmet stay on?]]
* It doesn't appear to have straps or anything, so how does Jay's helmet stay on his head while he's running in superspeed?
** It's basically a UsefulNotes/WW1 helmet with wings welded on, so the straps grab the topmost part of the forehead and then around the base of the skull. you can see the backside straps when Jay is being knocked over by Sand Demon's bomb.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Sand Demon is not made of sand, or is he?]]
* In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E2FlashOfTwoWorlds "Flash of Two Worlds"]], Jay Garrick explains that Sand Demon's body isn't actually sand, his cells have just mutated to become hard and strong. But later on Barry defeats him with a lightning, because a lightning can turn sand into glass. However, a lightning wouldn't do that to human cells, even mutated ones, because they don't have the right chemical components. So is Sand Demon made of sand or not?
** Presumably his cells are ''technically'' human, but whatever makes him a metahuman causes them to function essentially the same as sand.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Iris is taking it well]]
* For someone whose boyfriend died six months ago, Iris seems to be handling it really well. A bit too well. Considering that the two were dating for about a year, you would think she'd be more affected than she seems. Barry seemed more affected than her. At least with Caitlin she was rather visibly affected losing Ronnie again.
** People react to grief differently. Barry is the type of person to angst over everyone he couldn't save. For Caitlin, it's also understandable to be upset after losing the one you love ''twice.'' Iris, on the other hand, seems to have been burying herself in her work so she doesn't have to think about it. It's also worth mentioning that every time Eddie's death is brought up, Iris seems to be holding back tears, so she isn't quite over it.
** People expressing excessive grief for over six months are possibly suffering depression or Prolonged Grief Disorder. [[RealityIsUnrealistic Getting over a death within a few months is entirely normal]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Did something happen with Jason Rusch?]]
* Meta-headscratcher, but what happened with Jason Rusch? Not that Jax isn't an ideal partner for Stein, but why create a CompositeCharacter when they had one of the actual members of the Firestorm matrix from the comics? Was it just so they could have the whole Ronnie-Stein-Jason vibe even after Ronnie was gone? Or could they not get the actor again?
** In the Arrowverse, Ronnie was a highly competent and knowledgeable engineer and Jason Rusch is also a scientist. In the comics, part of the characterization of Firestorm was the combination of the older scientifically literate Martin Stein with the much younger athletic jock and okay but not exceptional student Ronnie Raymond. Using Jax allows that dynamic to be recreated.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Barry end up living with the Wests?]]
* Barry came to live with the Wests after his mother died and his father was sent to Iron Heights. Were there no living relatives of his, no grandparents, aunties, uncles or adult cousins he could've lived with? It just seems strange to me that the first person he gets sent to is someone to whom he isn't even related. It also kind of feels like just another way to delay Barry and Iris getting together, by making their relationship awkward because, to Iris (at least initially), they're LikeBrotherAndSister, but to Barry, they're NotBloodSiblings. This also never happened in the comics (NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat).
** His parents specified that they wanted him living with the Wests? That's normally how it works in real life.
** Barry might indeed not have had any other relatives that could take him in. It's not unheard of. In which case after his dad went to prison he would have been given over to Central City child services who would be tasked with placing him in a foster home ASAP. Detective West likely volunteered right away to foster young Barry and the courts were all too happy to let him do so. A police detective with such a sterling record, plus previous experience as a parent, would be an ideal placement for an effectively orphaned young boy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why did Eddie [[spoiler: have to kill himself?]]]]
* Let's say you find out your descendant is a murderous sociopath. Couldn't Eddie erase Thawne from existence by NOT having children, or making sure that he and his other relatives raise their kids to be good people? Also, why is it a shock to Eddie that Eobard has the same last name as him? It's not far-fetched for two people to share the same last name in the same city.
** Thawne is not a common last name (or at least that way of spelling it isn't) for Americans to have. [[http://howmanyofme.com [=HowManyOfMe=].com]] says that less than 119 US citizens had that last name according to data from the 2000 census. Eddie therefore has reason to find it strange that someone he doesn't know has the name, because if so few people do, it's entirely believable that all of them living in the US are relatives of Eddie. Also, Eddie could've not had children, but he needed to erase Eobard from existence straight away, and killing himself was really the only thing he could think of on the spot that wouldn't take years to do and to thus prevent Eobard's existence. What baffles me, however, was that he could've married Iris on the spot to achieve the same outcome. Not only had Eobard revealed that he isn't related to Iris, but Stein, an ordained Rabbi, was right there when Eddie shot himself. Regarding the "making sure he and his relatives raise their children to be good people", he could've already done that in the other timeline and had Eobard still turn out evil, because Eobard is not Eddie's son, but a much more distant descendant, and something could've happened down the line after Eddie's death.
** Marrying Iris wouldn't have worked immediately either. Time travel here seems to work on the DelayedRippleEffect model, with bigger changes causing bigger and faster ripples. Eddie and Iris dating would have killed Eobard eventually, as the longer they stayed together the lower the chances of them splitting up and Eddie becoming Eobard's ancestor would be. Them getting married would accelerate that process. But the only thing that would stop Eobard right that second was Eddie killing himself, because there's no way out of that.
** Marrying Iris may not have worked ''at all''. Eddie wouldn't be the first man in history to cheat on his wife.
** Or divorce.
** 2015-2024 is also enough time for Iris to marry Eddie, birth a baby Thawne, have that marriage end and go on to wed Barry.
** All we (and our heroes) know about this part of the future is that 'Iris West Allen' was the credited writer of a newspaper article circa 2024. That name actually gives them very little. For all they know, it's someone with the same name or a misprint. Gambling the ancestry of their local supervillain on it would be pretty risky.
** Of course. But potentials are reduced. If Eddie never meets Iris, his chances of being Eobard's ancestor are quite high. If he dates her, the chances are reduced, because he might never meet the woman he's supposed to marry. If he marries Iris, those chances are further reduced. If they have a child together, even further. So on and so on until he's died of old age and never become Eobard's ancestor. The Reverse Flash stopped Eddie from proposing because it greatly reduced the chances of his timeline coming to exist, not because of any guarantees. That's why Eobard checked the future with Gideon every five minutes--because any time ''anything'' happened, something might have gone wrong with the future.
** First potentials are not reduced in any concrete way. We know nothing about who Eddie would have married. Maybe she was a friend of Iris that he originally met through Iris. Maybe she was an up and coming student who would graduate five years in the future and work at STAR labs. Time travel gets real wonky real fast. And the original question was about why did Eddie commit suicide rather than any number of other solutions to prevent Eobard from being born and that all boils down to he needed an immediate solution to a threat and he took a chance and it worked.
** Exactly, a split-second decision in a desperate situation. Had he thought about it further or had more time, he may have acted differently, but he didn't.
** IIRC, Reverse Flash literally ''had his hands around someone's throat''. The universe probably wasn't too interested in waiting to see what hypothetical situation or vow of celibacy Eddie was going to make. Killing himself was an ''instant'' solution to stopping Wells at ''that very moment'', not in ten years when his ancestor is supposed to be conceived.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Sudden elitism?]]
* What is with everyone's attitude towards Jax in "The Fury of Firestorm"? This kind of elitist "lol dumb kid just wasting his life" nonsense has never been foreshadowed in any of their personalities. I mean, Caitlin I can almost understand, since she sees Tokamak as a mirror of Ronnie, but she still kind of comes out of left field with the whole thing. It just feels like a lot of characters got clumsily derailed for AnAesop on not being a douche to someone when you don't know their story.
** Really, it was only Caitlin that showed a preference for Hewitt over Jax. Cisco and Stein couldn't have really cared less, and it was Barry that persuaded Caitlin to give Jax a chance. I also don't really think it was her displaying elitism as per se, it's just that she would have rathered Stein to fuse with someone that he shared common interests with, and someone that Caitlin wouldn't have to spend ages giving a "dumbed down" explanation of how the Firestorm matrix works. Also, like you said, Hewitt seemed much more similar to Ronnie than Jax.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tokamak's beef with Team Flash doesn't make much sense.]]
* He wanted the power of Firestorm. After a delayed reaction, he gets the powers ''without having to share with anybody!'' Thanks are in order if anything, right? Yeah, I know he's got anger issues, but he got everything he wanted, only better.
** Powers drove his anger up like crazy, and there's also the ego. Some snot nosed punk got to be Firestorm instead of '''''HIM?!?!!?! THERE MUST BE RETRIBUTION!!!!!'''''
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why is Joe suddenly AbandonShipping Westallen?]]
* AsYouKnow, Joe has been a hardcore ShipperOnDeck for Barry and Iris for the last 15 or so years, to the point where he wouldn't give Eddie his blessing to propose to the latter. As has been implied, Joe really had nothing against Eddie other than the fact that Eddie was dating Iris when Joe wanted her to be with Barry. Now that Iris and Barry are both single again, and they both know that the other has more-than-platonic feelings for them, Joe just suddenly gives Barry his blessing to pursue Patty. Why? Note that in that same conversation, Joe told Barry that Barry would never feel the same way that he felt about Iris about anyone else. Also note that Eddie dated Iris ''and'' Joe knew Eddie before the latter was dating Iris for much longer than either Barry or Joe has currently known Patty. Why, then, did Joe detest the idea of Eddie and Iris being together, while now he's suddenly perfectly fine with Barry wanting to date Patty? Not only that, but Joe also didn't protest Barry dating Linda, and Joe didn't even ''know'' her!
** He hasn't given up on Westallen; he just knows that Eddie's death is still really weighing on both of them and in order to hash their feelings out, they'd have to talk about him which, neither of them are ready yet to do. He feels that Barry being with Patty will help heal him before he's ready to pursue Iris.
* Isn't it a little odd that he was rooting for his daughter and adoptive son to get together in the first place?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: No countermeasures against Dr. Light]]
* I find it strange that Barry doesn't even bother using sunglasses to protect his eyes from Dr. Light's super bright illumination. What's worse is that not once did he ever decide to put on some shades for his second and third encounter with Dr. Light. Did it occur to anybody at STAR labs that the Flash should be prepared for his any kinds of opponent the next time he fights them?
** Have you ever put on some sunglasses and looked directly into the sun before? It helps, but it still hurts. A lot. Doctor Light is specifically stated to possess the luminosity of a star. The only reason anybody can stand looking at the sun even with protection is because it's so far away. That close? I'm not sure there really is anything that actually can protect your eyes, rendering it a moot point. Frankly I'm surprised everyone in a several block radius doesn't just go permanently blind when she uses her powers.
** To the original problem just nobody thought of it. They don't tend to think of gizmos so much as they do (or more accurately Wells did) think of ways for Barry to fully utilize his power set. However a few major issues come up. No matter what Wells said Dr.Light is not harnessing the power of a star, her blasts are run of the mill energy blasts. At the very least they displayed little in the way of heat. Second, why didn't Barry just close his eyes or turn his head? She seems to have a charge up time that while it seems fast by our standards is absolutely nothing to a guy who can catch two bullets, then look around to make sure he hadn't missed one.
** Plus, even if S.T.A.R. Labs was able to craft lenses strong enough to block the light, the resulting darkness wouldn't allow Barry to see much else.
** I'd assume her fancy helmet/mask thing was to protect her own eyes, so he could've just worn that. But, I'd argue a more pressing problem is why he didn't just zoom off for a second so she didn't see him coming, then zoom back and knock her out before she saw him coming. There was no need to have a drawn-out hide-behind-cover fight the way they did.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why does Dr. Light want to kill Linda?]]
* When Dr. Light tries to kill Linda and replace her, she says that she's doing only because it's the only way she can hide from Zoom. How exactly would that work? Presumably Zoom has some method of tracking Dr. Light, because otherwise all it would take to hide from him is for her to change into civilian clothes and move to some other big city. And, since Zoom knows about the two Earths, presumably he also knows that people of Earth-2 have doppelgangers on Earth-1. So even if Dr. Light kills Linda and starts living as her, that wouldn't be enough to fool Zoom, and she should know it.
** It's true that when you think about it, that plan doesn't entirely work out, but it's one born of desperation and fear. That makes you think irrationally, so she probably hasn't thought it through. You see this sort of thing all the time in real life.
** Yes, these sort of things happen in real life, but ''The Flash'' is not in any way a realistic show, so ''someone'' should've noticed the obvious flaws in Dr. Light's plan. Barry is a smart guy, why doesn't he figure this out? When he comes to stop Dr. Light from killing Linda, he could've explained to her why the plan would never work, so that he could've persuaded her to help Team Flash to catch Zoom, without anyone getting hurt.
** What do we know about Zoom so far? Not much. Maybe Linda has a very good reason to kill her double to escape Zoom. And if not (beacause she is too stressed to think clearly) Team Flash doesn't have enough knowledge on Zoom to know it.
** It's more likely that Dr. Light wasn't thinking clearly: one of the most important aspects of KillAndReplace is that no one knows that you've killed that person. Walking into a crowded building in supervillain garb, while planning to murder your double in front of a dozen witnesses is rather counterproductive to ensuring that no one knows she's dead.
** Turns out her plan was to make Zoom think she was dead by leaving Linda's body for him to find. She admits this wasn't a good plan, just the best of a bunch of bad ones.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Clearing Wells' name]]
* Team Flash knew that the real Harrison Wells was dead and the Wells they were working with was Eobard Thawne. Cisco & Joe found the real Harrison Wells's corpse, so why wouldn't they use that to prove to the public that the Wells they know was an impostor. This would have been helpful, especially since Earth-2 Wells has come to Earth-1 but can't do much since he would have to hide from the authorities. Eobard made the confession as Harrison Wells. But given that the public knows about metahumans, would it be such a stretch for them to believe that he was an imposter from the future? Or at least say that Eobard impersonated Wells via shapeshifting or plastic surgery?
** Yes. Diggle over on Arrow mentions that a lot of people are still having problems with Metahumans, forget anything else. Team Flash probably didn't bother because originally it would do more harm than good. Wells was a "real" person to pin the death of Nora Allen on. Eobard Thawn hasn't even been born yet (and time travel shenanigans mean he never will). Without proof of how and when he did it, all sorts of other issues crop up. Like, can you give away Star Labs if you're an impostor? The existence of identical clones from Earth-2 is already causing some really annoying legal issues. Finally, listen to the way Team Flash talks about Eobard. To them, Eobard Thawn and Harrison Wells are the same person, not Eobard pretending to be Wells. When they talk about him they call him Wells. Cisco even finds it interesting that Earth-2 Wells has different musical tastes than a man Harry has no relation to at all.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Barry's facial hair]]
* Extreme and pedantic case of FridgeLogic here, so please bear with me. It's been established that Barry's powers cause his bodily processes and systems, such as his metabolism, to work at a much faster rate than muggles. Shouldn't he therefore have an almost permanent five o'clock shadow due to the speed at which his facial hair should supposedly be growing?
** If it was the case, then Barry should be constantly eating and drinking or suffer death by starving and/or dehydration. I assume that his metabolism is able to differentiate 'normal processing' (Hair growth, nail growth ...) and processing that happens when the body are in 'danger' (like being drunk and losing reflexes and coordination). The last ones happen at super speed to decreasing the amount of time Barry is in a sub-optimal state. So if Barry eats normally, he digests normally. But if he decide to eat sixty pounds of meat, his body will 'fast-digest' to avoid himself harming his stomach.
** [[AWizardDidIt Speed force.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why did Barry and Felicity kiss?]]
* Back in early season 1, Barry and Felicity decided to just be friends, acknowledging that, whilst they had chemistry, they were both in love with other people. They then proceeded to kiss ''on the lips'' in a non-platonic way, after which Barry leaves and the two seemingly pretend that it never happened. Did I miss something?
** I'd guess that kiss was their way of 'saying goodbye' or getting some kind of closure for the potential of their relationship. Just one, to acknowledge what could have been, before they go back to who they really love.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Barry's [[spoiler: broken spine]]]]
* Why did it surprise Caitlin that Barry couldn't feel his legs when he awoke after having the crap beat out of him by Zoom? He was apparently unconscious for quite a while. One would assume that, during that time, Caitlin would have performed numerous tests to determine the extent of Barry's injuries. Why, then, did she not already know about the condition of his spine?
** There was no reason for her to perform any tests. Barry got beat up, you get him some fluids and pain killers and lay him down.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Suit up, Harry]]
* Way back in season 1, Eobard Thawne travelled in time. It should have been a short trip: Go back, kill Barry, return to the new future, enjoy. And in Gorilla Warfare, we learn that he conveniently left another Reverse-Flash costume in another Reverse-Flash Ring that was conveniently found by Cisco when they needed Earth2-Wells to use it. How dumb is this ? Even if for some sort of reason (Fearing that he would need a new costume if the original is torn up) he created a new Reverse-Flash costume, there is not reason he left it behind when returning to its timeline. The confession video showed he is perfectly aware that Barry may decide to keep the timeline as it is, so there is no reason he left something as precious as a Ring to be reverse-engineering by Cisco or someone else.
** Ok, first off, that video indicated that Eobard was aware that something could possibly happen to him and he would die before his plan was completed, not that Barry would choose not to alter the timeline and stop him. Secondly, there was no reason for him to retrieve it at the end; if all had gone according to plan, everything Thawne had changed would've been undone, meaning the spare costume would no longer exist. Thirdly, even if all that wasn't the case, what makes you think Thawne would really care about leaving the spare costume behind? He spent the last 15 years screwing up the timeline, and the very reason he went back was to murder Barry before he became the Flash, potentially screwing up god-knows-what in his own time.
** Plus, I sincerely doubt that Barry could wreck any future plans Eobard has with a spare Reverse-Flash suit or a reverse-engineered ring that allows him to get his costume faster.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why didn't Zoom kill Barry as soon as he had him at his mercy? And how come he let Cisco shoot himself with a dart?]]
* There's no indication that Zoom has any kind of personal grudge against Barry, he just wants to get rid of all the speedsters. (And it would make little sense of him to have such a grudge, since a couple of months ago he didn't even know Earth-1 existed.) Before [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E6EnterZoom "Enter Zoom"]], he was perfectly fine with killing Barry by proxy (by sending metahumans to Earth-1 to do the job), so publically humiliating Barry clearly wasn't in his plan. So when he has Barry at his mercy, why doesn't he kill Barry immediately instead of running around the city and showing off in front of various Central City citizens? Since this kind of humiliation and making Central City scared of him wasn't in his original plan (when Barry was to be quickly killed by one of the other metahumans), why does he feel the need to do it now, even though it means taking the risk that Barry might come to his senses and escape? If he wanted to show Central City he's better than Flash, wouldn't it have been enough to kill Barry first, then flash his corpse in front of the journalists and cops? The effect would've been the same. Also, why did Zoom decide to kill Barry in front of his friends in S.T.A.R. Labs? Zoom knows that they have a weapon which might mess up his powers, so it's the worst possible place to show off. And if Zoom was able to catch the dart Wells shot, why couldn't he do the same with Cisco's dart? In both cases he was focusing on Barry, and the shot came as surprise to him, so why did he notice the dart the first time but not the second?
** We have to chalk it up to Zoom being both arrogant and sadistic. When all of Zoom's minions failed, he figured this Earth-1 Flash guy must be pretty tough. He apparently learns enough to know that he's the hero of Central City, and, angered that another speedster has gained such a powerful reputation, he sets out to make sure that the Flash is destroyed in a very public way. He might not have known that Barry was even still alive as he paraded him around the city. He did just shatter his spine, after all, which not a lot of people live through. He goes back to STAR Labs to give a final gloat to Harrison Wells and those who know the Flash the best, and in the process of mutilating his body by stabbing him, Barry makes a sound of pain, proving he is still alive. Relishing being able to murder Barry in front of his loved ones, he simply falls victim to the classic foible of EvilGloating, and Cisco is able to catch him off-guard. That's just my take on things.
** It might indeed be revealed later on that Zoom ''does'' hold a grudge against Barry when we find out Zoom's identity. It is also quite possible that he sends the Earth-2 metahumans to Earth-1 ''knowing'' that Barry will probably beat them, and simply enjoys killing (by proxy) for sport. If he's really that evil, I don't see why he ''wouldn't'' want to parade Barry's near-lifeless body around town. Zoom would also probably find it even more satisfying to kill Barry as his loved ones are ForcedToWatch.
** Confirmed that he's sending the metahumans through intending for Barry to defeat them because he wants Barry to get stronger and become a greater source of the Speed Force for Zoom to "feed" on.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:How do most of the villains present a challenge to the Flash?]]
* Some of them have some sort of power that could conceivably be a half-decent counter to super speed, but for a lot of them there's no issue. The same is true for the police (mentioned above) who seem unable to shoot villains in the back just because they have an exotic weapon or superpower that is really no more useful than a pistol. It seems if you surprise Barry he might not be able to "turn on" his speed quickly enough (the same for Zoom in the case of Cisco's dart) but most of the time we don't have that excuse. Snart is one example. I seem to remember something about his cold gun lowering energy levels to the extent that Barry can't run as fast, but avoiding the gun itself should be child's play for the man who catches Joe's bullets after he fires at the Earth-2 Wells with little warning. By the same token, I don't see how Oliver Queen is any use to Barry in a fight. Speed ought to beat everything. I'm guessing this is addressed somehow in the comics, if anyone knows?
** Honestly, this has been a problem in the comics, as well as pretty much any media portraying superheroes: If they really cut loose, someone like Flash should be able to incapacitate pretty much every one in his Rogue's Gallery in one blow, with only other speedsters and guys with super strength (ie, Atom Smasher or Girder) being able to pose any sort of physical threat to Barry. That's why the comics enforce the "No-killing rule" and it's the same here. Really, Barry's probably holding back subconsciously, lest he accidently kill his enemies (I know he has in the show, but it's not his first resort). Plus, the Flash has always been a person to see the good in everyone, so he's more likely to offer redemption before resorting to physical violence. But in answer to your question: if you pay close attention, you'll see that most of the Flash's enemies aren't posing a direct threat to him, but everyone else. They use that to their advantage, targeting civilians, police, his friends and family, before blindsiding him with clever use of their powers. It's why Snart was such a threat in his intro episode; he put civilians in harm's way in order to catch Barry by surprise.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:"You really think that leopard's gonna change its spots?"]]
* Over the course of the series, Leonard Snart has: killed a guy right in front of Barry, derailed a train full of people, taken Caitlin hostage, left her in a death trap, taken Cisco hostage, tortured his brother to make him give up the Flash's identity, betrayed Barry when Barry dealt with him in good faith, claimed that Barry owes him for keeping him safe when he wouldn't have been in danger if Snart hadn't betrayed him, and justified the whole thing with "I'm a criminal and a liar and I hurt people." And that's just the stuff Barry was personally involved with. And yet Barry thinks there's good in Snart and he secretly wants to reform because he loves his sister? What? Yes, yes, Barry likes to see the good in people, but he's never said anything like that to ''any'' other criminal, no matter what their motivations.
** Honestly, this bugged me too, but for different reasons: it's not like Barry's treating Snart as a special case, as he's offered redemption to several other members of his Rogue's Gallery, and even to those who he hasn't, he still often empathises with what they're going through. The main thing that bugs me is that everyone seems to treat Snart as redeemable because he's stopped killing people after making that deal with Barry[[note]] before murdering his father, anyway [[/note]], while ignoring the fact that he casually murdered Deathbolt in [[IncrediblyLamePun cold blood]], because (and I quote) "He owed [Snart] money." I know Deathbolt wasn't a saint, but everyone just seems to have forgotten about this, including Snart himself. Frankly, they have no reason to trust him, as he's broken every single agreement he's made with Barry.
** Good point about Deathbolt. There's a reasonable argument to be made that he actually did that in defense of Barry's life (he could hardly admit it to the other villains if so, after all), but he wouldn't have ''had'' to if he hadn't betrayed Barry in the first place. That's definitely a violation of the deal. And I really do think Barry's treating Cold differently. Who else has he tried to get to reform? The closest I can think of is trying to talk down Blackout, who hadn't done a quarter of what Cold has. He tried to make a deal with Dr. Light on practical grounds, he sympathized with Girder once he was dead and not before...seriously, who has he ever talked like this to? Am I forgetting someone?
** No, [[Literature/{{Discworld}} but he might change his shorts.]]
** In answer to metahumans he's tried to talk down (besides Blackout): if I remember correctly, Barry tried to get Multiplex to give up his rampage, and he did openly sympathize with Peek-a-Boo. As for the others, by the time he encountered them, they had already proven that they were just killing people for the hell of it, so there was no reason to negotiate with them. But in regards to Cold being treated differently to Barry's other enemies, if you pay attention to his first couple of episodes, Barry ''doesn't'' treat him like a special case, he treats him like the criminal that he is. It's only when Cold manages to learn the Flash's identity that Barry attempts to offer him a deal by appealing to Snart's ego (and that's only because Snart was threatening to reveal Barry's identity to the world). And really, he turns to Snart for help with the metahumans not because he trusts him, but because he's desperate for help. Even when Lisa comes to them for help, they still see Snart as a selfish asshole. It's only when they learn how bad Lewis Snart was (and Lisa's recounting of how her brother was the only one there for her), that Flash really starts to see Cold as redeemable.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Who owns the copyrights of a real hero ?]]
* So, [[spoiler: Oliver's child]] is playing with a "Flash" action figure. In this world, Flash is not a fictional character. And it seems unlikely he revealed his identity to get royalties. I just don’t see how this toy could exist without starting a court battle to see who is authorized to make that kind of toy and who doesn’t.
** Court battles require someone to sue. Barry clearly doesn't care, and it's not like he has an agent.
** Point is, if the Flash doesn't care to sell its image, NO Flash toy should exist. The fact that someone doesn't want to sell his image doesn't allow others to steal it. Especially since those kind of image stealing often lead to toys with choking hazard elements, lead painting, low quality and using said image to promote ideas not shared by the real Flash (like 'Buy our toy The Flash, The Flash thinks white people are better than black people. If you agree with him, help him by buying his Action Figure.")
** This is a problem some people have when they refuse to deal with copyright at all. Bill Watson, of ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'', famously refused to get involved, which is why you can find car stickers of Calvin doing everything from peeing in the gas tank to praying in front of a cross. Barry ''could'' make an issue of this, but until he does (or until someone does something really stupid like try to use him to promote racism), they can get away with it.
** Who in their right minds would make an unauthorized toy version of a ''supervillain'' and expect it to go well? William had a Captain Cold action figure as well. It also gets into the murky area of "Son of Sam" laws that are designed to prevent convicted criminals from cashing in on their notoriety.
** The city sells Flash merchandise (such as T-shirts) during its official Flash Day. Maybe they're the ones making the toys. Barry (as The Flash) may very well have given them permission for that, though the villains presumably haven't.
** If Barry wanted to, he could certainly take the toy company to court for using his likeness without his permission and win big. But to do that, he'd have to appear in court ''as'' Barry Allen and publically announce he's the Flash; the courts don't allow you to sue someone anonymously. So as long as Barry wants to maintain his secret identity, he has no legal recourse against anyone making Flash merchandise.
** Let's face it: It's [[{{Adorkable}} Barry]] [[AscendedFanboy Allen]] we're talking about. If someone approached him (as The Flash) saying "Hey, we want to make an action figure of you," he would probably be {{Squee}}ing on the inside. Doesn't he seem like the kind of guy who played with such action figures when he was a kid? As for Cold, assuming he is aware of the action figures' existance, he probably doesn't give a shit. The guy has bigger concerns than who is making toys of him, like running his criminal empire, for example.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Hawk ages]]
* In the Flash-Arrow Crossover, we learn that the Hawks (Hawkgirl and Hawkman, currently [[spoiler: Cisco's girlfriend Kendra, and a guy named Carter]]) have been reincarnated 207 times in roughly 4000 years, [[spoiler: and are murdered brutally in each life]]. This puts their average lifespan at around 19 years old.
** This may fall into ExactlyExtyYearsAgo. The RealLife Khufu actually lived a little over 4500 years ago; if they lived almost the same amount of time in each life, they would have lived to around 23 years. Not much better, but better. However, they probably didn't live the same amount in each life. Continued directly below.
** This actually combines NightmareRetardant with NightmareFuel. The ancient world was ''much'' smaller than the modern world, and so it would have been much easier for Savage to find the Hawks back in Old Kingdom Egypt than in the 19th or even 15th centuries. It is entirely possible that for a few dozen lifetimes Savage found them comparatively quickly (say, around 15 years), but after that it became harder and harder as the world grew – though the Internet would obviously have allowed him to find them much more quickly in this current incarnation. It's even possible the Hawks lived into adulthood or even old age in some lifetimes, depending on who they were born as (though that gets into WMG).
** Also note that Savage had to get around by mundane means, as covertly as possible, and slowly because he doesn't seem to have much in the way of resources so he can simply buy a ticket and travel openly (and by the quickest means). He was stowing away on a ship, the slowest form of intercontinental travel. Meanwhile the Hawks were being elsewhere when he had to kill them. There's also no indication of how soon he becomes aware of their presence when they reincarnated. He might only have a vague direction unless he's very close until they fully awaken. If they happen to reincarnate in the same region, he can probably track them down and kill them as children, or even infants. If they're born on another continent, he might have to wait until they release their powers before he can find them, and who knows at what age that might be.
[[/folder]]


[[folder:Is Barry a virgin?]]
* Not that it's really relevant, but is he (as of Season 2, episode 8)? We only really know of one girlfriend that Barry had before Linda, Becky, but that was back when he was in high school. Then, him and Linda got cockblocked that one time, and at the moment him and Patty seem to be taking things quite slow. Hopefully I'm not the only person who has wondered this.
** A) If you have a steady girlfriend/boyfriend in high school, it's quite common to have sex with them; B) you can lose your virginity without having a steady boyfriend/girlfriend; C) sexuality is not an important theme in ''The Flash'', there aren't really any references to ''anyone's'' sex life, so the fact that Barry's isn't discussed doesn't mean anything.
** As of 2.10, he's pretty clearly not.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: So, does Team Flash think that Zoom can see what happens on the other side of the dimensional breaches?]]
* Now, I realize that [[spoiler: Zoom only sent metahumans after Barry to make him stronger so there would be more Speed Force to feed on.]] My question relates to that scene where Barry and Linda stage a fight between The Flash and Dr. Light to get Zoom's attention. As far as they know, Zoom has requested Barry's emblem as proof of his defeat (which is probably just part of his ruse because of the spoiler information mentioned above). Based on that knowledge, there is really no reason for them to assume that Zoom can see what happens on Earth-1 (if he could, he could check whether The Flash had been defeated without requiring a BattleTrophy as proof), so why do they even trouble themselves to fake a fight when they can just take the Emblem off of his costume and throw it through one of the breaches?
** Fact is no one in Team Flash really knows what access Zoom has to our world. For all they knew, Zoom could have hidden surveillance cams near portals. And the "Send the Flashs symbol" could be a safeguard (Only the villain from Earth-2 knew about it, so if team Flash staged a fight using a villain's double. The double wouldn't sent back the badge, so Zoom would know it's a trap.).
** ''[[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E15KingShark King Shark]]'' makes it clear why Zoom didn't show up: he was probably well aware of what the team was up to since he hangs around the lab on a regular basis.
** That wasn't Zoom. Probably. There are at least two men with Jay Garrick's face, and the one who's been helping Team Flash isn't Zoom. Zoom was even carrying Jay's body when he was unmasked to make it clear that they're two different people and not speed clones. Zoom might have stopped by once or twice to spy, but he definitely wasn't doing the same as Reverse Flash last season.
** Its been confirmed the Jay we've been seeing all season was Zoom, so yeah.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:How much Eobard Thawne knew about Earth-2?]]
* At the end of season 1, Eobard Thawne saw Jay Garrick's Helmet and told the heroes it was his 'cue to leave'. Does that mean Thawne knew about Earth-2, and in that case how? He changed the timeline so that Barry could become the Flash 5 years earlier. Meaning that in the original story, Zoom killed Jay Garrick without any dimensional portal coming to the rescue. If somehow Thawne travelled to Earth-2, he may have met Zoom but not Garrick.
** There's no evidence that time traveling in one universe could affect the timeline of another universe, seeing as the timelines of both aren't exactly the same[[note]] The STAR Labs of Earth-1 was founded in 2000 (both before and after Eobard changed the past), while the STAR Labs of Earth-2 was founded in 1991 [[/note]]. At any rate, Eobard may have encountered Jay Garrick at some point, but not necessarily the Jay Garrick of Earth-2, considering the very nature of the Multiverse.
** Given the nature of the multi-verse he may very well have come into contact if not with Jay specifically still speedster who wore that helmet. Virtually nothing is known about how alternate universes and time travel interact in the Arrowverse so there may have been no "originally" Zoom vs Jay. This could be the only way it ever played out. At the very least it's implied that Zoom knows about the multiverse since Jay mentions he wants to be the only speedster. So unless Earth 2 was filled with Speedsters once and Zoom hunted them all down or he's been hopping around doing this for a while. He apparently never stumbled over Earth 1 in the original timeline since Eobard (who had no reason to lie about this) claims that he and Flash were evenly matched. Even if we accept that he tried to kill baby Barry because he was the weaker of the two it's still described as a genuine battle. Current Barry was losing to Eobard but not being utterly curbstomped which leads to Zoom utterly crushed Barry. A gap in power that high would easily have allowed him to beat Eobard and/or most likely Future Barry.
** Alternatively he knows about Zoom. Zoom is a big deal and he knows enough about Flashes in general to see that come popping through, believe it means a Flash just died and wants to avoid an opponent he cannot defeat who wants to kill him.
** Perhaps when Eobard says it's "his cue to leave," he's not concerned about the significance of the helmet, but that objects as large and heavy as the helmet are coming through the breach; it might indicate some quantum physics junk is going on and the breach will close shortly. (Although, to be honest, I'm a bit more curious about Eobard's off-hand reference to Rip Hunter).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why can't Jay go back and forth between Earth 1 and Earth 2]]
* At the start of the season when Team Flash needed knowledge on Earth 2 and Zoom and Jay was being setup as a mentor to Barry it made sense for him to stay on Earth 1, but since Wells from Earth 2 came he basically filled not only filled the Earth 2 knowledge broker and can teach Barry some new tricks with his speed that even Jay doesn't know there doesn't seem like there is much for Jay to do. As the season as progressed it is becoming more apparent that the writers are struggling to give Jay more to do beyond opposing Wells reckless ideas (while not having Jay give any alternatives to the team). Why can't Jay go back to Earth 2 to investigate Zoom or ask for some of his friends help (wasn't implied to have known other heroes?) then hop back and forth between the two Earths? It seems like a better idea to keep Jay useful, while not having the character being a series regular.
** I was under the impression that they knew how to send him to Earth 2, but not how to bring him back.
** Turns out, he has been. WordOfGod after ''[[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E15KingShark King Shark]]'' aired was that the Jay under the Zoom mask is indeed the Jay people have been seeing all season.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Joe, Francine and Wally]]
* In 2x03, Joe says to Iris that Francine was a cop's wife and knew how to stay hidden. Then in 2x09, he tells Barry that was a lie to save his pride - that he just never went looking for her. So which one is it? Because if it's the first one, then even though Wally has reason enough to be mad at both of his parents, it makes sense to be slightly more mad at Francine than Joe because he never knew anything. But if it's the second one, then Wally has every right to be mad at Joe for not looking, especially since he's been living in ''Keystone City'' this whole time. I mean, I feel it's understandable for Wally to be angry with Joe anyway, because his mother is dying and he has to race cars to pay her hospital bills when Joe and Iris seem to be doing fine, but I'd like to know who told who what.
** Since Joe admitted he lied the first time, presumably it's the second one.
** Almost definitely the second. She may have known how to stay hidden but she was a druggy and Joe even as a cop has extremely limited legal measures he can use to compel her to do anything she's not in the mood for. Wally is pissed because he's a teen in a crappy situation. Joe didn't know he existed and even through his anger I suspect Wally knows that if Joe had even suspected he had a son that he would have moved heaven and Earth to find him. Instead when his druggy wife ran off for the nth time he decided to focus on Iris and shortly thereafter on Iris and Barry.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Patty's age]]
* How old is this woman? We find out early on that she has a triple joint degree in Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and that she graduated from the police academy a few months ago. Given that we heard that Barry is 25 in the pilot, I'd put her at the same age. But then we find out that she and her father owned a shoe shop, and the reason her father is dead is because a pre-Weather Wizard Mark Mardon robbed it while she was out with her friends after school. I'm assuming that would put her in high school, but she says that Mardon killed her father a few months before he got powers - which, if we're going with the timeline of the show, was around 2 years ago. If all that info we got is correct, Patty is 19-20 on the show, but managed to get a triple joint degree and graduate from the police academy in two years, which beggars belief even for this show. I could be wrong and missed something, but I'm just so confused!
** She was obviously out with her friends after her classes at college.
** I don't remember her saying that the incident occurred a few months before Mardon got his powers. However, in a deleted scene from the mid-season finale, she mentioned that her father died when she was 17, so it's plausible to think she still could've been in either her last year of high school or first year of college then. Then, in the actual episode, she says that her father died 4 years ago, making her 21. I'm Australian so I don't know how the tertiary education system works in the US, but here it is possible (albeit difficult) to complete a science degree with 3 majors in 3 yrs. Her being able to do so can be put down to Patty being the intelligent nerd that she is, and her starting college at age 17. This would make her 20 when she graduated college. It can then be assumed that she joined the police academy shortly afterwards, and I think that takes a year (someone please correct me if I'm wrong), making her 21 when she graduated from that and then joined the CCPD. Therefore, she is currently either 21, or she might have just turned 22.
** Right, that makes sense. I think I was working off that deleted scene, so they must have deleted it because it contradicted what they said earlier, I guess? Because then it would make sense that her father was killed and then Mardon got powers a few years later, and that she had been following him since her teenage years.
** Okay, (I don't mean to create natter, so I'm sorry if this sounds like it) so are you saying that she's actually probably closer to Barry's age and by "school" she really meant "college"?
** Most likely.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Disposition of the Turtle]]
* Why is the Turtle locked up in the Pipeline? Season 1 established that running a secret supervillain prison under STAR Labs is morally, legally, and practically a terrible idea, which is why there is now a metahuman prison wing for this very situation. As unethical as imprisoning Hewitt in the Pipeline was in 2.4, it was at least established as a temporary measure until he agreed not to tell anyone their identities. But the Turtle doesn't know anything about their identities--or he didn't until they all decided to assemble in front of him--so why didn't they hand him over to the police? Did Patty not notice that her abductor was never arrested? Of course, the underlying reason for this is presumably so that [[spoiler: Harrison could easily murder him]], but that's...''really'' not a justification.
** They locked the Turtle in the Pipeline because they believe that his power is the key to countering Zoom's speed. They wanted to study and hopefully replicate the effects, therefore they need him close by so they can have regular access to him. It would kinda difficult to get regular access if he was locked up in Iron Heights. Presumably, once they were done with him, the Turtle would've been turned over to the proper authorities, but [[spoiler: Harrison made sure that that wouldn't happen.]]
** It's also mentioned that the Turtle has been evading the authorities for quite some time now, so Patty and the others from the CCPD probably just think that he got away again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Patty's [[spoiler: reason for leaving]]]]
* Patty says that she's leaving Central City to study to become a CSI, her dream job that she never ended up pursuing after she joined the CCPD to honour her father. However, she said several episodes earlier that she studied a science degree in which she triple majored in biology, chemistry and physics. Why didn't she just study to become a CSI from the get-go? Is she talking about getting a masters degree? Someone who is familiar with how science degrees in the US work please enlighten me.
** The reason why she became a cop in Central City is because she wanted revenge against Mark Mardon/Weather Wizard for killing her father. Remember, now that Mardon's in jail, she's finally got justice for her father's death (although she did try to pull the trigger on Mardon back in the Christmas episode). With that being resolved, Patty has no other reason to stick around in Central City, so she can finally move on and get her dream job as a CSI.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Did Iris believe Barry?]]
* When Barry's mother died, did Iris believe that Henry was innocent? I don't think it's ever outright stated, but there seems to be evidence pointing to both answers. For example, Henry has said, I think more than once, that Barry was the only one that ever believed in his innocence. However, Iris I'm sure also had some sort of WhatTheHellHero moment towards Joe in the pilot when Joe tried to talk some sense into Barry and convince him that his father was guilty. There's also the fact that Iris believes that Barry is a bad liar, plus he only ever kept one secret, the fact that he loved her, from her before he became the Flash. I'm sure you can see my confusion.
** I think she probably did believe him simply because, like you said, Barry has never lied to Iris apart from those two times. Besides, the whole reason everyone started believing in Barry as the Flash was ''because'' she believed in impossible things. Maybe Barry didn't tell Henry because Iris was just another kid like Barry? Or he may have thought that Henry would see it as Iris only saying she believed him about Henry because they're best friends.
** This doesn't really have anything to do with Barry's honesty so much as what Barry chooses to believe about his father though. It's not a lie if your information turns out to be incorrect that's just you being wrong so Iris's ability to tell if he's lying has no bearing. The question here boils down to what did Joe actually think vs what was he telling a child and eventual young man so he wouldn't waste his life trying to get a guilty man out of jail (in his opinion) or did he believe Henry to be innocent. Given what interactions we see between Joe and Henry it seems safe he always had his doubts. Which means Iris, smart woman and girl that she is and was probably defaulted to Barry is right.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Everyone has a doppelganger?]]
* Earth 1 and Earth 2 are not identical twins. While it's not 100% clear what the characters know we as viewers know that on Earth 2 Oliver Queen died with the Queen's Gambit. Our Harrison Wells died 15 years prior to the main story. Without Barry becoming the Flash it's probable that Nora Allen survived. So we know the doppelgangers are not tied to each other. As in dying on Earth 1 means nothing on Earth 2 and vice versa. More to the point (despite how frequently it happens in fiction) names aren't planned out. As happened with Jay, your doppelganger could have a different name because of something as silly as your Earth 2 Mom being a huge fan of Star Wars and naming you Luke instead of Bruce because your Mom loved Batman. I understand looking and hoping because that's what you do, but not the outright refusal to accept that things weren't identical seems wrong based on differences they have to know about such as who has super powers.\\
This just makes no sense. In "The Reverse Flash Returns" Caitlin and co. are sure Jay has an Earth 1 double. The show seems to run on (and this seems confirmed by previews showing Earth 2 Caitlin, Ronnie, and Barry) the idea that everyone on Earth 1 has doubles on Earth 2. Except we've seen Earth 2. We know it has a vastly altered timeline and world, with a War of the Americas, Gorilla City, different technology and aesthetics. That clearly means that not everyone would have the same relationships, due to early deaths, or just different circumstances from past changes in Earth 2's history. A few doubles makes some sense. But ''everyone'' having a double? It's FridgeLogic and a serious headscratcher.
** This is especially true because they know that Jesse doesn't have an Earth-1 doppleganger due to Earth-1!Harrison Wells and Earth-1!Tess Morgan dying before they could conceive her.
** How is the fact that an AlternateUniverse is different yet similar to another, a headscratcher exactly? To borrow a phrase from VideoGame/BioShockInfinite; there are constants and variables. Considering the very nature of the multiverse, not only is it very possible for there to be a variation of Earth with the type of divergence yet similarities to Earth-1, there '''must''' be a version that's exactly like that. As for why Team Flash assumes that the doppelgängers of Earth-2 have similar names, histories, and appearances to their Earth-1 counterparts? Chalk that up to Occam's Razor mixed with a bit of confirmation bias: Besides Zoom, Harry and Jay, every metahuman from Earth-2 that they've met had a counterpart with the same name as their Earth-1 counterpart, so logically, if you're searching for an Earth-1 double of someone from Earth-2, (ie, Jay Garrick), you try to find someone with the same name. If that fails, well, back to the drawing board.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: You can't change the past, except sometimes you can?]]
* In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E11TheReverseFlashReturns "The Reverse Flash Returns"]], Dr. Wells says that killing Reverse Flash won't stop Barry's mother from dying, even though this version of Eobard Thawne hasn't done it yet, because that event is already in the past, so it's a fixed point that can't be altered. Later on this idea is reinforced when Cisco starts to fade out: since Eobard already caused him to get his powers in the past, that is also fixed point which must be allowed to happen to avoid a paradox. But in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E15OutOfTime "Out of Time"]] Barry traveled to the past and changed it without any repercussions, and the same thing happened later in [[Recap/ArrowS4E8LegendsOfYesterday "Legend of Yesterday"]]. So apparently in the Series/ArrowVerse you can't change the past, except when the plot demands so?
** If you take LegendsOfTomorrow into account the following is true. Time is like concrete, it takes a while to set and become fixed. In both cases quoted here Flash went back ''during'' the event in question a tidal wave and large scale explosion respectively. They didn't even have a chance to finish much less become set in the time stream. Eobard here raises an entirely different problem in that he exists and yet doesn't. Eobard's changes remained in place because they were 'fixed' in time, so why did Eddie's suicide actually kill Eobard who should have been similarly fixed. Clearly it failed to do its intended purpose of wiping him out entirely. I think it's clear that in the Arrowverse time travel does what it wants because fuck you that's why.
** It could just be that it was an attempt to stop [[ArtisticLicensePhysics ignoring physics]]. Erasing a person from the timeline would mean [[NoConservationOfEnergy violating the Law of Conservation of Energy]].
** One interpretation is that it depends on the length of time between the change and the original event. The changes mentioned above (the tidal wave, the explosion, the alterations made to the past in Legends) were all short-term: The Tidal Wave would have hit less than a day after the moment Barry traveled back to, the explosion was only hours later, Ray's suit likely wouldn't have taken very long for Savage to replicate, and the event at which Martin Stein was to meet his future wife was the same night as the event that stopped it from happening. It could be that these events would take less time to become "fixed" than Eobard's birth, which was ''years'' in the future. This would explain why Eddie's suicide would still affect him. However, the circumstances of Eddie's death create a TemporalParadox, so a version of Eobard had to be left behind in history so that the events of Season 1 could still happen (that may not make a lot of sense, but call it the [[AWizardDidIt the influence of the Speed Force]] if it helps.)
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Why does Zoom need Harry's help?]]
* We see that Zoom is blackmailing Harry to force him to help steal Barry's speed. While it makes for good drama, it's unclear why exactly he needs Wells' help in the first place. In the flashback to his fight with Jay, Zoom seemed perfectly capable of stealing another speedster's speed on his own, and pretty quickly at that. Why go through the trouble of blackmailing Wells when he's shown to be perfectly capable of stealing speed himself? Is there some reason he was able to steal Jay's speed on his own but can't steal Barry's? The only explanation at the moment is that he's just doing it ForTheEvulz.
** Explained as of "Welcome to Earth-2". [[spoiler:Zoom didn't steal Jay's speed. Turns out [[DrugsAreBad a side-effect of]] [[FantasticDrug the Velocity drug]] is [[DePower power loss]].]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why do they keep referring to Reverse Flash as "the other Wells"]]
* They keep acting and speaking as if Reverse Flash was this earth's Wells, when they know perfectly well that they've never actually met him. He died a long time ago. It's incredibly strange when they talk to Earth 2 Wells as if he were Reverse Flash's doppleganger. He's the doppleganger of a man they've never met.
** While Thawne wasn't born as Earth 1's Harrison Wells, he did live as Wells for 15 years. As far as most of the world is concerned, Thawne ''was'' Wells.
** That doesn't answer the question, though. Unlike most of the world, the protagonists know the guy they worked with wasn't Wells but Eobard Thawne. And yet they keep making comparisons between Eobard and Earth-2 Wells, as if he's merely an Earth-2 version of the person they knew, even though he's not.
** When you spend at least several months with someone calling them something, it's gonna stick in your mind. To them, he was Wells, even if he just stole the identity.
** This consistently bothers me too. It's like the writers keep forgetting that Earth-1 Harrison Wells was a distinct entity from Eobard Thawne. It's incredibly disrespectful in-universe also, that the innocent guy who died a very painful death and had his identity stolen, is attributed to all the horrible stuff that happened.
** Earth 1 Wells is also a man none of the main cast ever met, he died while they were children. It cannot be stressed enough that for all intents and purposes his name was Wells not Eobard. For fifteen years nobody called him any different or knew any different. What actually odd in universe is that Wells and Eobard DO have such similar personalities despite being utterly unrelated people. Nobody else seems to be particularly close to their doubles.
** Because Eobard based his Wells impersonation on his earlier (from his point of view) meeting with Harry.
** Not really. Earth 1 and Earth 2 Wells are very different, and I don't see Earth 2 Wells and Eobard as particularly similar, aside from in the very superficial. Tina [=McGee=] also noted that Wells changed a great deal when he was replaced.
** Personally, if I knew a guy who turned about to be someone else completely, and then someone who looked and was ''extremely'' similar to the person who was impostered, I'd say "The other (blank)." I'd stop after because of how disrespectful it is, but point still stands.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why did the masked man use the knocking code?]]
* He could've easily used his fingers to make the motions of letters, and it'd have been faster too.
** That's a little harder to do. I have done that, and many people have problems understanding it. His knocking is probably best, and is actually better than Morse code, because Zoom may know Morse, but has no idea of the knocking idea.
** Zoom knowing Morse Code is pretty meaningless since he's not pants on head retarded. He clearly knows that masked man is trying to communicate when he gets back. Morse Code also has the additional benefit of being more widely known than Prisoner's Knock. If you're trying to communicate quickly you want to use the most universal system you can find.
** The knocking code was developed by prisoners because they don't need to watch, or even see, each other in order to pass messages.
** That's not really relevant here though, because the masked man's mask has eyeholes, so he can see the Flash and Jesse, and he knows they can see him too. And as pointed out above, as soon as Zoom gets back he would realize the knocks were a code, even if he wouldn't necessarily recognize that particular code. So the masked man could've used any code he wanted while Zoom was away.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:No biological function on Earth-2?]]
* OK, Barry was kept prisoner for less than a day so I give a pass, But Jesse and Iron Mask are prisonners for months, and I failed to see how they can do ... err ... basic natural evacuation. In the same way, how can the Iron Mask eat ?
** Obviously, Zoom brings a bucket. Which is hilarious to think about. He's probably an evil maid for them.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Shouldn't Earth-2 Iris be pissed off at Earth-1 Barry?]]
* Think about it from Iris' point of view: Earth-1 Barry kidnaps her husband, locks him in a closet, and pretends to be him, right down to kissing her and all. It was because Deathstorm and Killer Frost are searching for Earth-1 Barry that Iris' dad gets killed, so he's partially responsible for that. And when Earth-2 Joe is on his deathbed and saying his final words to his "son-in-law", Barry ''still'' keeps on pretending. He could've easily used his super-speed to get Earth-2 Barry there, so at least Joe would've had the chance to talk to his real son-in-law before his death. But when Iris learns all this, there's no reaction at all. Admittedly they had bigger things to consider at the moment... But at the end of the episode, when she finally has a chance to talk to Earth-1 Barry, it's just tearful goodbyes, and Iris isn't the slightest bit mad at Barry for the awful things he did. What the heck?!
** I agree that maybe Iris should have been more mad at E1 Barry, but I'm looking at it as a combination of understanding the magnitude of what was going on because of the threat of Zoom, since he is actually a resident of ''her'' earth, not theirs, and the writers not having enough time. They had to fit in E2 Iris finding out the truth, teaming up with Harry and Cisco, finding Killer Frost and rescuing everyone, before going back to their earth, as well as all the stuff on E1 with Geomancer. The writers probably thought an emotional goodbye would be better than Iris being upset with Barry for the impersonation. Plus, from the way that everyone had on those metahuman alert bracelets in the bar, it looked like people are more used to metahuman attacks than our people, so normal people being killed seems like a more regular occurrence.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Patty's exit]]
* Upon doing a rewatch, Patty's last scene makes absolutely no sense to me. Why would she think it acceptable to trick Barry into revealing his identity to her...on a crowded train? Even if you leave aside the fact that it felt very manipulative because he obviously had no desire to tell her, and you argue that she just wanted closure, could she not have done it anywhere else? Also, if she was so adamant that she was leaving before, why would knowing that he's the Flash be enough to get her to stay, when being a CSI is apparently her dream job?
** Knowing he's the Flash ''isn't'' enough to get her to stay. But realizing he's had a good reason not to be letting her in is enough for her to offer him a second chance to do so. If he'd taken her up on that and offered her a serious relationship, that would have outweighed the CSI job for her.
** Fair, but that doesn't answer why she felt the need to trick him into telling her. What kind of relationship was she expecting to have with him after that?
** Presumably, she'd have apologized or something, and they'd probably would've have done a bit together before ''getting'' together.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Iris, he touched you]]
* In Fast Lane, Iris confronts the guy running the drag races, and, after revealing that she's been taping their conversation, says something along the lines of "If you touch me, all of this information goes to the CCPD." Guess what the creep does next? HE TOUCHES HER, AND SHE DOES NOT GO TO THE COPS! Admittedly, he threatened her friends and family, but still!
** She might have meant it in an "I've arranged for all of this information to go to the CCPD if anything bad happens to me" kind of way, rather than literally telling him not to touch her.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Amazing new weapon, lets' never use them!]]
* So Zoom sends' another metahuman to try and kill Barry, Dr. Light. They defeat her and then by some technomiracle, recreated her powers into a pair of gloves, which are powerful enough to actually do some real damage, why not suit up someone or refit them for Garrick while he was depowered? We don't know how much besides hand blasts they copy, they could use them to blind Zoom, remember Barry was blind for most of the day.
** If I remember correctly, they didn't make the gloves that actually replicated her power, but rather ''resembled'' it. We don't know if they even came close to Dr. Light's power output, considering that they only made it destructive enough to be believable, rather than as powerful as they could go (which is probably also why they never bothered blinding Zoom with it). As to why no one else used them, considering how difficult it was for Linda to use them, not to mention the various technical malfunctions, they may have figured that it wasn't worth the effort (and walking around with glowing hands would be rather conspicuous anyway).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why Team Flash thinks [[spoiler: Jay Garrick is Zoom?]]]]
* I don’t get why at the end of the ‘Trajectory’ episode Team Flash suddenly believe [[spoiler: Jay Garrick]] is Zoom. It’s seems they just assume the blue lightning is caused by the [[spoiler: body decay]]. They seem to forget that people can have doppelganger, that speed mirage only works when the different places are very close, that [[spoiler: Jay has to use V9 while Zoom at the same time on Earth-2 was in full possession of his powers]]. Given how [[spoiler: Jay Garrick]] helped them, it’s strange none of them tries to defend him or find another hypothesis.
** They believe it due to Cisco's vision from touching Jay's helmet, plus Thawne was able to make it look like the Reverse-Flash was beating himself using a mirage.
** Yes, but they know doppelgangers and shapeshifters exist and they know speed mirage works at close range ... not between two Earthes without a portal to connect them.
** Regarding the powers, let's not forget that Zoom has been killing speedsters and draining their speed force.
** Exactly. So, as Jay, he doesn't have to use V9, right?
** Barry didn't trust Jay when they first met him. It took his friends to make him realize just because Thawne tricked them didn't mean Jay would. Now they have some signs pointing that Jay might be Zoom, so it makes sense for Barry to think Jay lied to them. His experience with Thawne definitely made him less trusting of people. He was the one arguing for Jay being Zoom at the end of the episode when Cisco and Caitlin were arguing it made no sense. Cisco vibed Zoom every time he touched Jay's helmet and actually saw what appeared to be Jay when Zoom took off the mask. If Jay's trustworthiness is called into question that automatically means everything he told Team Flash about Zoom is called into question. Jay already lied to them about how he lost his speed. Sure at the time he gave Caitlin a reasonable explanation, but how can they be sure he was telling the truth then? Jay was experiencing the same cellular damage Trajectory was facing. When her body disintegrated after her lightning turned blue it made Barry think it could be connected to Zoom. Neither they nor we know if Zoom is in full possession of his speed or if he is taking Velocity serum. There is no concrete evidence for either right now, but if Zoom needs Velocity to recover his speed it would explain why Jay doesn't show any signs of Speed Force when Caitlin examined him. As Harry theorize it would also explain why Zoom is obsessed with stealing Barry's speed if he needs it to save his life or restore his natural speed. There could be more going on here than what Team Flash thinks, but there is enough clues and bits that it is understandable why they think Jay is Zoom. Barry isn't ready to give Jay the benefit of the doubt, especially when he did that with fake Wells and it blew up in his face.
** Aaaaand, they were right. The person they knew as "Jay" was Zoom the whole time.
** Right for the wrong reasons.
** Actually hey had good reasoning. They witnessed that Trajectory-9 caused blue lighting, who has been using Trajectory? Jay. They had Cisco's visions whose accuracy has been spot on. And ever sine Wells they are unfortunately used to having former mentor/friends turn out to be not who they say they are.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How is Zoom still alive?]]
* Trajectory's lighting turned blue just before she ran herself to death. So how is Zoom still alive? His lightning is blue, so how hasn't he ran himself to death yet too?
** It's somewhat implied that's why he's been going after other speedsters' ...speed, to stave off the effects of the drug and find a cure.
** Caitlin also has a brief line about V9's lethality when Trajectory invades STAR Labs: she notes that the lethal effects of the drug are much more dangerous when one doesn't have any aspect of the Speed Force in them. Zoom definitely has the Speed Force in his body, but Eliza never did, hence why she starts disintegrating after her lightning becomes blue.
** Team Flash just assume that Trajectory's lightnings turned blue because of the body decay caused by V9. Maybe they are wrong. Maybe, for example, once a speedster reach a certain speed, his (or her) lightnings turn blue. In Trajectory's disappearance in that case is only due to pushing her power to Zoom's level while having a body decay. If Zoom doesn't have that decay, like Barry, he can use his powers as much as he wants.
** It's stated somewhere that while Zoom pretty much destroyed his Speed Force connection with V9, the little of it there is still there keeps the decay ''extremely'' low. Presumably, the more Speed Force one has, the less the decay affects them till Therese nothing left. When Zoom got Barry's speed, it rebuilt his Speed Force, curing the decay.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Is Hartley Rathaway / Pied Piper a metahuman?]]
* I always thought that he wasn't, and that the particle accelerator merely damaged his hearing without actually giving him powers, which is why here he's listed under the "Non-Metahuman Criminals" section. However, the Arrowverse wiki seems to disagree with this, and categorizes him as a meta-human with superhuman hearing but which needs to be kept in check by biomedical devices that he designs or else he'll experience SensoryOverload. (http://arrow.wikia.com/wiki/Hartley_Rathaway)
** That's just my point of view, but painful hearing problem looks more a medical problem than a superpower. But since this problem was caused by the particle Accelerator, maybe the wiki considers him to be the biggest loser of the SuperpowerLottery.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Fire Gun of Doom]]
* Shouldn't Heat Wave's fire gun be far deadlier than it's depicted? It's been described as weaponizing "absolute hot" the same way as Captain Cold's cold gun weaponizes absolute zero. So shouldn't Heat Wave's targets explode due to the "absolute hot" flames flash-boiling the water in their bodies? For that matter, shouldn't the gun kill everyone around it due to "absolute hot" dispersing through convection?
** Just because it weaponizes that level of heat doesn't necessarily mean the flames it produces are that hot. Plus, the gun could just have adjustable heat levels.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Name Choice]]
* Why exactly does Rathaway call himself the "Pied Piper" in the show? In the comics, the name made sense because he used sound waves for hypnotic purposes at least some of the time. But in the show, he mostly just uses them to directly cause destruction. So where does the name come from? Shouldn't he have named himself something more intimidating?
** There are some parallels between Rathaway and the Pied Piper of the fairy tale. He's a man who provided a service, got cheated by his employer, and came back for revenge. He's probably using it in the "pay the piper" sense.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: So, which Earth is Hunter Zolomon from?]]
* If Zolomon is under the mask and he was created during the Particle Accelerator explosion on Earth-2, then how does he look exactly like Jay, who we've seen is also from Earth-2 (given how they were shown fighting each other before the breach opened up)? There are doppelgangers, but they're generally AlternateUniverse doubles. We've never seen two from the same Earth before. And if Zolomon is from Earth-1, then why didn't he come after the Earth-1 Flash before? Or The Reverse-Flash? Given that he's on a clock to steal Speed Force before he dies, it wouldn't have made much sense for him to just leave two speedsters in the same area alone for a whole season. Is he from a third, previously unseen Earth (this would explain a lot)?
** There may be another reason. In "Trajectory", after Eliza Harmon reverse-engineers the Velocity-9 drug and uses it on herself, she gains tremendous speed -- but develops a SplitPersonality and it killed her rather quickly (maybe because she didn't have the connection to the Speed Force that Jay or Zoom did). We know that Jay took the Velocity-6 drug and it began killing him, though if he has a connection to the Speed Force, the drug might be just killing him more slowly than it killed Eliza. What if the drug also created a SplitPersonality in Jay as well, only literally? Jay might have split into two or even three people, assuming that the Masked Prisoner also looks exactly like Jay, with Zoom or Zolomon being the SuperpoweredEvilSide of Jay -- and also dying.
** This is all explained in "Versus Zoom".
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Cisco and Caitlin, Declaring Bankruptcy?]]
* How do Cisco and Caitlin get paid? Most likely government funding has been pulled from STAR Labs after the accident that killed a large number of people, and Wells/Thawne, who may have privately funded the lab, is now gone, and has left the lab to Barry. So how are Caitlin and Cisco making a living, when their new "boss" earns a meager CSI's salary?
** STAR Labs has been around even before the Particle Accelerator incident, so supposedly they still own a few patents that they can draw some funds out of. Not only that, but STAR Labs was the one who provided the CCPD with their Anti Meta-Human weaponry and equipment. Assuming CCPD still use these on a regular basis, they may be keeping STAR Labs on some sort of retainer for equipment maintenance, consultation, and eventual upgrades. If ''other'' police departments in ''other'' cities start using that equipment, the money would go to STAR Labs since they're the ones who own that patent. (Cisco invented those devices while under the employ of STAR Labs. Therefore, those devices belong to the company, not to him.)
** Considering the kind of next generation tech they create, I'd say those patents are extremely lucrative. Which raises a really important question: why has nobody acknowledged that Barry Allen by all logic is a millionaire or billionaire now? All evidence indicates that STAR Labs is a private corporation, without shareholders, meaning that Barry Allen is the sole owner of STAR Labs. Considering the sort of next level technology they create their patents are worth billions, and Wells' house was pretty snazzy so we know he wasn't exactly broke. Barry Allen is a billionaire now. This creates a giant plothole with Wally's plot. Barry shoulda been like "Medical bills? I got this."
** It's entirely probable that neither extreme is the case. First, let's assume that STAR Labs is a wholly-owned private corporation, because Thawne wouldn't have wanted any interference in his plans. So Thawne passed ownership of that corporation to Barry after his death. All well and good. While STAR has millions of dollars worth of assets, it probably also has millions of dollars worth of liabilities. It may even have already declared bankruptcy and reorganized during Barry's coma. So the net worth of the corporation is probably near-zero. It may have enough residual income coming in to offset its operating expendatures but probably not by much. Anything extra probably goes to funding the activities of Team Flash. (Those friction-free suits have to come from somewhere!) In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if we see a "STAR Labs is going broke" plot-line in some future season. Even if STAR Labs is losing money, if it was financially secure enough before the accident it might have the resources to coast for years at a minimum operating level like it is currently.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The crossover with Supergirl]]
* Why is Barry completely unfazed by the fact that no time has passed after returning from Supergirl's dimension? Why doesn't he feel like he has to tell to the others what just happened?
** To the first question: The guy has fought evil speedsters, various metahumans, a walking shark, and he recently met a superpowered alien. YearInsideHourOutside probably ranks pretty low on the "weird shit" scale at this point. To the second: Because only a few seconds have passed, he's still got a confrontation with Zoom to prepare for, which is a more immediate concern than telling his friends all about Kara's Earth.
** He also asks, "How long was I gone?" The rest of Team Flash, understandably, doesn't realize what's happened, and talk to him about his speed before they move on to Zoom again. And as the above says, he's got more important things to worry about at the moment.
[[/folder]]


[[folder: Was Jay real?]]
* So now we know that Jay Garrick is Hunter Zolomon/Zoom. But was there ever a real Jay Garrick? If there was, how does Zoom look exactly like him, and if there wasn't, why did Zoom spend all those years posing as Jay Garrick and being a good guy? And what reason would there be for him to take on the name "Jay Garrick" in the first place? Why not just use his original name since he didn't plan on anyone connecting his name to Zoom?
** Based on what has been revealed thus far (as of 2x18 "Versus Zoom") it does seem like 'Jay Garrick' was just an alias Zoom used while pretending to be a hero in order to "give people hope...then take it away from them". Obviously he needed an alias because if he went around calling himself 'Hunter Zolomon' everyone would know he was the notorious serial killer who had been put away a while back. Granted, its entirely possible that there is more to the story of how and why Hunter became 'Jay' and chances are that a 'real' Jay Garrick will be introduced at some point during the life of the series.
** It's worth noting that "Jay Garrick" is a pretty specific alias to go with, so Zolomon probably didn't just pull it out of thin air. Plus, Greg Berlanti has [[https://twitter.com/GBerlanti/status/722882921854427138 stated on Twitter]] that the crew has no intention of making Jay a case of AdaptationalVillainy, so there probably is a real one out there
** Maybe he's the Man in the Iron Mask, who may or may not even look like Teddy Sears. With Berlanti's WordOfGod in mind, things probably happened like this: Hunter Zolomon finds Jay Garrick, an average Joe, who was affected by the particle accelerator, becoming a speedster. Hunter abducts the Real Jay, puts him into a speedster cage, steals his identity as both civilian and the Flash, starts acting as both Flash and Zoom "to give people hope, so he could take it away from them". As for why does nobody recognize that the man who is calling himself Jay Garrick doesn't look like Real Jay? Well, Earth 2 Hunter is a serial killer - he could don the Zoom costume, murder all friends and relatives of the Real Jay, forge documents ('cause who can stop a speedster from doing that?), thus giving his own version of "Jay Garrick" a motive to be a hero and "fight" Zoom.
** The reveal that there was no "Jay Garrick" on Earth 1 was a great clue to the eventual Zoom reveal but also raises a couple questions: It seems inconceivable that there's *no one* with that name as it's not that uncommon. Maybe Caitlin was looking at a specific age range (e.g. if I'm looking on Facebook for a "Jay Garrick" I went to college with, I'd logically narrow the search to a set number of years). We know that Hunter's father fought in the "War of the Americas" (potentially a clever way of having a Justice Society on Earth 2 that isn't tied to a war with a specific date like in the comics but simply "some point in the past"). What we see Hunter's father wearing (the classic Jay Garrick costume) could simply be what most soldiers wore during that period and is no more unique as army fatigues or a dress uniform. This troper's suspicion is that Hunter's father and the real Jay Garrick are connected somehow: Maybe Jay Garrick like Joe West was responsible for putting James Zolomon away for the murder of his wife. And unlike Barry and Joe, Hunter didn't find a substitute father figure in Jay. No, it's more likely that he held Jay responsible and wanted to make him pay. "Versus Zoom" goes to great lengths to set up the parallels between Barry and Hunter -- the latter even saying, "We're not so different." Iris and Caitlin even comment on Joe and Barry's "special bond" in a scene that almost seems superfluous if it's not meant to provide a clue.
** This is explained in the Season 2 Finale. [[spoiler:The real Jay Garrick is Henry Allen's doppleganger from Earth-3. At some point before the portal opened, Hunter Zolomon/Zoom imprisoned him and stole his identity. They Jay we saw throughout the season, however, was always Zoom.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Zoom get back?]]
* In 'Versus Zoom', Zoom takes Wally back to Earth-2 where he meets the man in the iron mask. A short while later, he brings Wally back to Earth-1 to make a deal with Team Flash. But how did he travel between dimensions without Cisco's powers? And if he could just run between Earths, why did he have to wait for Cisco to open a portal to Earth-1 near the middle of the episode?
** It seems that once Cisco opened the breach, it stayed open and Zoom was able to easily traverse it.
** No, Barry had them reopen the portal to confront Zoom and stop him. ''Why'' he thought that was a good idea is beyond me.
** Me and a few other friends have theorized that Barry thought Zoom would probably just start destroying all of Earth-2 and try to find a way to get to another Earth to try again.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Shouldn't Zoom be dead?]]
* Zoom claimed he made it look like he was in two places at once by essentially recruiting a past version of himself and convincing him to get murdered. But doesn't that mean Zoom shouldn't exist anymore? If he was murdered earlier in his personal timeline, how could he still be around in the present?
** He called it his "temporal remnant." Like with Thawne--Thawne doesn't exist any more, but a few pieces of him are still running around the timestream to prevent paradox. So maybe the current Zoom is just the same thing, a ghost who will disappear once his role is over. However, that would be a DeusExMachina, so instead it's probably easier to assume that Zoom traveled from just a few months in the future, and the shorter timespan means less damage to the timeline.
** The 'timeline remnant' explanation actually ''doesn't'' make sense at all in this context. What's happened with Zoom, allegedly, totally contradicts what happened with Thawne. In Thawne's case, when Eddie kills himself in 2015, the Thawne bloodline from that point forward is erased, leading to Eobard being vaporized. However, Eobard's 'timeline remnant' from an earlier point in his life, protected by the Speed Force, still appears in 2016, and no doubt retroactively, the Eobard who showed up in 2000 to kill Nora Allen has also become a 'timeline remnant'. The point is that Eobard's story still ends the moment Eddie kills himself and he gets vaporized...that's the end of Eobard's life (as far as we know). Contrast this with what we're told happened to Zoom, where he apparently killed his past self and negated his existence, yet continues to exist. Going by the Thawne situation, the moment Zoom killed his younger self, he should have vaporized as well (the 'timeline remnant' in this case would actually be future Zoom showing up to kill his younger self, to preserve the new timeline and prevent a paradox).
** Eobard was erased from existence when Eddie, his ancestor, killed himself (and presumably generations of innocent people, but let's not get into that right now). Zoom literally killed *himself.* Eddie's actions make it impossible for Eobard to exist. It's also not a form of the "Grandfather Paradox," because while the Reverse Flash threatening to kill everyone is *why* Eddie takes his own life, the Reverse Flash doesn't directly kill his ancestor. Zoom's actions, however, are an example of the "Grandfather Paradox," but restricted to his own timeline. Zoom removes a version of himself from the past, who immediately becomes a timeline remnant because the original Zoom never left the past and went to Earth 1.
** You are also assuming that [[Main/VillainsNeverLie Zoom is telling the truth]]. Recall that the episode that revealed to the audience Zoom's face had him saying "This is a complication" with regard to Jay's death. Why would he say that if Jay's death was a part of his plan all along?
** No, people just assumed that "complication" refers to Time Remnant's death. It's more likely that Zoom was referring to the fact that Time Remnant Zoom has helped to close the last breach between worlds. If not for Cisco's re-opening of the breaches, Zoom would be left to die, stranded on Earth 2. THAT was the complication, that haunted Zoom up to 2x19.
** It's worth remembering that Earth-2 is an AlternateUniverse, and therefore the same rules that govern Earth-1 may not necessarily apply. There is a lot of overlap between the two, obviously (the Speed Force, most of the basic rules of physics, metahuman powers, the same individuals, etc.), and yet there are still differences, like the fact that Cisco couldn't use his powers on Earth-2 due to the different vibrational frequencies. Getting back to my point, it's possible that the rules governing time travel aren't quite the same on Earth-1 as it is on Earth-2. Therefore, it's possible that Zoom could kill his younger self without erasing himself from existence, or affecting anything else that happened. Alternatively, when you mix Time Travel and Alternate Universes, the results are likely unpredictable. There's nothing to suggest that Time Travel in one universe could have any effect on another. Note that Zoom, a resident of Earth-2, murdered his younger self on Earth-1, and since Zoom never existed on Earth-1, he couldn't exactly be erased from that timeline. And now, I have a headache.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Star Labs is a threat to Central City]]
* Some tropers mentioned their concern last season with how Star Labs operated outside the law (imprisoning metahumans without a trial or even questioning them without legal representation). However, ultimately, a villain was running the operation, which "justified" some of the darker aspects. This season, it's harder to rationalize, especially since Joe West -- a police detective -- is directly involved with them. The events of "Versus Doom" had civilians managing a hostage situation like rank amateurs and the end result was catastrophic and a direct threat to millions of lives. I get that West is Wally's dad, so he is understandably not thinking clearly, but his larger duty would have been to call in trained professionals. You never negotiate with a known criminal in this situation, and you definitely never barter the safety and well-being of another person for the hostage. You can argue that the Flash is not a mere "civilian," but he was not simply sacrificing himself (like the officer who volunteers to switch places with a hostage). His speed is basically a nuclear weapon in the hands of a terrorist. And it would be laughable to imagine any sane law enforcement personnel or government agency trading a nuclear weapon for a hostage. If those were the terms, you officially consider the hostage dead and double down in taking out the terrorist for the murder that is *entirely the terrorist's fault.* Or you come up with a plan to stop the terrorist and bring back the hostage safe and sound. But willingly handing over a nuclear bomb is asinine.
** This is probably the IntendedAudienceReaction. We're clearly supposed to think Barry is making the wrong choice – actually, Joe is the one who tells him that he shouldn't give up his speed. Besides, it's not like they could stop Barry from trading himself any more than they could stop Zoom from taking Wally. The real question is why [[MagnificentBastard Harry]] didn't sabotage the exchange to kill Zoom.
** A better question than that is why Barry didn't simply betray Zoom as soon as Wally was safe; at this point, Barry ''is'' more powerful than Zoom thanks to Thawne's tachyon upgrade, but rather than attack Zoom he just hands over the power even though it meant nothing could stop Zoom afterwords. The answer to that though is simple: The same reason Barry and co let Thawne out and began helping him get back to his time after he explains to Barry how to travel through time in the S1 finale. Barry, really, is just kind of an idiot about this stuff.
** First many of the things Star Labs does that are illegal fall under ScrewTheRulesImDoingWhatsRight. Until S2 the regular prison would have held a meta human for about five more minutes than said Meta felt like getting free room and board. Additionally with characters like Eiling and Waller running about I'm not certain a rational person would really want a Meta in a scenario where they could be studied and possibly reproduced or even implanted with a bomb and recruited to the Suicide Squad. As for true hostage negotiations the rules are a little different with Zoom who frankly was being polite by holding Wally hostage instead of offing him to make a point then grabbing Iris or Joe and negotiating. Also the Flash is NOT a nuke. Nukes are big and messy. The reason we don't want other countries to have nukes isn't because they might kill a an important person it's because of the huge unavoidable long term collateral of one. Only a handful of people in history are sufficiently evil that given Flash's power would actually do damage remotely on par with a nuclear bomb.
** The above solves absolutely nothing; '''''WHY DIDNT BARRY JUST THROW ZOOM IN THE PIPELINE?!?!?!?!'''''
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Who trained Zoom?]]
* Thawne as Wells helped train Barry Allen, and STAR Labs made his costume. But who was Zoom's support system? His lair implies a significant level of technical achievement (the cells). Did he also come up with a way of diagnosing his "speed sickness" on his own?
** Presumably Zoom figure it out on his own. He does appear to possess scientific knowledge, since he created the original Velocity formula to increase his speed. He might not have needed a support system. Barry has one, but we don't know he couldn't have figured out his powers on his own. There is a good chance in the original unaltered timeline that Barry did figure out his powers on his own.
** Bear in mind that there's still a lot unknown about Zoom and his backstory. WordOfGod says that the Man in the Iron Mask figures into that. For all we know, the Man in the Iron Mask could have trained Zoom in the use of his speed (especially if he himself is a speedster).
** Most other metahumans appear to have figured out their powers on their own (granted, most of them have less complicated powers), as have the Kryptonians in {{Series/Supergirl|2015}}.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Wells' brilliant idea]]
* Okay, so after berating Barry for giving away his powers and getting a lesson in humility from Griffin Grey about how the particle accelerator explosion affected some people Wells' idea is: Let's do another one! It seems kind of weird for him to do this considering he acknowledges he made mistakes.
** They don't have a lot of options either. Zoom is even faster than before, healthy again, and can travel between both Earths. Barry needs his speed if they have any hope of stopping him.
** Judging by the promos for the next episode, it seems that the 'particle accelerator explosion' in this case is more of a contained experiment designed only to affect Barry and not anyone else.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Where did the alloy come from?]]
* Where exactly did Felicity get the dwarf star alloy that Team Flash put in Barry's suit when he fought Griffin Grey? Nothing in the show indicates that their Earth has advanced-enough space travel to go out and get it from a dwarf star, so how did dwarf star alloy end up on Earth? True, the show says that the alloy came from Ray's Atom suit experiments, but that only raises the question of where HE got it from.
** Ray got it from a mine. It's a rare material, but it can still occur on Earth somehow. It doesn't really matter ''how'' the material forms on Earth, only that it ''does''.
** "Dwarf star alloy" doesn't have to be a literal name. Maybe whoever discovered it just thought it would sound cool.
** An episode of ''Legends'' confirms that the material does occur naturally on Earth. It's just incredibly rare and hard to detect without appropriate equipment.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How is Hawkgirl alive?]]
* The 2024 newspaper mentions that Hawkgirl was involved in the fight against the Reverse-Flash before he and Barry traveled back in time. But in Season 2, we meet Hawkgirl... and if not for the intervention of the Flash, she would have been killed by Vandal Savage in 2016 (meaning that her reincarnation wouldn't be older than 8 by 2024). How could she survive in the original timeline, where the Flash didn't exist (and Team Arrow wouldn't have known to get involved)?
** Which instance do you mean? Would any of her interactions with Savage been absolutely ''impossible'' for her to survive on her own?
** The real answer is did and we'll likely never figure out how. Time travel has some [[ButterflyEffect truly odd]] consequences. Flashpoint Paradox has Flash go back and save his mother. Among other changes Bruce is killed instead of Thomas Wayne, Superman is found by the authorities as a baby and Aquaman and Wonder Woman have an affair that leads to a world war. None of those situations should logically have been effected by Flash saving his mother. So Flash appearing when he did setting off any chain of events that lead to Carter finding Kendra sooner and fleeing to Poughkeepsie successfully is a lot easier to swallow than that. ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'' makes it explicit that Savage doesn't always catch them in their twenties or thirties.
** Simple answer. In the original timeline, Kendra wouldn't have been with Cisco at Jitters. She might not even have known Cisco (who in turn probably wouldn't have known the Flash yet). Wherever else she was, she was somehow able to evade Vandal Savage long enough to survive and live another nine years at least. Maybe in the original timeline, Carter found her a lot sooner and rescued her himself. With the ButterflyEffect in play, anything is possible.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How does Zoom Science?]]
* So, with the reveal that [[spoiler:'Jay Garrick' is really Hunter Zolomon]], how does Zoom do the science stuff he does? How did he develop Velocity 6? How did he test his blood to find out he was dying? How did he build the complex Speedster-proof cells in his Zoom-cave? How did he build the Speed Cannon to get people through the Earths? How does he do any of the science stuff that he's shown doing [[spoiler:as both Hunter/Zoom and Jay]]?\\
I mean, Jay was a scientist, but [[spoiler:Hunter was just a serial killer and mental patient]], and at no point is it said he studied any science before that, given his appearance indicates he was probably not a 'smart' killer. How did Zoom do any of those things if he's not actually a scientist?
** Earth 2 is ridiculously more advanced than Earth 1 is. The Particle Accelerator there came online at the same time without a genius from the future helping. Jesse Wells has a throwaway line about having five separate majors and asks if that isn't normal on Earth 1. We don't see a lot of Earth 2 but what we have seen suggests that Zoom may not be THAT brilliant by the standards of his Earth. Additionally a lot of this technology may exist at least in part over there.
** Barry is shown learning things by rapidly reading books and being able to retain the knowledge, so there's no reason Zoom can't. As for his look after he was seen to have been arrested, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theodore_Kaczynski.jpg This]] is what the Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber) looked like when he was arrested, had scored 167 on an IQ test, entered Harvard University at age 16 and was considered a mathematical genius when he earned his [=PhD=]. For all that's known as yet, Earth-2 Hunter Zolomon could very well have been equally intelligent as well as nuts.
** Furthermore, WordOfGod has confirmed that not everything is known about Zoom's backstory as yet and the Man in the Iron Mask was very much a part of it. It may well be possible that Zoom learnt a lot from the Man in the Iron Mask before imprisoning him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How can Zoom and Reverse Flash be so fast?]]
* Zoom is supposedly about four times as fast as Barry. How is that even possible? We know that the series puts something of a cap on how fast a speedster can travel, it's about 1600 mph (Mach 2) after that you literally tear holes in time. Two of Barry's time traveling experiences were accidental so we know it's not really a matter of wanting to go back in time. Shouldn't Zoom be randomly opening portals?
** In both times Barry accidentally time traveled, he was trying to deal with major disasters (a tsunami about the flatten the city that he couldn't stop, and Vandal Savage's disintegration wave), so he might very well have been desperate in wanting to have some way of stopping it, especially the second time when he knew he could time travel, and that unconscious need allowed him to travel in time. Zoom and Reverse Flash don't ''want'' to travel in time. Zoom might not even know he can--he doesn't seem to have ever been in a situation where he'd feel the need to--and so they don't. So time travel for a speedster might mean both having the speed to do so and feeling the need to do it.
** A couple points: Zoom definitely knows he can time travel (it's how he created a version of himself to murder in front of Team Flash) and Reverse-Flash definitely wants to time travel; his whole plan was finding a way to get back to his timeline. In Eobard's case, his connection to the Speed Force was in flux after he murdered Barry's mother, which is why he couldn't time travel in Season 1. As for Zoom, he may have realized he could time travel during his time on Earth-1. Plus, the whole Mach 2/time travel thing also had the Particle Accelerator in the mix, so I doubt it's as simple as 'Barry runs at Mach 2 and can travel through time'. As for his accidental time jumps, he technically knew it was going to happen in advance thanks to the echoes he sees at specific points in time, so when he accidently jumps, he may be unintentionally focusing on that point in time.
** As for Zoom and Reverse Flash being so much faster, that largely has to do with the fact that they're artificially enhancing their speed: Zoom has been abusing Velocity-9 to travel faster, while Thawne has made use of tachyon particle enhancement to go faster (which Barry also makes use of later in season 2). Presumably, as noted above, 1600mph is not a hard-and-fast limit for speedsters per se, and they can travel much faster without initiating time travel or opening portals so long as they're careful not to. Since the Speed Force is somewhat sentient, after all, intent probably plays some part in time and inter-dimensional travel.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Wally and Jesse's exposure to the particle accelerator explosion]]
* Both of them were hit and knocked out by the dark matter wave inside STAR Labs at the same time, yet Wally shrugged it off like it was nothing while Jesse went into a coma for nearly an entire episode. Does the explosion affect individuals differently even if they're in close proximity with each other like the Mardon brothers?
** First, Jesse is from a different universe and presumably will react to things differently than anyone else would. Aside from that, Wally may not actually have been affected. Lots of people were outside when the original explosion happened, but they didn't all develop powers; Wally may have the potential for powers but it hasn't been activated.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How does the Speed Force work?]]
* The show says that the Speed Force is an extra-dimensional energy source that Barry can tap into in order to use his powers. But other times the show acts like the Speed Force is a finite substance contained in Barry's body, such as when Wells used his technology to remove some of it from Barry and make him slower, or when Zoom physically stole the speed from Barry in exchange for Wally. So which is it? Is it an infinite source that Barry accesses, or is it a limited power contained in Barry's body?
** These are not mutually exclusive concepts. The Speed Force is a fundamental part of nature and is infinite. Barry as an individual can only store and access a finite amount at any given time. Additionally the Speed Force is sentient and given how it seemed to have been insulted that Barry would give up his powers opens the possibility that it may let things happen because it disagrees with your actions.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: When and why did Barry change into uniform to chase Zoom]]
* [[spoiler: When Zoom comes and kidnaps Henry Allen with the intent of murdering him he comes into a celebration for Barry who is in civilian clothes at the time. Zoom grabs Harry and runs, Barry pursues and he's magically in uniform. Barry changing from civilian clothing to Flash happens in a flash from our perspective and those of other humans but we're talking about remaining in pursuit of a man who can outrun bullets.]]
** Who knows, maybe Harry got Eobard Thawne's micro tech working, allowing Barry to store the Flash suit close at hand.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Zoom unmasked]]
* Zoom is unmasked when discussing his plan with Black Siren. She doesn't seem shocked to see him this way either. I know Siren was presumably a high-ranking member of Zoom's gang, but that is an uncharacteristic level of trust for Zoom. Why would he let anyone know that "Jay Garrick" is really Zoom? It's potential for blackmail or a commodity to barter if the police manage to catch her. (I'm going to give Zoom the benefit of the doubt that Siren wasn't actually planning to betray him but was stringing "Reverb" and "Killer Frost" along.)
** Well, Black Siren was his top lieutenant, and it does seem like he has a more personal connection with her as compared to Reverb and Killer Frost. So its possible she always knew what he looked like (in fact, there's nothing established in previous episodes which proves that Reverb and Killer Frost DIDN'T know what Zoom looked like). Also, Zoom may well have abandoned the "Jay Garrick" identity by this point...Jay would anyway have been considered 'missing, presumed dead' on E2.
** He probably doesn't ''care'' that much about it. Pretending to be Jay Garrick was a hobby for him, a way to entertain himself at the expense of the city; the only time he needed the identity to be kept was when he was on Earth 1 and needed to continue the illusion to manipulate Team Flash. Its entirely likely that a lot of his gang knew about it too so they could all joke about it, and while one may offer it to police, its not a big enough deal and, even if he ''did'' care about it enough, he's insanely powerful and could kill any/all of them with barely a thought.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why not kill Zoom?]]
* In the S2 finale Team Flash manages to get the boot on Zoom bringing him down low enough for Joe to briefly fight him in hand to hand and for Wells to shoot him to push him through a breach to Earth 2. You know what's better than sending Zoom back to Earth 2 where he'd inevitably find a way back given enough time? Filling him with bullets.
** Unless you're the Punisher, it's kind of hard to be seen as the good guy if you go around shooting people to death.
** Joe's a cop. Zoom is at the very least as strong as a demigod. No court in either world would ever convict him, and nobody would ever blame him, and two worlds would consider him a hero for it.
** You assume he could have just shot him. He didn't have his gun and Zoom's suit would have likely been bulletproof. It would have hurt but, you know.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Wally unlocking the Pipeline]]
* How is Wally able to free Barry out of the Pipeline? Wouldn't he need a passcode for that? Does this mean that STAR Labs security is so bad that any guy off the street could potentially walk in and free any metahumans still kept in the Pipeline?
** Given it was Barry they locked up, its like that the security was deliberately lax in comparison and they didn't bother setting a password.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why leave Wally out of important Team Flash decisions?]]
* Wally knew that Barry was the Flash, and has shown himself to be basically good enough to be a part of Team Flash decisions. So why, when Team Flash minus Flash decided to enact a very dangerous plan to defeat Zoom, one which got Joe trapped in Earth 2 for a time, did they not even inform Wally of this beforehand? If not for him deserving a spot on Team Flash, couldn't they at least have told him about it because their plan put Joe in danger?
** Wally hasn't really been a part of the team, or the Flash's world, long enough. Apart from being Joe's son and Iris' brother, not to mention discovering the Flash's secret quiet by chance, he's pretty much just another bystander. So unlike all the others, he really doesn't have an understanding of the stakes involved, or the sacrifices that might need to be made. For that reason, he didn't have a say. And he wasn't informed precisely because they knew he'd have the reaction he actually did - freak out if something happened to Joe and do whatever it took to get him back (including freeing Barry).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why not save [[spoiler:Henry?]]]]
* At the end of [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E23TheRaceOfHisLife "The Race of His Life"]], Barry is depressed because his father had just been murdered. Then he decided to travel back in time and save... his mother?! Why not save Henry instead? Barry knows that altering the past can have a huge ButterflyEffect; at the end of the previous season his older self warned him not to save his mom, and he agreed. And the further down the past you go to change the things, the bigger the butterfly effect will be. So why does Barry go back 20 years and save his mom (an event which, if altered, could lead him into not becoming the Flash to begin with), instead of going back a day and save his dad, whose death he was actually mourning? Barry knows that if he cancels the events of one day, the butterfly effect won't be that dramatic, since he's done it [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E15OutOfTime twice]] [[Recap/ArrowS4E8LegendsOfYesterday already]]. Seems like the only reason the writers made Barry save Nora and not Henry was because they wanted to adapt ''Comicbook/{{Flashpoint}}'' for the next season.
** By saving Nora, he saves both of them, and obviously he doesn't care about the consequences by then.
** Agreed. As Joe said at Henry's funeral, Henry lost fifteen years of his life, his reputation, and for all intents and purposes his son. The Reverse Flash killed Nora but basically slow tortured Henry. Then he's free for about a year and Zoom kills him. I can see Barry flipping out and doing what he does over the compounded injustice. Barry's an incredible optimist and the possibility of getting his father back and making everything right had been driving him for years. Now it's all gone.
** In Barry's mind, the death of Nora Allen is where all the tragedy in his life began. If he can avert that one tragedy, the first one, he can undo a lifetime of pain. Moreover, Barry ''knows'' for a fact that his mother wasn't originally supposed to die and Thawne altered the past to make it so, so from a certain point of view, he feels justified in altering that one event to something closer to what 'originally' happened.
** Barry's plan is clearly as stated above a very simple Save my Mother Save the World sort of mentality. And despite the fact that it might prevent him from becoming the Flash it shouldn't. Our very specific Flash is not the result of a scientist making a mistake. He was the result of twenty years of planning by a genius from a century in the future with a computer that could predict the future. Barry stopped Eobard but it looks like he knocked him out rather than actually killed him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Barry at the Grave]]
* Given the serialized nature of third act of Season 2, including the episodes when Barry was powerless, at what point in time did he have time to visit Oliver [[spoiler: at Laurel's grave]]?
** Best option is between episode 21 (when Barry gets his powers back) and episode 22 (when Team Flash is aware of Laurel's death). There's even an apparent gap of time at the end of Episode 21 when Barry and Iris visit Nora Allen's grave.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Zoom and the Man In The Iron Mask (season 2 finale spoilers!)]]

* So, all this time: 1) Zoom had invented a device that could suppress a speedster's powers. 2) Zoom had a speedster as his prisoner. This may call into question some of his actions over the course of the season. Why did he need to drain Barry of his speed, when he could have just done it with Jay Garrick? Why did he never use another speed-dampening mask on his enemy, e.g. in "Enter Zoom", or when Barry is prisoner in "Escape From Earth-2"?
** Understanding Zoom's plans can be tricky in the sense that we only really hear about them from Zoom himself during Villain Monologues. The show provides no Objective Perspective of what transpires. But my best guess, based on what we're told:\\
Zoom starts taking the speed drug that makes him fast enough to travel to other Earths. He learns about Jay Garrick/Flash, but it's around that time that he also discovers that the speed drug is killing him. After searching for a cure to no avail, he then kidnaps Jay Garrick/Flash as both a "trophy" and a failed attempt to steal his speed. It's clear from the events of Season 2 that Zoom can't take a speedster's powers by himself -- that was part of "Jay Garrick's" original lie to Team Flash. He needed the help of Harrison Wells. And it was Wells alone -- in fear of his daughter's life -- who discovered how to steal Flash's speed and transfer it to someone else. All Zoom basically did was kidnap the people (Jesse and later Wally) that would force everyone to play along. Basically, we have no evidence that he's much of a scientific genius on his own. It's a fair assumption that the speed dampener was something Zoom co-opted. And either there was only one or the technology just didn't work on Barry.
There is also the question of Zoom's actual motives during "Escape from Earth-2." As "Jay" (or at least Zoom's time remnant at this point), he makes every effort to try to get Barry, Cisco, and Wells back (when it would be easy enough to just fail in fixing the speed cannon). At this point, Zoom has Barry and Jesse hostage and is scouring the city for Wells, who once he captures, he can force to steal Barry's speed for him. However, Zoom later states that he faked Jay's death primarily to motivate Barry to "get faster." So, it's possible that he did want Barry to eventually escape. After all, Zoom loses his cool and phases through Barry's cage to beat the crap out of him, which was what gave Barry the idea of how to escape. Zoom is usually more restrained. So maybe this was all part of his "long con."

[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Man In The Iron Mask (season 2 finale spoilers!)]]
* So, is it just a major coincidence that the man Zoom is holding prisoner is a speedster who happens to physically resemble Henry Allen? I know various clues have been dropped throughout the season (including Henry's comment about his mother's maiden name), but still, presuming that Earth-3's inhabitants are ''also'' doppelgangers of Earth-1's inhabitants (or vice-versa), of all 7+ billion people on the planet, the resident speedster hero of this universe just happens to resemble the father of the resident speedster hero of Earth-1? ...Maybe there's something I'm missing? Maybe it hasn't been explained yet? Maybe the Speed Force willed it to be this way? I'unno.
** That's the very definition of the multiverse: for every possibility, no matter how unlikely or outlandish, there ''must'' be a universe where it is the truth. Therefore, a universe like Earth-3 where the resident speedster resembles the Henry Allen of Earth-1 is not that implausible by comparison.
** Not to mention, the 90's series is ''also'' part of the Multiverse, and therefore, by the same logic, the Barry Allen of that earth has to be another doppelganger of Henry Allen. That means there are a minimum of ''four'' Henry Allen doppelgangers in the CW Multiverse right now - Earth 1 (deceased), Earth 2, Earth 3 ('Jay Garrick') and Earth 4 ('Barry Allen'); of whom, one if the father of a speedster and two of them ''are'' speedsters. My guess is that the Speed Force somehow ''does'' seek out the Allen bloodline. In fact, in a wonderfully meta way, is it possible that the Speed Force sought out Earth 1 Barry, because he was the son of the doppelganger of Henry/Barry/Jay (a nod to how the character played by John Wesley Shipp was the ''original'' live action Flash?)
*** It's also possible that the the shot of 90's Barry Allen we saw was actually Jay Garrick's old suit.
** Hunter Zolomon is also the "evil" version of Flash on a world where most of our heroes are evil. It doesn't seem that outlandish that a proper "good" version of Flash on yet another world would be "related" to Barry. Much like the comic book Earth 2, where the heroes are generation older than Earth 1's heroes.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: How do time remnants work?]]
* On the show, the writers seem to throw around the phrase "time remnant" as if somehow that means that traveling through time means you can "die" without really dying because there are two of you. If Barry's method for creating a time remnant (travel back a few seconds in time next to yourself) actually works like that, wouldn't the Barry that traveled in time dying mean that Barry dies? Furthermore, if the Barry pre-time travel dies, doesn't that mean that the post-time travel Barry would dissolve into nothingness like Eobard/Wells did in the season 1 finale? I just don't get it. If anyone can explain how this works, it would be much appreciated.
** I think it's safe to say that time remnants, just like time travel in the Arrowverse, works: it does what it does because 'fuck you that's why.' In all seriousness, it seems that when you create a time remnant, you effectively clone yourself into two separate individuals, the 'older' of which is probably the one to die, allowing the younger to survive and avoid any time paradox. Why Barry never did this before when he accidentally traveled through time is something we can only guess at, but if Zoom's dialogue is any indication, it's a rather advanced ability that you have to really want to do. Add onto the fact that it seems to seriously piss off the Time Wraiths (considering how they seemed much more angry at Zoom for constantly creating time remnants and killing them), and it's understandable that it's something Barry would only do in desperation.
** Time remnants are possibly a way to 'cheat' the time-stream by running back just a few seconds into the past...so close that the time-stream doesn't even detect the two speedsters as a 'past' or 'future' version but as identical duplicates, removing the causality between them.
** Here's the most logical way to think about it: At some point in time you decide that you need an alternate version of yourself to die gloriously to advance your plans. At some subsequent point in time, you time-travel back to fulfill that goal and the time-travelling version of you dies. After that, the contemporary you moves forward in time naturally but when it comes time to go back, you decide "screw that, I'm going to live." You've now created an alternate future time-line where you ''don't'' die gloriously in the past. But the alternate-you from the other future still exists in the past as a "remnant" of the old future time-line. Hence, "time remnant."
** You create them by setting up a StableTimeLoop, but then don't close the loop. You travel back in time, to a point ''before'' you decided to travel back in time. You then ensure that your Pre-Time-Travel self ''doesn't'' travel back 'again' (from your Post-TT perspective), meaning both versions of yourself will exists ''past'' the point at which the Pre-TT version should have 'disappeared' by travelling back in time. Paradoxically, you shouldn't exist, because you've prevented the original event that caused you to be in the past. This is why the Time Wraiths don't like you doing it.\\
Most of the time remnants we see are created to be disposable - to sacrifice themselves reasonably quickly and shut down the paradox that way. So far, only one time remnant has been shown to live past his pre-determined point of expiry - one that Barry created. The mental strain caused by existing in tandem with his original self, but being considered an aberrant tool rather than a copy of Barry caused him to snap and become ''Savitar''. So while it appears theoretically possible to duplicate oneself and have that duplicate live an entire life as a distinct individual, the practicalities of this make it a generally bad idea.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Mental time travel (past-self merge) vs. time remnants?]]
* How does time travel work in this show, exactly? In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E15OutOfTime Out Of Time]] and [[Recap/ArrowS4E8LegendsOfYesterday Legends Of Yesterday]], Barry goes back a day, merging with his past self in a form of MentalTimeTravel. However, in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S1E23FastEnough Fast Enough]], there are multiple versions of Barry at the same point of time. This second concept is further explored in season 2 with the idea of "time remnants" that both Barry and Zoom utilize, beginning with 2016!Barry coexisting with 2015!Barry in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E17FlashBack Flash Back]]. My initial thought was that if a speedster travels back only a day they merge with their past self, but anything longer like a year will cause them to coexist with their past self. However, ''that'' theory is shot down in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E23TheRaceOfHisLife The Race Of His Life]], when Barry creates a time remnant of himself by only going back seconds or even microseconds in time. So I'm quite confused. And man, don't even get me started on ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow''...
** The Speed Force is semi-sentient in its own right so it could be that speedsters either have some control over what they do when they travel back in time. Or the Speed Force itself can understand what they're trying to do.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How to get to Earth-3?]]
* In the season 2 finale, Zoom says that Earth-1 just so happens to be the hub for all of the universes, so that any of the other universes can be reached by Earth-1. However, later in the episode, the real Jay Garrick leaves with Harry and Jesse to Earth-2 so he can go back to Earth-3. Huh? How can Earth-3 be reached from Earth-2 when it's established that Earth-1 is the hub?
** Earth 1 may be the hub, but the breaches that exist there right now only connect to Earth 2. Once on Earth 2, Harrison Wells will be able to figure out a way for Jay to get to Earth 3, which is why Jay went with them.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Barry Allen is a billionaire.]]
* He owns STAR Labs. A company like STAR Labs would have patents worth billions of dollars generating revenue. We know that Thawne was making quite a bit of money based on his house. We know STAR Labs had government contracts. It's implied that STAR Labs is completely privately owned by Thawne, meaning that it's now completely owned by Barry. This means that Barry should be a billionaire. This completely shreds Wally's drag racing plot, since Barry should have been able to pay them off with his loose change. It does however aid with explaining how Barry's just causing millions in property damage with sonic booms down city streets, shattering hundreds of windows. STAR Labs is paying for it. But still, Barry's a billionaire and this hasn't been addressed.
** Barry hasn't really thought about it. Likely Caitlin or Cisco (my money's on the former) had already been at least familiar with the financial operation and has been handling it through Barry's heroics as well.
** The accelerator accident most likely saddled STAR Labs with enough liabilities to offset its assets. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if they already declared bankruptcy and reorganized after settling all the lawsuits during Barry's coma. So while Barry may now be the owner of that corporation, its net value may be very low indeed. Also, just because STAR Labs ''might'' have money it doesn't necessarily mean that ''Barry'' does. A lot depends on how the corporation is structured, financed and run. It would be the kind of dick move a supervillain would pull to arrange things so that Barry has the resources to operate as the Flash but gets no personal benefit and a lot of headaches out of it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: 5.3 mile running start versus dodging bullets...]]
* So, in season 1 episode 6, it's established that Barry needs a running start of at least 5.3 miles to hit Mach 1.1 (837 MPH, roughly 1,230 feet per second) and deliver a supersonic punch. So how the hell is he routinely able to dodge, intercept or CATCH bullets moving that fast or faster? Case in point, in season 1 episode 12, Peek-A-Boo's boyfriend fires at Barry with a Desert Eagle chambered in .357 Magnum, from a distance of maybe 15 feet, while Barry has his back to the shooter. That slug cleared the muzzle at no less than 1,250 FPS, and yet Barry is still able to react fast enough to prevent it from doing more than punching a hole in the collar of his suit and giving him a nasty flesh wound.
** He probably subconsciously uses the Speed Force to drain the speed from the bullets somewhat. Running speed and reaction speed are two entirely different things however. Nobody can run 100 mph, but fastballs can be hit, dodged and caught. Catching that bullet behind him was an extreme case that seems to break the skill barrier he had at the time but we should also compare this to Arrow. Catching arrows mid flight isn't even presented as particularly difficult if you've got the skillset in the first place, by comparison Flash only barely caught that bullet.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Eobard Thawne Paradox (SEASON THREE SPOILERS)]]
* So, in 3x01 ("Flashpoint"), its revealed that Barry, after stopping Thawne from killing Nora in 2000, brought him to 2016. By the end of the episode, Thawne and Barry travel back to that night. Thawne's arrival on the scene causes both the Barry from the Season 2 finale, and the version of Thawne he defeated, to fade from existence. Thawne then proceeds to kill Nora, seemingly restoring the timeline, and then returns Barry to 2016. The problems resulting from this are twofold-
** How was Thawne even able to return Barry to 2016 after killing Nora? Originally, after Thawne killed Nora, he lost his powers. His whole motivation in Season 1 was to regain his powers and find a way back home. But here, Thawne seems to be perfectly capable of time-travel even after killing Nora. Why? If Thawne originally lost his powers due to disrupting the Flash's timeline by killing Nora, then the same should have applied this time round as well. And if Thawne originally lost his powers because he'd "exhausted" his Speed Force energy, then again, the same should apply here. But once you get around Thawne's ability to travel through time, there's a bigger problem...
** The moment Thawne left 2000 and jumped forward to 2016, history as Barry knows it should have been altered again. Barry is the product of a timeline where Thawne was stuck in 2000 without his powers, stole the identity of Harrison Wells, engineered the origin of the Flash etc. But now, Thawne wasn't stuck in 2000. No Thawne in 2000 means that the original Harrison Wells is still alive, the particle accelerator explosion only occurs in 2020, Barry doesn't become the Flash etc. And there's no reason to assume that Thawne would strand himself in 2000 to let events play out as they 'originally' did because a) he doesn't know at this point that he becomes Harrison Wells, and b) even if he did (because Barry told him) he has no real incentive to do so. Its almost certain he's heading off to join the Legion of Doom over in ''Legends of Tomorrow''.
** [[spoiler: It's possible that Thawn simply arranged for Wells to get the accelerator online sooner. Physics is incredibly complicated so we don't know how long Wells would have been very close to solving the problem. The idea that Thawne could have run into Wells' lab and helped him with some of his math is not impossible. Worse, with him running around 1942 he could also have scattered bits of information that moved lots of science forward slightly.]] Though Time Travel in Flash and Legends of Tomorrow seems to do what it wants, because it wants logic need not apply.
** The key word here is "seemingly". We can see from the end of episode 1 that the timeline is not quite back to normal, since Iris and Joe are estranged. From the promo of episode 2 we can also see that there are more changes from the original timeline, like Cisco not working at star labs. It could be assumed that these differences are due to the fact that Thawne didn't loose his powers and didn't get stuck in 2000.
** As Eobard said 'Timeline is restored, at least for me' meaning they could be on the timeline where Harrison Wells is still alive and Barry will not become the Flash until 2020.
** That can't be the case though because, going by dialogue at the end of the episode, and the promos for the next, it seems like this is a timeline where Barry still became the Flash and most, if not all, of the major events of the last 2 seasons still happened. That wouldn't be the case if there was no Thawne masquerading as Harrison Wells who brought about the particle accelerator explosion in 2013.
** Maybe it's because of the fact that Eobard was in a cage for some time. Eobard theorized, in the Flashpoint timeline, that the more speed Barry used, the more of his memories would disappear, while he was in a cage and couldn't use his speed and loose his memories. So all that time in the cage was enough to recover his speed and, thus, avoid the problem he had in the previous timeline.
** The reason why Thawne doesn't loses his speed after killing Barry's mom post-Flashpoint isn't really the issue. The question is whether or not he runs back to 2000, and, if so, does he again kill Wells and his wife and impersonate Wells? On the one hand, Thawne now has no reason to go back to 2000 - as mentioned above, he was only there in the first place after losing his speed. If he didn't go back, then Barry shouldn't get his powers for another 3-4 years. On the other hand, even if you assume he did go back for some reason, did he just (as suggested above) help Wells finish the accelerator and not kill him? If so, shouldn't Wells and his wife still be alive and running STAR Labs? Or did he still kill Wells and build the accelerator himself? Well, then, it would seem he would die by the end of Season 1, and not be alive to join the Legion of Doom on Legends of Tomorrow. Unless he finishes up with the Legion, then goes back and kills Wells. Of course, then we go back to, why?? Seems like no matter how you slice it, with Thawne keeping his speed after killing Barry's mom, Season 1 and 2 can't have happened, and the post-Flashpoint timeline makes no sense.
** For me the real issue here is that the show seems to regard the "proper" timeline as the one where Barry's mon died, even though it wouldn't have happened if Eobard hadn't killed her. Yet when Barry tries to fix it being saving his mom, he gets hell for it ? Seems the only one in this show who can't do what he wants with the timeline is Barry. Eobard and Zoom can do what they want (Zoom never would have been caught by the time wraith if Barry didn't attracted them, and Eobard still kept part of his speed even though it was unstable). Really seems like Barry is getting the short end of the stick, even though he was just trying to fix what Eobard broke.
** In this case proper seems to mean the timeline that Barry is native too. While Barry and Eobard leave the Flashpoint pretty quickly and it seemed to be a world as good or better than the 'real' universe time travel is just random. In the comic somehow Barry saving his mother caused Superman to be found by the US government and Wonder Woman and Aquaman to engage in a devastating war. Zoom and Eobard are pretty smart by comparison to Barry, who is no slouch. Its entirely possible that they simply do it better than he does.
** In addition to being smarter at it, it's also because Eobard and Zoom don't really care all that much about the timeline. I mean they want to make sure that they still exist with their powers intact, obviously, but beyond that, they really don't care about how the timeline is supposed to be. So, Barry gets the short end of the stick because he's trying to fix the timeline, while Eobard is deliberately trying to damage and change it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Don't you remember Gary Allen at all ? (SEASON THREE SPOILERS)]]
* The way Barry introduce himself to Flashpoint!Iris is weird. Joe were a very good friend of the Allen familly so it seems weird Iris doesn't recognize the 'Allen' name or doesn't think to ask if he was related to her dad's friends especially since they talked about their childhood. It seems weird too that once Iris meet the Allens none of them recognize the others.
** The impression one gets from the last two seasons is that the Allen and West families weren't ''that'' close. Barry and Iris were friends in elementary school, and Joe was obviously acquainted with Henry, but there doesn't seem to have been more of a connection beyond that. Maybe, without the murder, and Joe taking in Barry, Iris and Barry just drifted apart. Also, even if Joe was acquainted with Henry, that acquaintanceship may well have ended once whatever happened to Joe's life in the Flashpoint timeline happened to make him an alcoholic.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Barry trap the Reverse-Flash in a freaking metal cage?]]
* In 3x01 Barry keeps Thawne locked behind glass with metal bars for the door. How does Thawne not just vibrate his way out? Heck, he could probably kick the door down if he tried hard enough.
** Its not made clear, but presumably Barry constructed that cage in a manner similar to the holding cell in STAR Labs that Cisco modified to hold Thawne, or the cell in which Zoom imprisoned Barry and Jay last year.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Shouldn't Cisco have gotten vibes on the alterations to timeline?]]
* When Barry changed the timeline to save Central City from being destroyed by Weather Wizard his powers allowed him to dream the other timeline where Thawne/Wells killed him. Despite changes made to the new timeline Cisco still got his powers. Shouldn't he be vibing visions of his life in Flashpoint or even the original season 2 timeline where Dante lived?
** Maybe he will. After all, we're only an episode into the new new timeline.
** He also has better control over his vibes and may be intentionally not doing that.
** Also, in the case of the Flashpoint timeline, maybe Cisco doesn't even have his powers (or hasn't discovered them yet).
** Um no, he definitely has his powers, it's what allowed him to help Barry beat the Rival. As for not getting a vibe about the alterations to the timeline, it's possible that he can only really detect alterations by either looking for them, or in the case of his first death, unintentional reminders that bring up that heavily emotional moment.
** The reference was to Cisco possibly not having powers in the ''Flashpoint'' timeline i.e. the timeline from 3x01 where Nora is alive, Wally is the Flash etc. and not the latest CloseEnoughTimeline that the show is currently set in (where obviously Cisco has powers).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Flashpoint]]
* Okay we know from the spoiler: LegendsOfTomorrow that Eobard retains his powers in the "new world" which should have screwed things up way worse than they seem to have. Since he didn't get trapped in our time, he didn't have to kill and replace Wells. So right out the gate for reasons that aren't clear he must have helped Wells bring the Particle Accelerator on board faster than Wells was originally able to just to keep Barry Allen powered up. But since he didn't get stuck and lose his powers how did Season 1 even occur? And why didn't Wells return to his actual plan. Kill tiny Barry Allen, then run back to his time and call it a day? As season two's Zoom aptly demonstrates if a speedster wants you dead there isn't a whole lot even another speedster can to to prevent that long term and regardless Barry came right back to the present.
** At this point, it's pretty obvious that time travel in ''The Flash'' and ''Legends of Tomorrow'' is guided by the principle of NewRulesAsThePlotDemands. Time travel rules constantly change based on what is most dramatic for each episode, with little consistency between them. Just look at the [[Headscratchers/LegendsOfTomorrow headscratchers page]] for [=LoT=] for proof. This [[BellisariosMaxim wouldn't be such a big problem]] if the writers hadn't made time travel paradoxes such a big part of both shows, thus making it inevitable that the viewers realise there's no internal logic to them at all.
** My best guess is that the Eobard Thawne who caused Barry to get his powers in 2014 is now a Timeline remnant, since it's really the only way the plot of the Arrowverse makes any sense after Flashpoint. It's really the only explanation I've got, since trying to comprehend the logic behind time travel in the Arrowverse is a good way to give yourself a headache.
** But if timeline remnants worked like that, that would mean that Eobard couldn't have changed the past by killing Barry's mother - the timeline remnant of her would still remain, and Eobard's timeline wouldn't be changed. But since clearly that didn't happen, and the timeline was changed by Nora Allen not being around anymore, it should've been similarly changed by Eobard not being around anymore.
** No, I'm saying that a Timeline remnant of Eobard got stuck in the past and went through basically all the events of Season 1, which is the only way the whole Flashpoint thing makes any sense. Nora is still dead, but a version of Eobard remained in the past to go through all the events that led up to Barry becoming the Flash in 2014. That's my best guess anyway.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Arbitrary limitation to Mirror Master's power]]
* In the [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E4TheNewRogues "The New Rogues"]], when Mirror Master gets the Top away from her prison cell, they enter the window in her cell, and come out somewhere else. Clearly they didn't come out in the same room, because there was only one reflective surface there. So it seems the reach of Mirror Master's power isn't limited to just the mirrors in one particular room. However, in the climax of the episode, Mirror Master can't escape because Barry makes all the mirrors in the room face each other. Why can't he just escape to some other mirror or other reflective surface further away, like he did in the prison break?
** It seems he can only jump to a surface he can see from the one he's currently in. The whole point of the circle of mirrors is that the only other glass surfaces visible are the ones in the circle.
** Yeah, but in the prison break scene there is only one reflective surface he can see: the window of Top's cell. And clearly, once they entered it, they didn't come out of the same window, because otherwise Barry and Joe would've caught them. For them to escape they must've exited through some other mirror. So that scene seems to disprove such a limitation to his power.
** There's a corridor off to the side that isn't shown on camera which could very well have more reflective surfaces.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: What was the point of the Shade's first attack?]]
* In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E6Shade "Shade"]], it's eventually revealed that the eponymous villain is working for Dr. Alchemy, and his attack in the open air cinema is supposed to distract Barry while Alchemy tries to lure Wally to him. But before that we see the Shade attacking and killing some random businessman... At this point Alchemy hadn't even contacted Wally yet, so clearly that murder wasn't supposed to serve as any sort of distraction. So why did he kill the businessman?
** We don't know the backstory of Shade, maybe he has some vengeance to take against the businessman ... or it's just when one gets fantastic powers, one just wants to try them, and the businessman was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
** He might just like killing people. He ''is'' a merciless criminal.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Savitar is a god?]]
* Is Savitar an actual god or what?
** That depends on you definition of "god". The Series/Arrowverse doesn't have an ''inherently divine'' class of beings in any theological or mythological sense, if that's what you're asking. However, he is a [[NotQuiteHuman clearly inhuman]] being of supreme (one might say godlike) power who seems to be just about totally unique. If he wants to call himself a god, there isn't really anyone who can contest that claim.
** The Speed Force is a sentient (and somewhat petty) integral part of the universe. The Speed Force may not qualify as capital "G" god but it is a deity by any rational definition. In addition to the correct information above that nobody can contest a sufficiently powerful being, they can simply disrespect them. Like Captain America doesn't acknowledge Thor as a God, just a {{SufficientlyAdvancedAlien}}.
** The question then becomes: is Savitar actually a part of or specially linked to the Speedforce, or just very powerful in it? At this point, and especially in the Arrowverse, it's really just a matter of definition and belief. To Savitar and his followers, he is a god; to the heroes, he's not. He certainly has godlike power, but whether or not that makes him a god is basically up to the individual.
** It was initially believed The Arrowverse had no superpowers – obviously that turned out to be wrong – and there was no evidence of superpowered heroes existing before Barry, until the JSA appeared in [[Series/LegendsOfTommorow]], so don't be so sure.
** It should also be noted that while magic and spirits exist (see ''Vixen'', ''Constantine''), actual acknowledged "gods" have not been mentioned. None of those magical beings, or the Speedforce itself, or the {{Time Master}}s, or even any SufficientlyAdvancedAliens have claimed godhood yet; while Savitar calls himself a god, others of a similar tier might disagree.
** The midseason finale "The Present" provides an answer - [[spoiler: No. Savitar ISN'T literally a God. He considers himself one because he's powerful enough to make others believe it. Savitar is a metahuman speedster, just like the Flash, albeit one who grew insanely powerful, and who has possibly transcended a normal physical existence on some level.]]
** Savitar, via Alchemy, is shown to have a small cult of followers, so it seems fair to say he is ''their'' god.
** Savitar's powers come from his mastery of the Speed Force. In fact, he loses many of them after breaking out of the Speed Force prison, implying it's only possible for him to do it while in the Speed Force. Also, the Philosopher's Stone is eventually revealed to be a calcified chunk of the Speed Force itself, which explains how Savitar and Alchemy were able to use it.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: What about Caitlin/Killer Frost?]]
* Does Caitlin Snow still have her Killer Frost powers or did she lose them when she rejected her Killer Frost persona? If she still has them, can she use them safely or is she stuck having to wear Cisco's anti-meta bracelets for the rest of her life?
** Metahuman powers don't just disappear like that (unless someone is messing with your body), they are a part of you. Barry lost his powers several times and he always got him back or they weren't lost from the beginning. Consider Barry bringing Caitlin back at the end of the episode similar to episode 5, when her mother basically did the same. Killer Frost is a part of Caitlin and she needs to control her own emotions better if she doesn't want to let loose again. I imagine (or hope) we will see more scenes where Caitlin trains her powers, so she can use them whenever it's needed without going AxCrazy. Caitlin is still wearing Cisco's cuffs. They will probably only temporary act as a PowerLimiter, there are also still Savitar/Alchemy's plans with Caitlin and that vision Cisco saw when he vibed her. Killer Frost will return, the question remains whether she will be on the good or bad side of the story. (The problem still remains whether, as her mother warned her, her constant EnergyAbsorption will turn her into an irreversible heat vampire, like in the comics, when Killer Frost sought heat to not die and found the cure in Firestorm, who produced endless energy.)

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Caitlin's knowledge of Flashpoint]]

* How did Caitlin know so much about Barry's timeline changes? As far as can be determined he hasn't spoken to her in exhaustive detail what happened pre-Flashpoint and the differences with respect to post-Flashpoint. Yet when she hauls out her TheReasonYouSuck speech, she knows (or at least hints at knowing) details that in some cases only ''Barry'' could know.
** Barry in private confessed to Caitlin several changes of the current timeline that he caused by creating Flashpoint, Dante's death being among this, in the previous episode in a ItsAllMyFault speech, after she told Team Flash she has powers.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Vixen and Steel missing from the episode "Invasion!"]]
* Ok, there in real life there was probably some contractual or other reason why the actors playing Vixen and Steel couldn't appear in the Flash part of the "Invasion!" crossover, but the in-universe explanation is just weak. The heroes know they're up against a powerful alien force, and two out of the three Legends with actual superpowers just stay behind to look after the Waverider? How does that make any kind of a sense? The Waverider has an AI controlling it, so presumably it can take care of itself. And if someone really needs to stay behind, why not one of the heroes with no powers, like Mick or Sara? If they're afraid the Dominators would try to hijack Waverider, and that's why it needs to be guarded, just send it to the distant past or future, where it will be out of the Dominators' reach. But leaving two of the most powerful heroes behind while the others are dealing with a planetary invasion is just stupid.
** They were left behind for the same reason that Team Flash doesn't want Wally to join in; for all intents and purposes, they're rookies, and this is a challenge none of the superheroes of 2016 have ever faced before. Nate is still learning how to use his powers, and while Amaya may have experience with hers, she doesn't know anything about the 21st Century. Besides, the rest of the Legends really have no idea what they're up against. Once they do, you can bet that Amaya and Nate will be called in to help. They're being overprotective, but also smart. Keeping two of their big guns in reserve mean that the Dominators don't have complete information about Earth's heroes or their capabilities, leaving them as a bit of a trump card.
** Which was exactly what happened on the next crossover episode in ''Arrow''. They were on the Waverider ready to help out in case things got really bad.
** Of course, the out-of-universe reason for not every character from every series getting in on it is probably (and ''definitely,'' according to WordOfGod, in the case of all non-Supergirl members of ''Supergirl's'' cast) is the fact that wrangling LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters is very, very hard.
** It's actually pretty standard for the Legends to leave one or two teammates behind on the Waverider while the rest go on a mission, whether to guard the ship, to serve as a rescue team in case the rest of them get into trouble, or just because they've got something else to work on.
** Leaving Amaya behind also might have been because Ray (and probably Sara and maybe some of the other team members) is aware that Oliver and company have interacted with her granddaughter Mari, and thought it was best to avoid any possible temporal issues that her interacting with them might cause.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Throw it where Jay?]]
* At this point Team Flash doesn't know much about the Philosopher Stone aside from it has some ability to control your mind and give you visions of dead loved ones and might be indestructible. The fact that a long lost artifact has survived for thousands of years doesn't mean it would survive an acid bath or being dunked in a volcano or given to the the Legends and tossed into the Sun but the team bought that line. Either way Savitar is a speedster of such extreme power that neither Jay nor Barry can even perceive his moves much less fight him. So Jay's solution is to throw the stone, and thus him, into the Speed Force. Of all the options out there including giving the box to Team Arrow where almost everybody dead parents (some killed by others on the team) this is possibly the worst option anybody could have thought up.
** Firstly, the fact that they say it's indestructible means people have presumably tried before. Even if they try acid, lava, etc, there's no guarantee that would work, and they would still have to figure out some way of getting rid of it. They need a solution that will get rid of it once and for all. While asking Team Legends to throw it into the sun might work (and that's assuming that no one on the team gets curious and opens the box), what's wrong with throwing it into the Speed Force? The Speed Force is said to be infinite-even another speedster probably wouldn't be able to find it.
** Savitar says he's trapped in "eternity" and they throw it into a place described as "eternity itself" that's the problem with throwing it into the Speedforce.
** Right, but the thing about eternity is that it's...[[CaptainObvious well, eternal.]] For Savitar to try and find the box would be like trying to find one particular drop of water on Earth.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:It hit everyone!]]
* Why have no metahuman children even been mentioned? The explosion affected the whole city...
** Dumb, dumb luck. Sometimes I think that that particle wave explosion had a sense of humor.
** Magenta is definitely on the young side, so that's one. Granted, she wasn't the result of the particle accelerator explosion, but it's stillan example of a metahuman child.
** By children I mean younger than 13. It doesn't seem likely that Magenta is..
** Maybe Metas are similar to mutants over in Marvel and generally only manifest post puberty or they simply got boring powers and/or had parents who could keep it under wraps.
** We haven't seen any metas who'd be over 45 either (except for Jay Garrick, but he's from an different universe), and the majority of metas seen so far have been men, even though statistically it should 50% men, 50% women.
*** Stein and [=DeVoe=] were both over 45, and [=DeVoe=] is absolutely a meta...he just falsified the DNA on his mug.
** That just raises further questions.
** Why a metahuman should be a hero or a villain. Maybe there is a lot of metahuman that have power they can control and just decide not to use it and continue to have a normal life. So maybe the metahuman is 50% men and 50% women, but a majority of women doesn't see the point of risking their life to play superhero or supervillain.
** Men are statistically more likely to engage in certain types of behavior. So the female metas may simply be making less noise so to speak.
** Which still doesn't directly address the children and elderly.If I may add,Savitar and Eobard Thawne are extremely old,the former is even possibly ''centuries'' old,while they didn't get their powers from the particle accelerator,they're still both over 45.
** Savitar may not be from Earth 1 and strictly speaking Eobard hails from a yet to be revealed timeline and almost definitely had nothing to do with the particle accelerator. More to the point that is a casting choice. You could ask the same of nearly any show out there. Inverse however it could be chalked up to older people simply not being in the zone to commit crimes or be a hero and most of the powers are easily controlled so an adult who didn't want to be noticed wouldn't. It is worth noting that Earth 2's Wells suggests that the number of Metas we have seen are just a drop in the bucket. That he's seen many times more than we did and the Particle Accelerator was far better contained on his Earth than here. So either some of our metas are taking time to develop or are successfully laying low.
** Was actually mentioned above that their powers aren't from the particle accelerator and no,they haven't even been mentioned,no additional actors would be needed.
** How about animals? For some reason we haven't seen any meta-pets yet. You'd think that they'd be harder to keep hidden, since animals tend to lack the same level of caution that humans have.
** Um, Gorilla Grodd.
** Because we only see those who either become criminals or heroes. There are probably many, ''many'' more meta-beings than those we see ** But why should we care about that 5-year-old who can fill a sheet of paper with a crayon drawing simply by thinking about it? Or that little old lady who can increase the longevity of her house plants? And if my guinea pig could suddenly talk to me, or my cat learned how to levitate, it'd be pretty cool, but it'd probably not make for more than a little comment from the show's main cast. If I used my levitating cat to rob some banks somehow, yeah, but that's fairly unlikely...
** Since ,as mentioned in the folder "How Did Barry Get Super Speed?",the powers granted to the metahumans are often related to what they were doing when they got hit by the explosion,there should be at least a few Bart expies running around somewhere in Central City and/or Keystone City...we also sure as hell haven't seen all the heroes or criminals,remember Barry's opening narration in the second season premiere?
** As noted above, the majority of people are neither criminals nor heroes. Most metahumans are probably content living their lives out and using their powers in small ways. And remember, most of the metahuman bad guys we've seen were either a) from Earth-2, b) driven mad from the experience (such as Mirror Master or Blackout), or c) those who already had been long-time criminals, such as the Mist. If you're a metahuman considering using your powers to break the laws, you might well think twice when the Scarlet Speedster turns up and the Central City crime rate presumably plummets accordingly.
** That doesn't help me AT ALL,and [[WhatTheHellHero is probably extremely ageist]],unless you aren't aware what the question even is, in which case [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped I'm truly sorry,but you're just a fucktard,like most people are.]]
** First of all, everybody calm down. To answer the question, all (or almost all?) of the metahumans who got powers from the accelerator got powers related to their violent deaths. Presumably, no children died violent deaths within a few hours of the explosion. There also seems to be a mental element; young children would for the most part lack the motivation and the control to properly use any powers they might have.
** The handwave explanation could be that metahuman DNA simply doesn't activate until maturity...maybe growth hormones suppress the DNA, and that's what those inhibitor cuffs are actually doing. The OOC explanation is it would just look bad to have Flash fighting children, and there is no demographic motivation (it's TV-14 after all) to have child heroes. Labor laws also factor in...remember that both Kid Flashes started out as kids in the comics, not 20-something like Wally.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why not ask for Supergirl's help against Savitar?]]
* By all accounts, Savitar is way overpowered compared to Barry. But what about Supergirl? The first crossover between the Flash and Supergirl established that she has super-speed too, and is almost as fast as Barry, not to mention that she's way tougher and has other powers that would helps against Savitar. And after their second crossover, Barry has the means of contacting her. So why not ask for her help against a villain who clearly seems to be in a higher league than Barry?
** Well, besides SupermanStaysOutOfGotham, how is Kara supposed to fight something she can't see or react to?
** Exactly. Just because she has super-speed doesn't mean she's connected to the Speed Force, which might be a requirement to 'see' Savitar.
** Not to mention that even if Kara is as fast as Barry (which is still debatable), Savitar is still considerably faster than him. The fights would likely end up being the same, with Kara being unable to catch up to or even land a hit on Savitar, and that's if she could even see him at all.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Earth 2 Barry's list of numbers]]
* We see a list of numbers by his home phone, each with the first name of another DC hero. It's a cute nod to them all, but... Earth-2 Barry is not a superhero and is very much a NonActionGuy. Why would he have the whole Justice League's phone numbers, by secret identity no less? Of course, obviously there's no guarantee that any of them are heroes if Barry's not, but in that case, what connection would they have to each other, that anyone would need those specific people's numbers?
** In all likelihood, none of the individuals are heroes on Earth-2. As to how they know Barry? AlternateUniverse. He could've met them through a variety of ways, but ultimately how they met or why Barry has their numbers really doesn't matter.
** This. Even if we assume that these characters have lives that ''remotely'' resemble those of their comic-book counterparts, there are any number of ways how Barry could have their numbers. For instance, Barry and/or Iris could once have handled a case involving some Wayne Enterprises property/personnel in Central City, leading Bruce Wayne to befriend them. Clark Kent could be a reporter whom the husband-wife duo came to know professionally and later personally. Iris could have once been part of a (purely ceremonial) security detail when Amazon Ambassador Diana visited Central City. And Hal could just a test pilot whom Barry just happens to be close friends with (maybe he once investigated a crime at Ferris Air).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Hasn't Team Flash already changed the future?]]
* The Season 3 mid-season premiere "Borrowing Problems from the Future" is all about Team Flash trying to figure out if they can change the future and prevent Iris' death at Savitar's hands. Now why is this even a question? Leaving aside the fact that changing the future after witnessing it via time-travel is logically no different than changing the past via time-travel (which is clearly possible in this verse), Team Flash has already changed the future at least once before - last season, when Cisco vibed the death of Tina [=McGee=] at the hands of Eobard Thawne hours into the future, and Barry was able to use this knowledge to save her.
** The writers are trolling us.
** You can only change an event once you know what actually causes it. Butterfly Effect ignored since it's simply insane the reality is Barry doesn't know how or why Savitar targets Iris. Odds are high (narratively speaking) that the idiot enters the time stream specifically to find out details and provides them instead.
** To add on to this, Barry now knows what happens when you change time too carelessly – it breaks. As HR put it, it's like dominoes (though why HR would know ''anything'' about the metaphysics of time is another question entirely). Barry could just (for example) send Iris to Earth-2 or something. But that either wouldn't work, as there's almost nothing Team Flash can do that Savitar can't undo; or something goes horribly wrong and Savitar just kills the city or something.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why are Caitlin's powers so different?]]
* Almost every metahuman villain in the show becomes villain because they were already immoral before gaining their powers, so they're more likely to abuse them. Likewise, almost every moral and decent person who gets powers wants to use them for good, and becomes a hero. Now, Caitlin is most certainly a moral and decent person, and her powers can be used for good (like when she saved Barry from Mirror Master's trap), so why would using them inevitably turn her into Killer Frost? It's never been explained why her powers would automatically corrupt her, when that hasn't happened to others.
** Didn't Magenta have a similar circumstance? Alchemy did as well. Granted, those weren't normal cases, but it shows that some metahumans do develop alternate personalities.
** Magenta was a deeply disturbed kid who was being mistreated by her step-dad, so gaining powers made her lash out. And Alchemy was explicitly the result of Savitar mind-controlling Julian, he was no alternate personality of Julian's. As soon as Savitar disappeared, so did Alchemy. So both of those cases are very different from Caitlin's, and in both of them there was a clear explanation for the characters doing what they did. With Caitlin, there's no such explanation. It seems that everyone (including the writers) assumes using her powers will make her become Killer Frost just because that happened to her counterpart on Earth-2. But many other Earth-2 counterparts (like Firestorm or Vibe) were evil too, yet no one seems to be afraid the same will happen to Cisco when he uses his powers.
** From the characters' point of view, it's a bit comprehensible: before they'd met the Earth-2 versions of Firestorm and Vibe, they already knew (or were) their superpowered heroic counterparts so they had no fear of powers turning them evil because they'd already gained powers without turning evil before they knew their counterparts existed. When they met Killer Frost, however, they didn't have a handy comparison in the form of an empowered Caitlin on Earth-1, didn't have any proof that gaining power wouldn't make her go bad like Earth-2's Caitlin and when Caitlin learned about it, she made the assumption that having powers would make her go bad. So it's possible that when her powers emerged she started acting badly ''because'' she thought that's what would inevitably happen, with the example of Magenta not helping, in a form of SelfFulfillingProphecy. It's entirely possible that if she'd just had someone to talk to her early on, point this out, and learn to control her powers, instead of Killer Frost you'd have the Arrowverse version of the heroine Ice.
** Granted, its not been presented well, but Caitlin ''does'' have issues. Her childhood doesn't seem to have been an entirely happy one. She lost her dad, who seems to be the parent she was closer to. Her mom and her have an (ahem) frosty relationship. Also, in the span of three years, she lost her fiancee/husband Ronnie (twice!) and the other man she got close to, Jay/Hunter, turned out in fact to be the BigBad. Not to mention, encountering her evil Earth 2 doppelganger and finding her to be NotSoDifferent in certain aspects, and the PTSD she likely suffered after being abducted by Zoom at the end of Season 2 - all of this are certainly contributing factors to Caitlin's fractured psyche. The ''real'' Headscratcher is - why hasn't anyone at STAR Labs suggested Caitlin getting some kind of professional psychiatric help? Even if Team Flash can't trust a civilian psychiatrist, they can surely arrange for one vetted by ARGUS or, hell, the US Government (since the new President owes all the heroes one)?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Where did the metahumans in Flashpoint come from?]]
* Perhaps not so much a Headscratcher as something not yet explained, but the lack of explanation is glaring at this point. Where did all the metas in the Flashpoint timeline come from, without there being any particle accelerator explosion? So far, every universe/timeline with metas that we know off has had a particle accelerator explosion - the 'normal' Earth 1 timelines have it, Earth 2 had it, the 'original' Earth 1 timeline Thawne came from had it. So where did the metas in Flashpoint come from? Flashpoint Wally claims he got his powers due to lightning and an incident involving some nitro in a race-car. Does this mean ''all'' the Flashpoint metas got their powers due to random freak accidents (much like the comics)? But the problem is that all these metas appear to be metas in the same way as the 'normal' timeline metas, scientifically speaking - judging by the tests conducted on Wally and the other metas Alchemy 'reawakened' in the normal timeline using the Philosophers' Stone. How could a series of seemingly unconnected random freak accidents result in changes similar to what dark matter energy waves coursing through a city in a single incident accomplished?
** It's been previously established that not all metas gained their power from the explosion. Deathbolt had specifically been mentioned as not being in Central City when the explosion took place, thus how he gained his power is unknown. Subsequent to that, there was Darhk essentially being a meta through magic, as was both versions of Vixen; and Vandal Savage, the Hawks, Ragman, and Steel, all who received powers in different ways. If one goes by the DC comics idea of metahumans, it's plausible to think that some humans have the capacity to exhibit metahuman abilities and just need a trigger to do so. In the Flashpoint timeline, the triggers were just something else.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Did Clive Yorkin have powers in Flashpoint?]]
* If Clive Yorkin was a meta "reawakened" by Alchemy, shouldn't he have had his death touch in Flashpoint? But if so, how did Laura Stone and the other Flashpoint CCPD cops arrest him? Did his powers somehow arise after he was sent to Iron Heights? Was there enough time for that to happen before Barry reset the timeline?
** Maybe the cops had a more developed Metahuman Task Force in Flashpoint, and had some way of neutralizing his powers at range.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Julian and Caitlin? But doesn't Julian have a girlfriend?]]

* Many of the episodes following the winter break in season 3 seem to be building up a romance between Caitlin and Julian. However, in "Shade", Julian mentions to Barry that he has a girlfriend. So...was he simply lying at the time? Did they break up at some point between? Did the writers just completely forget about this? Are they polyamorous?
** You know, that is a good question. Unless it's mentioned, at this point, I'm just going to assume that someone messing with time travel retgone'd their relationship. Either that, or Julian was subconsciously lying to avert suspicion from the fact that he was Alchemy.
** No, he had no idea he was Alchemy at the time. This was "Shade", and he doesn't find out he's Alchemy until Team Flash tells him in "The Present". Though he may have been lying about having a girlfriend just so he didn't have to accept Barry's invite to the movie in the park, since at the time the two still weren't on the best terms (though nonetheless a huge step up after the previous episode, "Monster").
** "No, he had no idea he was Alchemy at the time." Hence why I said "''subconsciously'' lying." Having said that, your answer is also plausible, considering the only mention we ever have of him having a girlfriend was in response to Barry's invitation, which he clearly didn't want to go to. So, it's possible he just made it up so he'd have an excuse to avoid it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Reverse-Flash suit]]

* I know that this is out of place somewhat on the chronology of the headscratchers, but it just occurred to me: Reverse-Flash's suit doesn't actually look all that similar to Barry's overall. I mean, I see the resemblance in the pants and boots, and there's the whole cowl and chest insignia, but other then that, they don't look anything alike? I mean, he based it off of the 2020 Flash's suit, and although we haven't actually seen much of it, the general consensus I got was that it was pretty much Barry's suit, only brighter. And what's with the black? It's not that important, I'm just wondering.
** The whole point of the Reverse-Flash costume is that it's the reverse of Barry's; where Barry's is red, Eobard's is yellow, and vice versa. It's not meant to look like Barry's suit, it's meant to look the reverse.
** Original Poster: I understand that. What I mean is why doesn't it look like a reverse of Barry's suit? I mean, Barry's got that mesh area on his stomach, while Eobard has this weird leather vest/armor thing there and lightening bolts shaped around his chest symbol, Barry has no shoulder pads on his suit, Eobard has something similar to that on his, etcetera, etcetera. Personally, when you really study the suits, you see that Zoom/[[spoiler: Black Flash]] 's suit actually looks more like Barry's. And I understand with the chest symbols background, but again: What's with the black on the legs, arms, torso, and everywhere else?
** ... Doesn't everything you just said make it the reverse of Barry's suit? All of the things on Eobard's suit are things that Barry doesn't have, hence it being the reverse. As for the black parts, it also ties into making it the reverse: Barry's costume is (relatively) bright and inspires hope, so naturally Eobard's is darker and inspires fear.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Plan To Save [[spoiler:Iris]]]]

Barry accidentally travels to the future and sees Iris get murdered by Savitar, and now the team needs to try and stop this future from happening. Okay, all fine and dandy. What's the plan?
They write down some events that Barry happened to see on the news while in the future and plan to stop them from happening, and that will stop Savitar from killing Iris.
I'm sorry, what? First off, there is absolutely no known correlation between the events on the news and Iris' death, it's just some headlines that Barry happened to see while he was there. When they actually do experience the events listed, absolutely none of them have anything to do with Savitar or the situation leading up to it, yet they all assume that because it wasn't Barry who caught that one random guy 4 months ago, Savitar doesn't end up killing Iris. Nobody, not even some of the most brilliant and intelligent people on the planet, even questions once how this is supposed to save Iris or brings up the fact that what they just did hasn't had anything to do with Savitar at all.
Everyone just treats it as a certainty that changing these entirely unrelated events will stop Savitar.
Their entire plan is like someone foreseeing 9/11 deciding to go take a piss in the woods instead of going shopping that day and assuming that stops the tragedy from happening. There's no connection at all between the actions they take to prevent the future and the event they're trying to stop.
Even if they're just banking on the fact that time meddling in the Arrow-verse tends to break things even if they're entirely unrelated to what was changed, they still have no good reason to assume with such certainty that Savitar killing Iris will just go away just because they changed something at all.
* The idea seems to be that by changing those headlines, they prove that it is possible to ScrewDestiny. Which would be a bigger deal except for the fact that the previous two seasons have ''already'' proven that it is possible to ScrewDestiny (the most dramatic example being Eddie Thawne committing suicide and erasing Eobard Thawne's existence). Then again, given the TimeyWimeyBall that applies to the Arrowverse, perhaps it makes sense for the team to figure out what the 'rules' are in this particular case. Also, other than Barry being adamant about not being the one to stop Plunder, most of the other headlines are things that Barry would want to stop anyway - the gorilla attack, Caitlin becoming Killer Frost etc.
** OP here. The gang already knows for certain that it's possible to change fate, they even know the specifics that determine what can and can't be changed. (A time limit before a change is cemented, although this mechanic is a headscratcher and plothole in and of itself.) Their efforts since finding out the future has been to change the event they saw (Savitar murdering Iris), the list of things was written explicitly as their plan to achieve that. Every time they change something on the list, it's stated as progress towards stopping Savitar when they actually haven't made any progress at all. So far they haven't taken a single step towards changing the event they're trying to change, so why is everyone acting like stopping Grodd from invading Central City is somehow even vaguely related to stopping Savitar? Either they're actually just hoping that their unrelated actions will genuinely catch Savitar in the ripple effects (A terrible plan), or they outright have no plan and are taking no actions to stop him. (Arguably worse, but at least doesn't involve messing with time.)
** The main problem with this is that neither the audience nor Team Flash know exactly what will cause Savitar to reappear and murder Iris (yet). With that in mind, they do know some of the events that happen prior to Iris' death, and it stands to reason that changing the events would have some ripple effect that would, at the very least, allow another outcome to save her. So yeah, they're basically hoping that their ripple effects will in some way affect Savitar. It's not a perfect plan, but there's really not a whole lot they can do.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: All the gorillas super-powered?]]
* It seemed to me that Solovar had all the same abilities as Grodd and all the gorillas were huge. But Grodd got all his gifts from the particle accelerator accident. The gorillas from Earth-2 were intelligent, okay, but why would Solovar also be telepathic, and all the gorillas as big as Grodd?
** Maybe on Earth 2, Wells and Eiling were experimenting with lots of gorillas, instead of just one.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why doesn't Lily Stein help out the team?]]
* She's a brilliant physicist living in Central City and she's worked with the team before (during the Invasion! arc), being the offspring of a former prominent member. She would be a great asset to the team. Though, in all fairness, we could probably ask the exact same questions about Hartley Rathaway following the episode "Flash Back".
** Team Flash isn't the center of the world. Both Lily and Hartley have their own life, projects and dreams. They can help for big threatening event, but otherwise they just go on with their life.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why does Barry literally get slower with every speed boost?]]
* Barry's speed makes absolutely no sense, it literally varies by orders of magnitudes between episodes, sometimes even within the same one like in Attack On Central City. Barry's fast enough to outspeed a fired bullet that has a head start, but somehow he still gets shield-bashed by Grodd and can't run that relatively short distance to Savatar in 2.5 seconds. Season 1 Barry broke mach 1.5 easily, in season 2 he got (specifically stated) more than 4 times faster, yet his top speed is still treated as mach ~2? What about the fact that season 1 Barry ran literal circles around Central City in seconds? And season 2 Barry outran an actual lightning bolt? How is he being outpaced by cars, gorillas and frickin' blow darts in season 3? It's like Barry's speed in season 3 is being lowered to even lower than season 1 just so Wally can get faster than him without making it as blatantly bullshit.
** He's constantly getting hit with attacks from villains that realistically should never touch him. I think you just have to roll with it, because speedsters have StoryBreakerPower and there wouldn't even be the possibility of defeat if they were handled consistently.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Speed Force is kind of a dick]]
* Okay, so in "Into The Speed Force", we learn that the Speed Force is pretty pissed at Barry for creating Flashpoint. Pretty understandable. It claims that it thought Barry had moved on from the trauma of his mothers death, which Barry tells it that he did, till Zoom killed Henry, which the Speed Force implies that it was a test of his resolve, which he failed. Okay, bit of a dick move, but Barry is the Speed Force's champion, so he's held to a higher standard than others to it. But really? [[spoiler: Not letting Wally leave after Savitar trapped him in it?]] That's just not cool. Wally did nothing wrong, he just was tricked by Savitar into replacing him in his prison. Why can't the Speed Force just let Wally go and sic the Time Wraiths or Black Flash on Savitar? And speaking of the Black Flash, [[spoiler: While it was great to see Zoom get what was coming to him]], why didn't it just do that sooner? By that, I mean take his speed like it did to Eobard Thawne. I mean, while Eobard had just murdered Nora and stopped Barry from becoming the Flash, he at least fixed it somewhat, while Zoom was about to ''destroy the entire universe''. And why not do the same to Savitar?
** It seems to me like the prison ''needs'' a speedster in it-that's why Jay stayed after he rescued Barry and Wally. As for Zoom, if the Speed Force needed him to kill Henry (which is totally a {{Jerkass}} move, but regardless), perhaps it would've stripped Zoom of his speed anyway if Barry hadn't pulled his gambit. For Savitar-honestly, no idea why it didn't set the Black Flash on him, but maybe since he was already (at least partially) in the Speed Force, the rules were different?
** For the Savitar part, it's possible that the Speed Force saw Barry was handling him generally well (It doesn't think like us, so it has a different idea of handling things), and it also might have been a sense of priority. While Savitar was causing trouble in Central, he was only trying to escape his prison and only Future Barry put him in his prison in the first place, so the Speed Force likely didn't care all that much. Eobard Thawne, on the other hand, was screwing with time, recruiting Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn for the Spear of Destiny to rewrite reality. If I had to chose, I'd kill Thawne first, then ''maybe'' send Black Flash in on Savitar.
** Okay, but if it was going to take away Zoom's speed if Barry didn't pull his gambit... there ''wouldn't be'' anything it could do, as Zoom would have destroyed the universe. What I was trying to ask was why didn't the Speed Force just take his speed like it did to Thawne, when it saw that he was ducking the Time Wraiths? With Eobard, it has the excuse he was needed for certain parts of history, but ''nada'' on Zoom.
** Maybe it wanted him to become the Black Flash, so the whole race was a BatmanGambit on its part? Honestly, we may just have to chalk this up to IdiotBall.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Just Evil All Along?]]
* So are we ever going to be told where Caitlyn got her frost powers from? It's made clear that it wasn't an Alchemy job, which yet again brings up the wth with her becoming Killer Frost. I don't know if they just missed something, but sudden ice powers I get. She was affected by the blast, blah blah. But what's with the sudden EXACT personality of Earth 2 Killer Frost jumping in? Or is this going to be some lame "It's her suppressed split personality" thing going on?
** She got her powers from the particle accelerator explosion, but they manifested later (just like Cisco's did). As for her evil persona, it seems it's linked to her "cold" power, which make her "cold" inside as well (uncaring, unfeeling). She is acting the same as Earth 2 Killer Frost because she has the same powers, and her powers are causing the same changes in her personality.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Savitar's identity and [[spoiler: 2056 Barry]]]]

* So [[spoiler: Barry's destiny is to become Savitar at some point...presumably following the events of The Once And Future Flash (February 2024), possibly overlapping with the Red Skies Crisis (April 2024)...but what about 2056 Barry and his message to Rip Hunter? When we see Savitar's face he's clearly not significantly older than present-day Barry...so did he become Savitar and then become good again at some point so that he could send the message to Rip? Seriously, [[MindScrew my head hurts after this reveal, despite long expecting it...]]]]
** [[spoiler: During the EurekaMoment montage, one of the clips was 2024 Barry mentioning how 2017 Barry would go so far as to create time remnants to fight Savitar, which in itself would seem meaningless and doesn't have anything to do with the reveal, except if one remembers the full quote from the episode was that Barry would create time remnants but Savitar would kill them all, '''mostly'''. That suggests at least one ''wasn't'' killed. That emphasis suggests a time remnant will become Savitar, while Barry originally had no idea this happened and remained oblivious to who Savitar was, and became 2024 Barry and later 2056 Barry. So Barry never himself became evil, but a time remnant of his did.]]
** Hmm, fair point. [[spoiler: Many of the things Savitar has said about Barry, about how he "took" something from him and so forth, how his past self is the BigBad from his perspective don't make too much sense if there's only a single Barry Allen going through the timestream...even if he's just metaphorically speaking, it doesn't make a lot of sense...but if he's spawned from a time remnant of Barry that he will ultimately create, that should justify a lot of these weird inconsistencies]]. Though it's odd how during Barry's EurekaMoment and remembering his future self saying that line, we actually ''don't'' hear the word "mostly".
** [[spoiler: The montage only really highlighted the phrase "time remnant".]] When 2024 Barry was speaking, the complete sentence would have been useful to drop a hint to Savitar's identity. By the time it came up in this episode, Barry had already figured out who Savitar is (and the audience should have as well), so there's no point adding that extra bit any more. It wouldn't surprise me if in the next episode [[spoiler: it's made explicit he's a time remnant. This might also take care of the obvious plan of Barry pulling an Eddie to save Iris: as he's already discovered via Eobard Thawne, retgonning doesn't always work if the later "you" is a time remnant]].
** ....aaaand that's exactly what happened: [[spoiler: Savitar is revealed as the time remnant of Barry that wasn't killed, and he points out the Eddie-Eobard issue when Barry suggests killing himself.]]
** Not saying it won't happen but Savitar [[spoiler: turning out to be a time remnant would be incredibly anticlimactic. It means more if Barry Allen -- "our" 100% Barry Allen somehow becomes evil. If it's a time remnant -- even if it's like evil Kirk on STAR TREK "Enemy Within" -- then it's basically an "evil twin" storyline]].
** [[spoiler: "Our" Barry did become evil: a time remnant is 100% identical at the moment of its creation, so the implication is that if 2017 Barry goes through everything that Savitar did, Barry would become the same broken nutcase. And in any case, with a FutureMeScaresMe plot, that's simply the evil twin storyline with a small twist on the origin of the twin.]]
** Another point, aren't all time remnants destined to die? I viewed them as Beta-timeline versions of the hero compared to the alpha timeline version. This is why Zoom's doubles always died, and[[spoiler: Barry destroyed Zoom's plans running to death knowing he would die anyway.]] So why didn't this one die? What makes him so special? Wouldn't the time wraiths destroy him AND Barry for this?
[[/folder]]

[[folder: According to Legends of Tomorrow, interacting with your past self causes a reality-breaking paradox...]]
* And yet Barry has done this far more often than the Legends have, like in the season 2 episode "Flash Back", all of the times he visited the night of his mother's death, his 2024 self meeting his 2017 self in "The Once And Future Flash", and most ridiculously...[[spoiler: Savitar being a future version of Barry now ''heavily'' messing with his past self's timeline]]. Why hasn't reality broken and time folded in on itself, as ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'' has demonstrated?
** The Legends and Time Masters and other time travelers and the speedsters seem to have slightly different rules. The Legends, for instance, haven't been concerned with Time Wraiths.
** In fact, in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E21CauseAndEffect "Cause And Effect"]], Savitar says that the rules of causality apply less and less to a speedster the more than they time-travel.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Did 2024 Barry lie to 2017 Barry about not knowing who Savitar is?]]
* In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E19TheOnceAndFutureFlash "The Once and Future Flash"]], the 2024 version of Barry tells the 2017 Barry he doesn't know who Savitar is. However, he certainly would've remembered the events of [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E20IKnowWhoYouAre "I Know Who You Are"]], where Barry learns the identity of Savitar in 2017. So did he lie to 2017 Barry? If he did, why would he do that?
** Not necessarily. Its possible that in the 'original' timeline, Barry never found out who Savitar is and trapped him in the Speed Force in 2021. And in the current timeline, the future has changed, and now Barry discovers who Savitar is in 2017.
** If the timeline was changed by Barry's future trip, how come Savitar still knew all the details of Barry's and Caitlin's confrontation, right down to the exact words Barry would say? It seems Savitar knows exactly what's gonna happen, which would mean the timeline ''hasn't'' changed. Also, Savitar doesn't seem to be at all surprised when Barry confronts him and tells him he knows who Savitar is. If the Barry of the "original" timeline (whose 2024 version we meet in "The Once and Future Flash") never learned Savitar's identity, that would mean that Savitar should be surprised; since Savitar came to the past before Barry supposedly changed the timeline, his memories should be of the original timeline, where Barry never learned who he was.
** If we assume that [[spoiler:Savitar is Barry's time remnant]], then it's possible that Savitar is updating with Barry's actions. Every time Barry does something, that gets factored into Savitar's background.
** That's not how time travel has been shown to work in ''The Flash'' though, RippleEffectProofMemory is very much in effect. For example, when Barry travelled back in time and saved his mom, his memory was still of the pre-Flashpoint timeline. And when he changed the past again and erased Flashpoint, his memory didn't update to include stuff that had changed via ButterflyEffect, such as the death of Cisco's brother.
** Except that in Flashpoint, Barry was shown to be losing his pre-Flashpoint memories (and indeed, losing them was one of the motivations to try and repair things, again). As happened with Martin Stein when he accidentally altered time resulting in having a daughter, the memories gradually come in. In the cases where Barry was surprised things changed, it was things which he found out almost immediately after he time traveled (Sara Diggle, Dante's death, Joe and Iris being estranged, Julian's presence, Harley being a good guy) and before new memories from the altered timeline might have set in. So, if he'd gone on a vacation right after Flashpoint and before he went back to work, he might have gradually remembered the presence of Julian before actually meeting him for the first time.
** The timeline was almost certainly changed by the 2024 trip. Barry from 2024 was surprised to see 2017 Barry (as were the other characters) and in the list of things he gives that he tried to use to save Iris and demonstrate the futility trying, "Travel to 2024 to find out who Savitar is" wasn't one of them even though it would be an obvious one. "See, I even tried ''this'' and it didn't work."
** But if the timeline was changed, and in the original timeline (the one Savitar lived through) the 2017 Barry didn't travel to 2024 and didn't learn about Tracy Brand's work, how come Savitar was able to predict the events that followed Tracy's murder attempt, right down to knowing Barry's exact words when he confronted Killer Frost? None of this would have happened in Savitar's original timeline, the one where Barry didn't visit 2024.
** Mild SPOILERS for 3x21 ("Cause and Effect") - As per the promos, Cisco is going to do something to Barry's brain in an attempt to "prevent him from making new memories" in an effort to stop Savitar. So clearly, anything and everything 2017 Barry is experiencing now gets 'rippled' to the future and changes Savitar's memories and experiences. Yes, this does seem to contradict the use of RippleEffectProofMemory in other cases - but its never been stated that time-travelers will ''never'' acquire memories of the new timeline (in fact, in 3x01, Barry's memories were slowly being replaced by those of the Flashpoint timeline, and over on ''Legends of Tomorrow'', Martin Stein's memories were also slowly being rewritten to match his 'new' history.
** This still doesn't explain why none of the other characters in the future told Barry who Savitar was. Even if something happens to wipe Barry's memory, it still doesn't explain why future Cisco, Joe, Julian, HR, etc. didn't know who Savitar was.
** Because in that timeline, none of them knew. As far as everyone in that timeline was concerned, Iris died and Barry trapped Savitar in 2021 without ever knowing who he was. Its once Barry returns from 2024 with new information from the future that things start changing. If Barry were to run to 2024 now (i.e. post-3x20) he'd end up in a somewhat different version of the future where everyone knows who Savitar is/was.
** On LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, Stein's memories start to "update" once he accidentally changed the past, which resulted in the birth of his daughter. I presume something similar happened to Savitar after Barry's trip to the future. Note that he doesn't immediately kill Brand once he's released in WRATH OF SAVITAR, which would sort of be a no-brainer. It's because he believed at the time that the team doesn't find her until it's too late to stop him from killing Iris -- presumably a "fixed" point in ensuring he becomes Savitar.
** Exactly. The way I see it, Savitar, when trapped in the Speed Force, has memories of the 'original timeline' (whatever that is). Once Savitar is freed from the Speed Force however, his memories start updating ''Looper''-style and he starts to remember whatever 2017 Barry does. Savitar is a living, breathing RippleEffectIndicator. His memories and backstory are an extrapolation of the most likely future of 2017 Barry at any given moment. Once Barry returns from 2024 with information about Tracy Brand, Savitar's memories update to remember that he, Cisco and HR went to meet Tracy, so he sends Killer Frost to kill her. Once the first attempt to kill Tracy fails, Savitar comes up with the prisoner exchange plan, but then his memories update and he remembers what Barry says to Caitlin and that Cisco was up in the rafters, so he instructs Caitlin accordingly. Once Barry figures out who Savitar is and runs off somewhere to confront him, Savitar remembers this and runs to meet Barry. And so on.
** It's entirely possible that until Barry's trip to 2024, Savitar had no idea Tracy Brand even existed, never having found out who was responsible for the tech that trapped him in 2021. It was only after 2024 Barry told 2017 Barry about her that Savitar knew who she was and her importance.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Why didn't Savitar kill Tracy Brand as soon as possible?]]
* The revelations in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E20IKnowWhoYouAre "I Know Who You Are"]] make it clear Savitar always knew Tracy Brand would build the device which would trap him in the Speed Force; that's why he sends Killer Frost to murder Tracy. But if he always knew, why didn't Savitar kill Tracy as soon as he got out of the Speed Force in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E15TheWrathOfSavitar "The Wrath of Savitar"]]? At that point Team Flash had no idea who Tracy is, and killing her would've been easy peasy for Savitar. So why does he wait until Team Flash learns about Tracy, giving them a chance to prevent her death?
** Evidently, he has his reasons. The team remark on how Savitar didn't kill Tracy when he had the chance in this episode. Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye.
** It was explicitly stated that Savitar had the choice of either getting away with Caitlin or killing Tracy, and he chose the latter. So his choice had nothing to do with not wanting to kill Tracy, he just didn't have the time to do both, and saving Caitlin was more important to him. Also, if Savitar always knew Tracy wouldn't die and/or doesn't want her to die, why was he mad at Caitlin for failing to kill her?
** As mentioned above, it seems that Savitar's memory is being updated as Barry changes the history that Savitar already experienced. Savitar didn't kill Tracy once he escaped the Speed Force because Savitar didn't ''know'' about Tracy--presumably he never found out who made the trap that caught him in 2021--and he only "remembered" her when 2024 Barry told 2017 Barry about her.
** Turns out he ''wanted'' her to build the bazooka.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why do Team Flash never send Iris to a different universe to save her?]]
* It's quite egregious that this is never at least mentioned or attempted in the show, especially given the amount of time that they spend trying to change other arbitrary elements of the future and that characters from other universes such as Jesse and Kara are seen in multiple episodes. Surely one of the characters would have had the idea to send Iris to Earth 2/3/38 until Savitar is dealt with.
** That almost certainly wouldn't work. Savitar is clearly capable of travelling between universes thanks to the Speed Force, so he could almost certainly find Iris if she left Earth-1. And they know this, even before Barry learned who Savitar was, they knew he knew about Jay and Jesse, so they knew he could travel through universes. It would've been nice if they had brought it up, but it makes sense as to why they didn't.
** Jay had said, when first telling Barry about Savitar, that speedsters across the multiverse had either already encountered, knew, or had heard stories about Savitar.
** This does eventually come into play in Infantino Street, with it being implied that without Savitar knowing what Earth Iris was on this might have worked.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: "Cause and Effect" time remnant memories]]

* It's explicitly stated that the time remnant who became Savitar is created four years after the events of this episode. But after the amnesia hits Barry, he immediately learns who he is and starts rebuilding his life. So how come Savitar still doesn't know his own identity? That would mean that four years later Barry still doesn't know who he is, when in this episode he learns that the same day.
** Actually, that seems to be an assumption on Cisco's part. In 3x19, 2024!Barry claims that he created time remnants in a bid to stop Savitar from killing Iris, which would have been in 2017. Regardless, as far as the memory thing goes, Savitar is pretty much a RippleEffectIndicator. He immediately reflects any change made to Barry in 'real-time'. So maybe, in the next four years, the amnesiac Barry slowly rebuilds his life and identity, but in the immediate present he hasn't, and so the Savitar in the immediate present doesn't remember any of it.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: "Cause and Effect" time remnant existence]]

* If for some reason Barry's memory still isn't working four years later, that would mean he doesn't know how to create time remnants either, so Savitar would never be born. So Savitar not remembering who he is, and Savitar existing to begin with, are mutually incompatible facts. If Barry's memory isn't fixed in four years, Savitar shouldn't inherit his amnesia, he should cease to exist.
** Well, TimeyWimeyBall is pretty much a fact of life now in the Arrowverse, as said by Savitar himself. Maybe Savitar has messed around with time-travel so much that he can't be erased from existence physically (he says as much to Barry), but that doesn't stop him from being a RippleEffectIndicator affected by anything that happens to 2017!Barry.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: "Cause and Effect" Wally's powers]]

* Barry's amnesia leads to Savitar not giving Wally powers, which is fine in itself. But Savitar got freed from the Speed Force only because of Wally and his powers. So if Wally's powers are retroactively gone, that should mean Savitar is still trapped in the Speed Force. Which he clearly isn't.
** Again, somehow due to TimeyWimeyBall, only Savitar's memories are affected, not his physical existence. Things like being trapped in the Speed Force or escaping the Speed Force are probably immune to 'normal' time-travel related changes anyway.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: "Cause and Effect" Wally's powers and memories]]

* How is it possible that Wally loses his powers, but he still remembers having them? If the powers are retroactively gone, so should the memory of them. It doesn't makes sense that Wally's powers don't have any ripple proof, but his memory does. And Savitar's "updating" memories show that RippleEffectProofMemory doesn't work here.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: "Cause and Effect" Julian]]

* Wally loses his speed powers because the amnesiac Barry never goes on to create Savitar, who was responsible for giving Wally his powers. All well and good. But why is Julian Albert still in STAR Labs, unaffected by the same event? His working with STAR Labs was a direct result of Savitar interfering with his life and turning him into Alchemy. So why wasn't he instantly effected the same way Wally was?
** Because the physical existence of Savitar wasn't affected, neither was the physical history of his actions in the timeline. Wally not having his powers is a weird effect though. The best answer one can come up with for that is - rewriting timelines affects certain individuals more than they do others, perhaps because of the nature of their powers and/or circumstances. For instance, last season, when Team Flash imprisons an earlier version of Thawne, Cisco starts getting adversely affected - probably because Cisco is a meta only because of Thawne's future actions, and the nature of Cisco's powers probably makes him more sensitive to the effects of time-travel and broken causality. Similarly, Wally, being a speedster, is probably more sensitive to the break in causality caused by 2017!Barry losing his memory, causing him to lose his powers - even though everyone else is unaffected physically.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: No second murder attempted by Savitar?]]
* As happy as I am that Iris is alive, when Savitar got new memories of killing H.R. instead of Iris, what exactly was stopping him from going back to Infantino Street or S.T.A.R. Labs and killing her again?
** That is odd, especially considering that Barry later says when they offer to help Savitar that him killing Iris now wouldn't change anything for him. Having said that, it's also possible that it wasn't just the death of Iris that would assure Savitar's existence (if it was, he could've simply killed her the moment he escaped the Speed Force), but also Barry's own knowledge of her impending death, doing everything in his power to stop it, only for it to be for naught. Changing the timeline back, even if for a moment, would help quell the despair that ended up creating Savitar. Alternatively, it's also possible that Savitar himself may not have wanted to kill Iris. Despite his claims otherwise, he clearly does still love her, so it was likely really hard for him to actually go through with it. He probably had to spend a lot of time psyching himself up for it, steeling himself for what he had to do to ensure his own existence. And the specific date was probably easier for him too, since something like that is easier to prepare for when you know exactly when it's happening instead of just going for it on a whim. But once he fails, and kills the wrong person, he just can't bring himself to try again, since it hurt so much the first time.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Wally's Powers After The Events "Finish Line"]]
* In the season 3 finale, unsurprisingly, BigBad Savitar is killed. However, two episodes ago, Barry lost his memory which in turn caused Savitar to lose his own memory, disrupting the StableTimeLoop...with the ultimate result being that Savitar was never able to travel back in time and give Wally powers, causing Wally to lose his speed. Since Savitar is outright killed in the season finale, shouldn't the same thing happen? And yet Wally is shown to still have his SuperSpeed. I'm hoping season 4 will at least ''try'' to address this apparent inconsistency, though somehow I doubt it.
** The Philospher's Stone exploded and released another energy wave (possibly creating more metahumans) before Savitar was killed, and while Wally still had his speed. Since he gained his power from the Stone in this timeline in the first place, it's possible that this protected him and the other metas who gained power due to Savitar from being depowered by Savitar being erased.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Why is Barry "permanently" stuck in the Speed Force?]]
* At least, until Season 4 finds a way to undo it.
** The explanation is that a speedster must be inside the Speed Force to keep it stabilized (which just raises [[VoodooShark further questions]]), but why does it need to be Barry on a permanent basis? The show has four recurring speedsters and Cisco has already demonstrated an ability to send speedsters in and out of the Speed Force. Could they not take turns on some schedule?
** Logically, that might work. Thematically, however, Barry has to serve penance for having caused the whole Savitar crisis in the first place by having used his powers to create The Flashpoint reality. Sacrificing himself in this way also [[RedemptionEqualsDeath redeems Barry somewhat]], given his selfish and, at times, outright dickish behavior to his friends over the past year.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:The Speed Force Prison and The Events Of "Finish Line"]]

* Why does The Speed Force Prison still exist after Savitar's death? The only reason it was created was to contain Savitar in the future. The only reason Savitar was created in the first place was because of Barry creating (and then neglecting) a time remnant. Since Iris killed Savitar, none of that ever comes to pass and Savitar winked out of existence. So why is The Speed Force Prison still demanding that the piper be paid when it shouldn't logically have ever existed along with Savitar?
** Time travel rules in the Arrowverse make no sense, news at Eleven. More seriously, the Speed Force exists outside conventional time, so erasing Savitar didn't quell the need for the Speed Force prison. It does beg the question as to whether or not the prison always existed, and if so, who or what was in there in the first place.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Savitar's existence makes no sense '''!!!SPOILER!!!''']]
* So it's revealed that Savitar is the future version of a time remnant of Barry created during Future-Barry's final fight with Savitar after Iris' death. Savitar gets locked in the Speed Force prison, but left TR-Barry alive knowing he'd eventually become him. So TR-Barry turns evil, goes time travelling to create the myth of Savitar as the "First Speedster" and the "God of Speed", then eventually gets the armour he's known for. Then after Flashpoint, Savitar learned of the time travelling being done that gave him an opportunity to escape the Speed Force. Except... he escapes it in 2016 before he even existed? How does that work? TR-Barry was jumping around time before and after he became Savitar, I get that, but this Savitar everyone's fighting was a prisoner in the Speed Force, ergo he already killed Iris which led to the final battle with him and Future-Barry that caused TR-Barry to be created. So how could he not only escape in a time before he was imprisoned, but also redo the whole "killing Iris" shtick when logically he would've already had done before Future-Barry threw him into the Speed Force prison? [[MindScrew Ow, my head...]]
** Presumably, since the Speed Force exists outside of normal time, he can mess around. On a more serious note, a lot of people misunderstand what "time remnant" means. It's a perfect ''temporal'' clone. This means that the second he's "created", Savitar is a completely separate entity from Barry, allowing him to mess around and do what he wants, so long as the events leading to his existence are the same or extremely close enough. Alternately, he's trapped in a cycle: Savitar kills Iris, Barry creates time remnants or such to stop Savitar, they lock Savitar away, time remnant is rejected by others, becomes Savitar, travels back to kill Iris, rinse and repeat. It's not much, but there's so much conflict with Arrowverse time-travel that we can basically just try and grasp at what meager straws there are.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Is Barry rich?]]
* At the beginning of Season 2 it's mentioned that "Wells" (Thawne) left STAR Labs to Barry, so presumably Barry is still the owner. While STAR Labs' financial situation isn't really mentioned, it was pointed out that "Wells" had a surprisingly luxurious pad so presumably it was doing at least ok financially. So that sort of raises the question of what all was left to Barry. Considering that his apartment with Iris is rather roomy and luxurious, and there's still money to pay the other STAR Labs staff, it's possible that Barry has more money than we're led to believe.
** Pretty much, yeah.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Savitar's Plan]]
* Alright, so I might just be being stupid here, but what exactly were Savitar's plans? He wants to be a God, kill Iris to ensure his own existence...what exactly was his full plan for everything? What was Alchemy supposed to be doing? Can someone just explain the whole plan to me?
** His goals in order are 1) Escape from the Speed Force 2) Kill Iris (to ensure he comes into existence) and 3) Become a god. The whole Alchemy thing was essentially just a (very convoluted) way for him to achieve 1) by giving Wally powers and tricking him into throwing the Philosopher's stone into the Speed Force. When 2) failed he had to rush and go 3) before he got paradox'd out of existence. It's implied (but not stated outright) that after he achieves 3) he wants to use his powers to create a world where he's the "real" Barry and the other one is the time remnant, as he told Barry that he'd be the one "abandoned and forgotten" once he becomes a god.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Future Flash becoming weaker]]
* In season two, we see Flash basically curb stomp Reverse Flash. Then he does it again when he goes back in time. Beating Reverse Flash seems to take minimal effort for Barry. Yet, whatever future version of Flash that's initially fighting Reverse Flash seems to really have trouble with him and is on even ground. Why is Flash from the future so much weaker than present Flash if Flash gets stronger and faster over time?
** The first time Barry beats Eobard is when Eobard is just starting his own supervillain career, so that Reverse-Flash is inexperienced compared to Barry. The second time around was simply because Eobard wasn't expecting it. His version of the Flash had vanished with his younger self, and so wasn't likely to come back. The season 2 version of Barry simply blindsided him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Flash immortal?]]
* Since Savitar is Flash, and he went back to ancient history to write himself as a god then took the SlowPath to the present, then does that mean Barry Allen is immortal?
** In could have something to do with the armor Savitar was wearing. We have no idea where Barry got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it completely halted his own aging.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Time Travel Logic]]
* Is anyone going to mention how often the writers of The Flash play fast and loose with basic logic? For instance, by all means, it should be IMPOSSIBLE to change the past, for one simple reason: When you change the past, the future you won't have a reason to go back in time to change it. If you actually change the past, it eliminates the need for you, in present day, to go back and change it. The same logic applies to trying to change the future. If you see into the future, wish to change it, and do so, than the past you will see the future you created, meaning that past you will not do anything to try to change it. In both cases, the only logical outcome is you being unable to change the past/future, ensuring the past/future you still goes back/forwards to change. This happens twice, once when Barry saves his mother, and when he saves Iris. In the case of the first one, future Barry would have no need to go back to save his mother if she was already alive, and in the second, Barry would have never seen Iris die, therefore he would have not made any preventative measures.\\
\\
There are other similar examples of this blatant violation of basic logic. For instance, if Eddie shot himself, and this prevents Eobard from existing, then Eobard wouldn't have attacked in the first place, removing the need for Eddie to kill himself. Therefore, the only possible outcome would be Eddie being unable to kill himself (i.e. someone stopping him, the gun misfiring, him having second thoughts, etc.) \\
\\
Before I move onto the second violation, I need to explain something about Savitar (stay with me, because here it gets tricky). Savitar is a classic example of a Causal Loop, or in layman's terms, a Bootstrap Paradox (something creates itself via time travel, such as someone taking a copy of a book back in time and giving it to the writer) In my humble opinion, I have an idea of how the Paradox works. The book is written by the writer, and you get it from the unchanged timeline, before changing the timeline so that the book seemingly creates itself, when in reality, the book was originally written by the writer and you changed the timeline with said book. I think the same applies with Savitar, the Flash probably fought another foe when the Time Remnant was created, which then became Savitar and decided to create itself by running into the future. As we just explained however, Savitar WOULDN'T be able to create himself, as that violates the above mentioned logic. In addition, Barry would have most likely fought the foe that created Savitar in the first place later on, which means that Savitar's creation would be inevitable regardless and it would just be an endless time loop of him getting created and killed. \\
\\
And on an unrelated note, the whole episode with Barry losing his memories doesn't make any sense either. Why would Savitar lose his memories if they fix Barry's memories later on? If Savitar isn't created, how does Barry still have his speed? How do any of them retain their memories? Idk, it just seems like the writers weren't really thinking that hard on this one.
** This just in: Time travel rules in the Arrowverse make absolutely no sense whatsoever, news at eleven. Seriously, it's pretty clear that the writers are just using time travel shenanigans to justify whatever they want to happen, rules be damned. At this point, you just gotta roll with it and try not to think about it too hard.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Savitar's apothesis]]
* Savitar said he would be spread throughout every moment in time to become a god. First off, aren't we always stretched across every moment in time? We are only aware of one at a time, but if you were alive and aware from the universe's birth to death, you would just be overloaded with information that you have no means of processing. Secondly, how is that different, if he could process it, from regular life for him? he can already time travel and alter the timestream. Also, wouldn't all this make him more vulnerable to the time wraiths/black flash? He froze Black Flash in the present, so that effects the future, but BF is still alive in the past, Kill Frost isn't always, and time wraiths may not be able to be frozen to death. Now they don't need to track him because he would always be there to capture/kill/torture/whatever unkillable ghosts controlled by the concept of motion due to annoying people. HOW does any of this make him a god in any sense of the word?
** Presumably, the 'present' Savitar would now exist outside of time, beyond the reach of the Black Flash. He would be able to see the results of all his actions,and change all actions to benefit himself, and be capable of processing all relevant information. Essentially, he wouldn't just time travel...he would, in a literal sense, BE a sentient version of time. He would also be unkillable. At that point? He would be omniscient, and omnipotent. At which point he IS a god. It's different from a regular life because the amount of EFFORT it takes to time travel would be meaningless. He would also likely be outside paradoxes.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Danton Black, common thief?]]
* Revisiting Season 1 for a moment, why did Danton Black rob Stagg's award ceremony in "Fastest Man Alive" instead of going after Stagg while he was out in the open? As we later learn, Black isn't motivated by financial gain. He has a personal grudge against Stagg and wants him dead. Maybe it was a cover, but he spends considerable energy on the robbery, using multiple clones to carry it out. Did he even send one after Stagg?
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Did Team Flash give up on the "Secret Identity" thing?]]
* Not that they've ever been very vigilant about it (especially Barry) but by the third and fourth seasons it seems like the characters blatantly talk about (and do) superhero stuff in public. Cisco/Vibe doesn't even bother wearing a mask and Caitlin has used her powers in public on various occasions, not to mention Barry's habit of taking his mask off any time there's a dramatic scene, no matter how public the place. In the Season 4 premiere they have a conversation about Barry being stuck in the Speed Force while sitting in a random bar where anyone could overhear it. And wouldn't people wonder why Barry disappeared for six months? Are their identities still supposed to be secret at this point?
** Cisco is wearing his goggles when operating as Vibe, which covers at least as much of his face as the small domino masks worn by the Canaries. As for the public conversations, you have to assume the standard trope that unless you explicitly show someone listening to a conversation, no one else hears conversations in public places. Barry's disappearance was, as explicitly stated by Joe, explained by claiming he'd gone on sabbatical.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Removing all the amazing tech because of one meeting with a technopath?]]
* Okay, so because they happen to come across a technopath who could control Barry's suit we now have to remove all the amazing (although probably overpowered) tech from the suit? That seems like an overreaction. (although I get not wanting to make the Flash into Iron Man, especially with those hand beams)
** They didn't remove all the tech, just most of it. The raft ended up being useful later. Too bad they didn't keep the hand blast thing, though.

[[/folder]]

[[folder:Mind Virus]]
* what is an organically-produced virus? how does it interfere with technology? wouldn't the reversal of the virus not knock him out, but just destroy his current batch? How does lightening kill it? If it was part of Kilgore, wouldn't he be dead if they reversed the code? Is the virus killing him? How Does Any Of This Work?
* The lightning didn't kill the virus, it shorted out the tech in Barry's suit so that Kilgore couldn't use any of it. As for the rest [[AWizardDidIt dark matter did it]]. It pretty much can do whatever the plot calls for anyway.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:So, does superhuman good luck mean that casino owners stop caring that you might be cheating?]]
* Okay, imagine that you're a casino owner. You've got a pretty good business going. You're making money hand over fist. Now, imagine that one day, some woman comes in and starts playing craps. She wins ''every single time'', in blatant defiance of logic and probability. Surely you would start to be suspicious of her winning streak long before she got to thirty-six wins in a row. No casino staff made any kind of effort to stop her from playing?
** Chances are, there aren't that many casinos in Central City, so the staff probably recognized her and figured she would lose sooner or later.
** Any management that attempted to stop her from playing or thirty-six her from the floor could very well have been delayed or dealt with by her supernatural luck the same way Barry was forced to trip on marbles before she even knew he was after her.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Why NOW to pull Barry out of the Speed Force?]]
* A lot of weeks: Produce The Flash, or people will die. S4ep1: Produce The Flash, or people will die. Team Sans Flash, who's been without Barry for 6 months: *shrug* Let's risk everything right now and not before now getting Barry out of the Speed Force after the bad guy kicks our butt and asks TWICE!
** It wasn't weeks, it was less than a day. The Samuroid demands the Flash return in 24 hours or it'll destroy Central City. They try to fool it by using Wally, but it doesn't work, so they work to get Barry out. And Cisco was spending those six months looking for a way to bring Barry back and only recently managed to do so.
** It's also likely [=DeVoe=] was waiting until he knew Cisco had finally developed a way to get Barry back before he initiated a threat big enough to make them desperate to get Barry back.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How could they legally bury H.R.?]]
* This just came to my mind just now: How exactly was Team Flash able to legally bury H.R. without there being an investigation or anything? There are no birth records or anything for him, as he is literally not of this Earth, and given that Harrison Wells is a deceased criminal on Earth-1, and he looks exactly like him and even has the same last name, how come nobody noticed that?
** With their A.R.G.U.S. connections, they could have had an identity created for him. For his appearance, it could have been a closed casket funeral or they could have used his holographic disguise, though that might not be necessary if no one would be there that would know who Harrison Wells was that didn't already know what the situation was with H.R. being his double.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Barry's terrible defense]]
* Is Cecille really bad at her job? She calls no witnesses to speak to Barry's character, short of cross-examining Singh, no way to confirm Barry's alibi for the supposed time of [[spoiler:Devoe's murder]], or the fact that Barry has never been arrested for anything. Instead, she allows Marleze to spout her bullshit about Clifford allowing her to sleep around (and the jury actually buys it instead of instantly being suspicious of infidelity) without challenging it. And there had to have been ways for Barry to answer the DA's questions without admitting being the Flash. Or does he consider anything but the absolute truth to be perjury? A defense attorney's job is to cast doubt on the prosecution's case, so that enough jurors are unwilling to vote "guilty", and Cecille does nothing of the sort. She doesn't even object to the prosecutor testifying during his opening statement instead of simply presenting his case.
** Barry spends the entire trial convinced that [=DeVoe=] has won, and that he will be outmaneuvered at every turn. That by itself took a lot of steam out of the defense. We can also theorize that after Singh's positive testimony got torn to shreds, Barry didn't want to subject any of his friends and coworkers to that.
** [[https://screenrant.com/the-flash-trial-barry-defence/ This article proves otherwise]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Monster named Barry]]
* When Judge says that Barry is most monstrous person he had ever seen I find that hard to believe as well as very insulting. Even though he was convinced Barry was killed someone I don't think that is the horrific thing he encountered. This suggests that he sees the man who only supposedly killed one person as more of a sociopath than I don't know, the man who happily committed mass murder by putting bombs in toys and then proceeded to brag about it. Really?
** We don't know exactly what cases the judge oversaw, but Barry was resigned to his fate the entire time, which didn't look good. We know of course that he didn't think he could beat [=DeVoe=] at least at the moment, but from an outside perspective the fact that he made basically zero attempt to defend himself looks like a sociopath who is just going to trial for the sake of it but doesn't actually care enough to try. Hell, knowing [=DeVoe=], it's possible he specifically manipulated things to get a judge who had never overseen a particularly heinous crime (he had probably overseen murder trials before, but the defendants were more contrite) so that he'd be horrified and give the maximum sentence.
** There is also something to be said of how the prosecution was presented, painting Barry as a man who used his position in law enforcement (the good guys meant to protect people) as a cover to stalk, harass, and then ultimately murder. There's a distinct difference between a single murder of passion, and a long term harassment/pre-meditated murder committed by someone who is trusted and relied upon to protect you.
** Over on Arrow, while in a similar situation, the judge there actually pointed out that, in this day and age, the possibility of a doppelganger is something to consider.[[spoiler: Of course, he had been replaced by Christopher Chance, which only proves the point.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Thinker stealing powers]]
* So he is able to use telepathy by transferring his mind into Dominic Lance's body (aka Brainstorm), okay, that I can understand. But what still bugs me is that with his mind now transferred into another meta's body like [[spoiler: Hazard]], he's still able to retain telepathy on top of gaining the new host body's powers. How exactly does he collect all their powers when different meta humans have different powers? I mean, it's not like [[spoiler: manipulating quantum probability]] is an extension of telepathy.
** He got this mega awesome chair that can steal powers, he must have tinkered it so when he swaps body, he keeps powers he previously gained. It's not like he's improvising, he planned gaining all this powers from the very beginning.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Iris,Team Flash leader]]
* Can someone explain how she came to the point of proclaiming herself team leader ? Hasn't Barry put Cisco in charge in S3 ?
** Well at the start of Season 4 she was directing Cisco and Wally during their efforts to keep the city safe while Barry was in the Speed Force.
** Leader in this case is the person coordinating the team. Which Iris started doing between 3 and 4 because Cisco and Wally were both needed in the field since they were undermanned. Even after the full team comes back she's still the best choice because Cisco and even Caitlin now might need to take the field, while the non powered Iris almost never does (except in rare occasions like the Bachelorette party).
[[/folder]]

[[folder: DeVoe Ignores Emotions]]
* So [=DeVoe=] has made it clear that he disregards emotions as being of any value, especially in regard to his goal of "enlightenment". But then he gets mad because he did not account for emotion when confronting Barry [[spoiler:in Ralph's body]]. How can he claim to be so smart, but fail to realize that emotion (the very thing he wants to get rid of) IS a factor that needs to be accounted for?
** As Harry told him, he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Look how he's alienating his wife; anyone with any sense can see it won't take much for her to betray him due to the way he's acting, as he himself initially did (and made contingencies for) but as time is going on he's simply losing any ''emotional'' intelligence he had, and with it the capacity to consider emotion as relevant.
** Don't forget, she left him once before...
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Clifford DeVoe, master of extremely specific circumstances?]]
* How did [=DeVoe=] manage to manipulate things like where Barry came out of the Speed Force or which specific powers the dark matter would give the Bus Metas? I know that his thing is being so smart that he can predict the most probable outcome, but "most probable" does not equal "a certainty." His plan seemingly hinged on these things going exactly the way they did so that he could bring about The Enlightenment. In particular, what if Barry emerged from the Speed Force literally anywhere other than where he did? The Speed Force is a SentientCosmicForce that does not bend to the will of other people, especially not a superintelligent megalomaniac who plans to enslave the world.
** I will say 'the power of the plot', but for a less meta answer, here is my two cents: When someone gains powers, they are usually tied to their personality. De Voe knew each bus passengers and so knew each and every powers they might obtain. Maybe Ralph, for example, had 30% to gain a stretchy body, 50% to gain invulnerability and 20% to gain a super brain forcing other people do what he says. But whatever the power Ralph gains, [=DeVoe=] knew Ralph's body will be able to support him. He didn't have a plan, he had several thousand different plans depending on each combinaison of the power gained by the bus metas... like he had multiple plans during the Flash's trial depending if Barry told he's the Flash or not.
** As for the speedforce, it still has to obey some physics laws. [=DeVoe=] could have calculated where the vortex would open to set his plan in action.
** Still, he was SOMEHOW able to predict the arrival of an alternate universe Black Canary, one that he couldn't have even known about in the first place...
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Does Ralph have all the bus meta's powers now?]]
* In the Season 4 finale, Ralph, with Barry's help, regains contol over his body and kicks [=DeVoe=]out, who proceeds to upload his brain to his chair. But nothing is mentioned about the various bus meta's powers that [=DeVoe=] stole over the course of the season also leaving Ralph's body. Does that mean he still has them? And if not, how can Ralph taking control over his body back somehow undo [=DeVoe=] transferring al those powers to Ralph's body?
** Well we will get a definitive answer during season 5. But I can imagine 3 outcomes.
*** Ralph keeps all powers and so leave Central City to not outshine The Flash.
*** Ralph keeps all powers but isn't clever enough to figure out how to use them (except his own).
*** All powers except his own are in the chair and are lost ... for now.
** It's possible that all the powers were linked to [=DeVoe=]'s consciousness. So when his mind was overwritten by Ralph, the powers were lost. Ralph could've easily stopped the satellite debris from raining down on the city single-handedly, and yet we saw him using his own powers and not the other bus metas's powers.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Ralph being the only surviving meta]]
* Todd Helbing confirm in the "Inside Subject 9" YouTube video and Entertainment Weelky that the bus metas' minds were absorbed by [=DeVoe=] when he took over their bodies and were subsequently killed. Yet Ralph's mind was kept intact, because the body would've died? Wouldn't by that logic, the previous bus metas would have still been alive while being taking over by [=DeVoe=],and therefore would have been able to tak back their bodies once he left their respective bodies? How did Ralph survive besides plot armor?
** When The Thinker leave a body, he destroy everything he doesn't take with him.
** When The Thinker leave a body, he takes everthing, then kill the now useless mind of the previous host in the new body.
** The orginal host' mind needs to find a portal (like Ralph did) to regain control of their body. They don't know about the portal, they don't know where it is and they have only a few minute to figure it out before the body died because brain isn't functionning.
** Previous bodies were dying, maybe The Thinker leaving a body accelerate the process or turn the brain into a liquid (literally)
** The way The Thinker steal power while bodyjumping is fatal for the victims. After all, even the bus metas who wasn't used as replacement body for The Thinker died.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Dave Ratchet's fate]]
* Precisely how is Dave Ratchet, who was broken out of Iron Heights and dumped into China, supposed to live anything resembling a full life? He has no money on him, no identification, there is no indication that he can speak any Chinese dialect, and he'll frankly draw a lot of attention to himself just being there. He even admitted that everyone in his life abandoned him. He might have had a better chance somewhere like the Australian Outback or the Yukon, but there just seems to be no way this ends well for him.
** I seems to remember he was deposed in a temple. Not somewhere he could leave a full eventful life, but a place in the country he likes and where he could find peace.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:What is the difference between Star Labs breaches and Vibe's breaches?]]
* In ''Flashtime'', Cisco couldn't form breaches while in flashtime because breaches take too long to form. Quick then went off to Earth-3, presumably via Star Labs' breacher, to recruit Jay Garrick...but how? Both of them admitted that they don't know how to draw others into flashtime, so she couldn't so much have put the machine into flashtime to allow it to operate...so that nixes the unlikely situation that Star Labs' breaches open more quickly.
** Well ... Vision isn't impaired while in flashtime ... meaning that their speed is way slower than speed of light ... and ... electricity works at lightspeed so ... Hmmm ...No, doesn't work ... Maybe the portal was already open on Universe 3 ... or maybe it's just a plot hole.
** Simple answer: Barry accidentally created a breach to Earth-38, so it's logical that other speedsters could do the same in an emergency. As for time difference, Barry spent a day on Earth-38 but when he came back, it was less than a second later, so it's possible.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Gideon being active again]]
* So Gideon reappears in "Think Fast" and comments that its been 1078 days since she was last activated. The next episode has Barry commenting something like that Gideon doesn't work anymore. So this means that not only has Team Flash known she was still there, but they have never thought to consult a super computer A.I. from the future on how to possibly defeat The Thinker or any other threat they have had over the past three years? I know that that WordOfGod said something like that Gideon was destroyed at the end of the first series, but if the writers knew they were going to bring her back, they could have still just addressed it earlier.
** They may not have realized how to bring her back online. Harry with the Thinking Cap was smart enough to do so, but the rest had no clue.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: So... Devoe doesn't steal Barry's powers why again?]]
* As the title says, why doesn't Devoe steal Barry's powers and probably body along with them? He has numerous opportunities to do so, and even expressly states that he needs Barry's connection to the Speed Force to spread his Enlightenment throughout the multiverse and gain infinite knowledge... which he would have gotten by simply stealing his powers to begin with. On top of that, having a connection to an infinite power the Speed Force would've solved his energy issues long before he got to Ralph's body. Instead he goes through this extremely convoluted plan of deliberately getting Barry's mind into his head to accomplish what he could have easily done without it. I mean, reasons aside from "then the good guys couldn't possibly win" of course.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: How did Iris survive financially [[spoiler:after Barry's "death"?]]]]
* She previously quit her job at Jitters and she stopped writing her blog during the whole Savitar affair (was that ever a source of income?). The others had to move on and get other jobs. There was no will acted on, as the official story was that Barry was on sabbatical. How could she afford her new house, food, etc?
** She might've had access to Barry's accounts for STAR Labs available to her.
** It’s... entirely possible that she has savings, or that Barry had savings, especially since his father had a wrongful imprisonmentnand you can make a lot of money from those. Furthermore, nobody had to “move on and get another job” except Caitlin, who had to get another job because she left.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Team Flash and killing]]
* Putting aside Barry killing the Sand Demon with lightning for a second... Iris, in a situation similar to Ralph's (superpowered villain wants to kill them, Team Flash can't stop him so they hide out in STAR Labs, etc) shot Savitar in the back in Season Three (HOW?). But she's against Ralph taking a similar action in Season Four. Are Iris and Barry the only ones with a "license to kill"?
** I think it's ''because'' they've been so ruthless in the past that they're against it.
** Or the writers just forgot how the previous season ended?
** Somehow, I can't see that "We don't kill" speech really landing after that fight with Savitar.
** Iris killing Savitar wasn’t premeditated murder; he was about to murder her fiancé. Ralph wanted to find DeVoe and kill him. It’s not the same thing.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: What was Team Flash's plan for stopping DeVoe's satellites again?]]
* Recruit Blacksmith to give them one "magic grenade" to disrupt DeVoe's FIVE satellite plan? Was ANYONE particularly surprised that this was not a successful plan?
** Well seeing as DeVoe needed all five satellites for his plan to work, disrupting even one of them would set him back. Of course, they didn't expect him to hijack the STAR Labs satellite, but if he hadn't done that, his plan would be for naught.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: This house is bitchin?]]
* Why did that have to become a thing and a matter of who said it (which turned out to be Nora Allen II) instead of being just a throwaway joke?
** It was a plot point foreshadowing the fact that Nora would turn up. That's how stories work, you keep the audience guessing, and conventional storytelling rules dictate that there's payoff at the end. A "throwaway joke" would have been dissatisfying.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Flash's future enemies]]
* How come the Flash is a longtime enemy of people ''very far'' in the future? Abra Kadabra's from the 64th century, and I forget if we ever got a date for Reverse-Flash's future but he did say to Cisco, "To me, you've been dead for centuries." If it was just the matter of a veteran hero's enemies attacking him in his youth, they'd only be from a few decades in the future, not such an incredibly long time. Is Flash immortal, does a time travel incident strand him permanently in the future, what?
** Actually yes, in the comics, Barry and Iris live in the 30th century for a period of time. Long enough in fact for their grandson, Bart Allen be born.
** Its well-established in the comics that the Flash time-travels to future eras and has adventures there. In fact, that was how he first encountered Eobard Thawne in the comics (and for all we know, that holds true in the show's continuity as well, since we still haven't seen the first meeting from Thawne's POV). So its entirely possible that at some point in the future, Barry starts semi-regularly adventuring in the future and that leads to him making some enemies from those eras. Alternatively, some of these foes from the future could time-travel to the 21st century at a point later relative to where Barry is now, which is where they first encountered him.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: The Flash's Disappearance]]
* So Nora confirmed that Barry did disappear in the Red Sky Crisis in 2024. But we know he made a message in 2056 to send to Rip Hunter. So doesn't that mean he always came back? Or was just part of a timelline change from Flashpoint after Iris originally died?
** As of now, we simply don't know. It's worth noting that the message Rip had was from 2056, and Nora appears to be from 2049...so for all we know, Barry is destined to return later but Nora doesn't know it yet. And yes, of course, the timeline changing from Flashpoint could have made a difference - though even in that timeline, Barry does disappear during the Crisis.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Killer Frost's Origin Has Plot Holes]]
* So it's been confirmed at this point that Killer Frost has been a part of Caitlin since childhood due to her father's experimental cryogenic therapy. Killer Frost appears whenever Caitlin is scared or angry. Caitlin has experienced the trauma of losing Ronnie twice as well as being held captive for weeks by Zoom, the latter which gave her PTSD. She was whammied by Rainbow Raider in "Rogue Air" in which she lashed out at Cisco for Ronnie's death ''in a state of anger''. All of these experinces put her in a heightened emotional state in which she was likely to have experienced anxiety and anger, but Killer Frost just happens to manifest within her again ''in Season 3''?
** While it may be the lazy answer to these questions, put quite simply, all your examples of Caitlin having gone through major emotional experiences without Killer Frost coming out... Happened prior to Flashpoint. Before Flashpoint, there were absolutely 0 signs of Earth 1 Caitlin having Killer Frost inside her, while everytime we've seen it manifest was afterward. We don't know the details of how Flashpoint changed these events in seasons 1 and 2, if she ever went through any of the same experiences (sans Ronnie's death). Unfortunately, we just can't take any events before Flashpoint into account when judging these sorts of things.
** Are you kidding me? They retconned her origins so that Flashpoint ''wasn't'' the cause of Killer Frost, because poeple complained that it didn't explain why the Particle Accelerator post-Flashpoint would give her a SuperpoweredEvilSide. So we traded an origin story with a ''debatable'' plothole for one with several plot holes.
** Didn't her dad also try to suppress her powers once he realized what he had done to her? So maybe it just took all that time for that to finally wear off, at which point Killer Frost was finally able to come out when Caitlin is stressed. Metas from other sources often have delays between the source of their powers and actually using them.

[[/folder]]

[[folder: What is The Nature of Cicada's Dagger?]]
* In episode 5x03 Nora said that no heroes, including Supergirl, the Justice League, the Legends, Team Flash, and Green Arrow, could take Cicada down in her timeline. Ralph suggested it was because of his dagger nullifying their ablities. The 100th episode showed his dagger can only nullify the powers of metas who got their powers from the particle accelerator, excluding Killer Frost. Heroes like Supergirl and Citizen Steel didn't get the powers from a Dark Matter wave, so how is it that they couldn't take Cicada down?
** He's still extremely dangerous even discounting his trump card of being able to cancel powers. Plus the Cicada that Nora was talking about was a homegrown terrorist who might have had plenty of other tricks up his sleeve to handle enemies.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Zoom's Fate in the 100th Episode]]
* So after Barry and Nora accidentally encountered Zoom, the latter chased the former two through the wormhole only to be caught be a time wraith. Shouldn't that theoretically mean Zoom was killed by the wraiths earlier tha the Season 2 finale? or did it really knock him back to his time? If the latter, why not stop him then knowing that later events would lead to Barry creating Flashpoint?
** It could've been a time remnant of Zoom. Or the Time Wraith simply wiped his memory before sending him back.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Thawne Knowing About Savitar]]
* Barry and Nora went back to the events of episode 2x17, and Thawne knew about Savitar's exploits. Savitar was a product of the post-Flashpoint timeline. Thawne is from a pre-Flashpoint timeline, as he knew Nora as Dawn and only realized her name cahnged as a result of his meddling with the timeline. So how would not know that but know everything about Savitar?
** Savitar is pretty weird even by the standard of this show's time travel villains. He wasn't a product of the post-Flashpoint timeline, he used Flashpoint to escape his cage. Presumably Savitar has always existed due to various {{Stable Time Loop}}s, and even though he is dead and will never be born he's sort of still alive, at least enough for people to remember him.
** Are you kidding me?! Savitar ''was'' a product of ''creating and deleting'' the Flashpoint timeline. Killing Iris was just prove of that since she lived long enough to write the future article in the pre-Flashpoint timeline. And Savitar being a time remnant of Barry should've remembered Flashpoint even before being imprisoned.
** Pr Thawne knew Savitar like he knew Pr DeVoe, Cicada and Dawn West-Allen ... He knew the alternate version of them. Cicada was 'the one who went away', Thawne has no idea that the Cicada Team Flash is fighting has nothing to do with the one he knew (more or less like Sherloque). So it is possible that in the Original's Barry timeline there was another Savitar/Time Remnant that happened in 2021 or 2022 instead of 2017.
** Savitar apparently always existed to some degree thanks to the Speed Force. Jay spoke of him as a Speed Force legend, despite being outside of Earth-1 and therefore completely unaffected by the changing timelines. If that doesn't help answer the question, well, the time travel rules in the Arrowverse have never made sense to begin with, you just gotta go with it.
[[/folder]]