Headscratchers / The Flash 2014 Season 1

New entries on the bottom. Spoilers, naturally.

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.

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, 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?
  • Rule of Perception. 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 Real Life 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 Like Reality, Unless Noted 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 Alcubierre 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.

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.

Multiplex clothes

• How did the homemade Multiplex clone have the same clothes?
  • Unstable molecules?
  • This version of Multiplex implicitly buds stem-cell based duplicates, so Technically Naked Shapeshifter?
  • 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.

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 Me's a Crowd -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 Required Secondary Powers of a Technically Naked Shapeshifter and epic Shapeshifter Baggage.

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.

Central City

• Where is Central City? Batman works out of Gotham, Superman out of Metropolis, both New York expys (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 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.

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.

Levitating liquids

• Seems to be an Oh, Crap! 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.

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.

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 Healing Factor, 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.

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.

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.

Barry's day job

• So I get Hollywood Science and all, but according to 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. 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).

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 unconsciously when he drags a person or object along with him.

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 Genre Blind on this issue. There's also the fact that Barry just really wanted to rub in defeating him. It's definitely a moment of idiocy, 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 Megaton Punch 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.

Barry and Eddie

• Why did Barry reveal 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.

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.

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 Faraday Cage, meaning his body is protected.
  • Now we know how ruthless Wells really is, the first theory makes a lot more sense.

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.

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 Beware the Superman, 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.

Keeping metahumans secret

• Why the Masquerade? I get why Barry needs a Secret Identity, but why keep metahumans a secret?
  • A couple of reasons: 1) Letting the public know could easily result in Fantastic Racism 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 Fantastic Racism 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?

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 pilot suggests that he wasn't, but the end of the Arrow episode "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 Poorly Disguised Pilot sources.

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.
  • Even if it wasn't about him specifically, there may well have been an article listing the victims of the accident.

"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 Hidden Depths.
  • 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.

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 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.

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 so he can run.
  • The lightning giving him abs would imply the latter.
  • In the recent Arrow episode, "The Brave and the Bold", he was able to do the salmon ladder at Super-Speed, so he's certainly stronger than he looks.
  • He lifted with his legs.

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.

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.

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 original Red Sky crisis in the comics had Barry Allen making a memorable Heroic Sacrifice. 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.

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.

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.
    • Well...
  • 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.

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 Revenge by Proxy, 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 Punny Name (Hartley 'Rat-Away') that fits perfectly with the story.

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 to 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.

Why is Harrison Wells in a wheelchair?

• Why would Harrison Wells be in a wheelchair, if 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.

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 Fusion Dance 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).

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.

Martin Stein and Wells

• Why did Wells 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 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.

Stein telling the others about Wells

• Why didn't Stein tell the others about how 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."

Wells 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:
    1. Cisco comes up with the idea for the force field trap, Wells and Allen secure the device as bait.
    2. 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.
    3. 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. OK, now my head hurts.
  • In the Paley Fest trailer 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.

"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.

"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 Healing Factor, 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.

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 Rule of Cool , 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. 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.

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.

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 I Ded 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.

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 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 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.

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.
  • Scott Adams 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?
  • Also, remember when posing as Wells, Thawne has carefully made sure to project an image of a friendly, helpful, benevolent man who wants to make up for everything the Star Labs accident caused. In reality, Thawne is an egomaniacal psychopath who cares only for himself. He's probably enjoying dropping just a few too many hints to make his hiding-in-plain-sight act more fun because he knows no one will pick up on it until it's too late, and then there'll be the why-didn't-we-notice-this-before second-guessing which will let him enjoy rubbing their noses in how he fooled them. He straight-out admits his favorite movie is Back to the Future.

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 "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.

Defeating the kinetic bomb

• In "Tricksters", for Barry to get rid of the bomb, he 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 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.

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).

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.

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).

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 What the Hell, Hero?. In fact, in "All Star Team Up", Barry knows that his secret is ruining Iris's relationship with Eddie. However, instead of having a Heartwarming Moment where he tells Iris 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 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) 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 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.

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, 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.

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 Ripple-Proof Memory? 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.

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 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.

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 Sinister Surveillance has suddenly failed.

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 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.

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?

Wells and the accidental birth of the Flash

• In "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 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?
  • 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.

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 Villain of the Week as they come up and call it self-defense), this effectively becomes a case of Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!. 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 "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 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.

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.

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.

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 Sickeningly Sweethearts. 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 Ship Tease 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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).

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.

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/Thawne 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.

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.

Lucky he happened to have it on him

• 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 a "kill and replace" device? All my friends have one and I keep one on my person wherever I go. In all seriousness, 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.
  • 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 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.

The Arrow's Appearance in Rogue Air

• Since Oliver was working undercover in League of Assassins, at what point would he have time to travel from Nanda Parbat to Central City without blowing his cover? And if he got the nanite arrows from Ray Palmer, would that mean he knew Oliver was working undercover? Because on Arrow he found out Oliver 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 completed his "training" and asked for leave". Or, as you said, he could have 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.

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 "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.
  • Given that Cisco is usually able to whip up tech to defeat the meta of the week in the course of an afternoon, it's entirely possible they come up with new inventions that they sell and patent to keep funds flowing.

Time Travel Confusion

• So Gideon was 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 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 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.

Stein is a Rabbi

• In the season finale, Stein says Ronnie and Caitlin's marriage is "legit" because he's a rabbi. But, 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, especially since they have access to Gideon the super-computer.

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 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 specifically to clear up this point: The "temporal echo" of Thawne was created (possibly by the Speed Force) to resolve an otherwise unresolvable paradox. It's a bit of a Hand Wave, but it nicely ties up the loose ends.

Caitlin the Genius Ditz?

• 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 Omnidisciplinary Scientist.
  • Crippling Overspecialization. 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?

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.

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.

Eddie and Eobard

• In the Season Finale, 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 Grandfather Paradox 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.

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 Ret-Gone 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.
  • Possibly the Speed Force took away his powers as punishment.

San Dimas Time

• 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 San Dimas Time 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.

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 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 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.

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 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.
  • He probably never considered that Eddie would be willing to kill himself.

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 Set Right What Once Went Wrong. 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... Way To Break It Hero 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 Grandfather Paradox. 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. For-want-of-a-nail 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.

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 The Slow Path?
  • 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 (and there's no guarantee of that), 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.

6. 7 Teraelectron Volts (Unmarked S 1 Finale Spoilers)

• In the Season 1 finale, the wormhole caused by 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 Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale?
  • 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.

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 Cartoon Bomb on the crate, if I remember correctly. Bottom line, it's not really much of a "trick". More of a "threat".
  • 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. However, it's possible that their little attack on the party may have been to acquire funds for his real "Perfect Trick."

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 Stable Time Loop 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 Timey-Wimey Ball.

Supersonic punch, baby!

• There's an iconic moment in S 1 E 6 when Barry finally lands the supersonic punch on a seemingly-invulnerable meta, thanks to a five-mile run-up. The meta turns to face him and changes into steel before he bursts through the doors. But since Barry is explicitly running faster than sound, how did the guy hear him coming? Barry's fist should have hit him before the sonic boom reached his ears.
  • Rule of Cool?
  • Possibly he heard the wind from Barry's passage along the way, or something like that?

Why Not Just Shoot Eobard? finale spoilers

• So, in the final episode, Eddie shoots himself in order to erase Eobard from history. OK, fine. Except...Eobard was pretty much standing still while he gave Barry the standard villain monologue about And Your Little Dog, Too!. Why didn't Eddie just shoot Eobard? Yeah, a speedster can catch bullets, but he was facing away from Eddie. At that short range, by the time Eobard heard the gunshot, the bullet would've already been in his skull.
  • Barry's reacted to gunshots and stopped bullets the instant he heard them, so that's hardly a guarantee. And Eddie certainly wouldn't want to chance trying and failing, because he if the bullet wasn't instantly fatal, Eobard sure as hell wouldn't give him another opportunity.
  • Right, fair enough.

What did Snart want from Barry originally?

In the episode where Barry asks Snart to help transport the prisoners, Snart writes down what he wants in return on a piece of paper. Barry looks shocked, and flatly rejects it. After some back and forth, Barry agrees to help destroy Snart's entire criminal record. Thinking that Snart wrote down a name and that he wanted that person killed, which is why Barry rejected it so quickly. Maybe an underworld rival or a local anti-crime politician? Snart was probaly just screwing around with Barry, and asked Barry to do something he knew Barry wouldn't do, then quickly proceeded to what he really wanted.

Miscellaneous

• In "The Flash Is Born", Barry manages to break the sound barrier to perform a "supersonic punch, baby!" (as Cisco put it) on Girder, the only way for him to punch through Tony's steel skin. The only problem with that is that Tony hears the the sonic boom a split second before Barry bursts into the room. If Barry was really going faster than the speed of sound, than Tony wouldn't have heard the boom until Barry was already on top of him. Of course, then Tony wouldn't have been turned towards Barry in a convenient position to be punched.
  • It's possible he heard the glass breaking outside or the wind of Barry's passage.
• In the season 1 finale, Thawne mentions Rip Hunter. When Rip finally appears in the Legends of Tomorrow spin-off, it's revealed that he used to be a member of an organization called Time Masters, whose purpose is to preserve the timeline from anyone attempting to change it. Obviously, Thawne is aware of them, likely having encountered them, probably Rip himself. And yet, the Time Masters haven't done much to prevent him from royally screwing up the timeline by killing Nora Allen and thus changing everything related to the Flash; though to be fair, they deem Vandal Savage's much more widespread destruction as necessary, so they may hold the same view of Thawne's crimes. They also don't stop Barry from saving his mother at the end of season 2, although this could be because of the destruction of the Oculus in the Legends season 1 finale, which effectively rendered the Time Masters impotent. In fact, with the destruction of the Oculus, Thawne ramps up his time-altering activities in Season 2 of Legends.
  • In addition, even fans keep blaming Barry for constantly changing the timeline. Barry only tried twice, not counting him accidentally going back a day during his fight with Weather Wizard. His first change created Flashpoint, but it also was an attempt to return the original timeline. Thawne created the first change by killing Nora and creating Flash almost seven years early. The only reason it didn't work is because, as Jay put it, he's trying to make a broken cup whole again.
• In the Season 1 finale, Stein estimates the "energy level" of a singularity in the sky at a 6.7 teraelectronvolts...which makes it about as dangerous as a small bug. Whoops! Alternatively, every individual particle has an energy level of 6.7 TeV.