CW's Flash

Because the Speedfarce is an asshole. I hate it and all its lies and bull. It wpuld be fine if it really was a neutral entity but it isnt. It's chaotic asshole that pretends to be lawful neutral

Giving cosmic forces sentience is always a recipe for disaster.

I mean I think they really could have pulled it off but they just didn't give two shits. they really should half left it ambiguous and vague.

They could have made it where the Speedforce can just give people powers, but can't really affect or decide what happens in the material world beyond that. Or the Speedforce can only actively choose to do stuff with those in the Speedforce. But no, they say it sends out enforcers and makes decisions like allowing Barry to go back in time.

RE Barry not running- Barry doesn't know if De Voe put cameras in his apartment (or Barry has cameras for security), which if they show him there could make him look more guilty. But if Barry has the alibi that he was at the party, and shows his phone records where he was just talking to someone, he can make a solid case. There's also no blood on him.

Expect Devoe to have altered those phone calls somehow.

More to the point, I'm guessing these details will be ignored because DRAMA!

I'm calling it right now, that the reason DeVoe will lose will be his wife turning on him. That will be the one thing his super-smart brain won't account for: Her love for him not being strong enough.

Or she betrays Devoe because she loves him, and doing so will somehow save him.

edited 9th Dec '17 2:16:21 PM by Cross

I am also guessing that device Savitar mentioned last season will come into play eventually in regards to battling the thinker.

You know, I'm hoping Iris' reporter skills will be vital in proving that Barry is innocent. But it seems the writers have forgotten that Iris has a job. #Not Bitter Why Would You Think That

(Though admittedly, with Kreisburg gone I'm hoping some s1 writers will come back that do remember stuff like that)

RE: Devoe- the wife turning seems like a pretty typical plot point, so I hope it's not that. I want Marlize to be just as evil.

To be fair she has been leading the team flash command center so she kinda has a job just a non paying job.

Eh, true. It just seems like Iris' entire life revolves around Barry now, though.

I think that poor, poor Dom will get his own body back and Mrs. De Voe will go totally spare over losing her husband again and be the "real" big bad—aka, the De Voe everyone in the future means.

I also do hope that Iris's work as a reporter comes back into play soon.

edited 9th Dec '17 5:33:02 PM by Ellowen

I hope they bring back Wally while Barry is in prison.

I mean, he'd be a great help right now, filling Barry's spot and all.

The Speed Force does seem to be limited in how it can affect the material world. We've only seen it take any action when a speedster does something to open a portal to the Speed Force; any time we've seen a Time Wraith appear, it's been because a speedster time traveled via the Speed Force and a Wraith followed them out.

Ah, I meant RE: the implication that the Speed Force can decide if it lets a speedster time travel or not

because it totes let eobard murder a woman and send an innocent man to jail ( and a doctor at that, you want a butterfly effect, how many people might henry allen have helped save if he'd stayed a doctor those 15 years? what about tess morgan's inventions?) with a grand total of zero repercussions or judgments but the second barry tries to change something the speedfarce acts like he;s committing some horrific crime like Speedfarce, my dude my pal, you don't get to have it both ways. (again, i wouldn't mind so much if the characters would just call it out?? )

The writers would kindly like you to forget that the entire universe the characters currently reside in is the result of Eobard flagrantly violating the supposed rules of time travel, murdering people and drastically altering the course of history. The same way it wanted you to forget when he was still around that Captain Cold used to murder whenever he was either pissed off or when it was convenient, or that Oliver is totally a serial killer who stands out as the only "instant kill mode" hero in a universe overall becoming more traditional morally.

It never even comes up the once in Legends that the entire universe is one gigantic aberration, despite the fact that characters who ought to know such things (including Rip) have existed since the show's very first season. Nobody even knows who Eobard is in the third season (including Rip) despite the fact that he was and is history's most prolific time traveler.

Likewise, nobody reacts to Flashpoint either. Despite that very thing being the actual subject of the season of Legends that ran during that season of The Flash.

edited 9th Dec '17 11:50:44 PM by KnownUnknown

They mention in Legends that some aberrations are small enough, and create a timeline close enough to the original, that no one really notices (like Stein suddenly having a daughter, or Snart's dad being arrested for trying to sell a stolen jewel rather than trying to steal it himself). Since Thawne worked to recreate the events of his original timeline, just on an accelerated scale, presumably world history stayed largely the same, even if individual lives were greatly affected.

That doesn't explain Flashpoint, given the sheer amount of highly noticeable alterations Barry made to the timeline which stayed active for several months.

Thawne did do a hell of a lot of things, and his manipulation of the timeline would have resulted in the Flash (who is explicitly incredibly significant on a cosmic scale) never existing at several points had he not fact checked with his future newspapers in order to bring things back on track, which means there were points in time where the aberration must have been highly noticeable. It also includes creating Vibe, who didn't initially exist (not in that form), and who is responsible for interconnectivity across the multiverse on a grand scale.

The writers didn't have the idea for things like Time Cops and Time Wraiths when the Flash was first written, but it's a shame they didn't make reference to those things retroactively. Another reason for it is the fact that the various series are very isolated from each other - the Legends repeatedly know nothing about what happens in the other shows unless someone from said show tells them, despite having an AI that has what is essentially temporal omniscience.

Perhaps Barry programmed Gideon to hide Flashpoint from Rip and the Legends.

Despite the Fridge Logic of that, I'm fine with the shows not requiring you to watch another show to understand some things.

Eobard gets off way lighter compared to Barry. I know heroes are held to a higher standard, but if it hadn't been for the fact that speedsters changing the past cracks time- which Barry explicitly didn't know until Jay explained it post Flashpoint- then Barry would technically have been fixing the timestream via preventing a murder, which is a pretty good act. But he did mess up, and the Speed Force is very Mad at Barry, and would have kept him for eternity if it wasn't for Cisco pulling him out.

Meanwhile, Eobard starts a grudge with someone who died before he was born, fails to kill his foe as a child (which would cause a paradox!), kills Nora Allen instead (who knows the impact Nora's life would have had, along with the people Henry would have saved as a doctor), and messes with history not caring as long as the Flash exists and he gets the future he wants, who cares if literally any of the cops he killed were supposed to have important kids, solve important cases, or otherwise do something that impacts the future. Eobard's lucky his actions didn't result in the death of another one of his ancestors. But the Speedforce apparently doesn't stop him from time traveling, or from Eobard still being around despite Eddie's Heroic Suicide.

Bottom line is: The Arrowverse should stop giving Time Travel that much focus.

Did Flashpoint really change that much in the grand scheme of things? For our main characters, it certainly changed a lot, but there was still a Flash battling metahumans in Central City. Even if the person under the mask is different, the big picture seems pretty much intact.

And the Legends kill tons of people from the past during their various adventures, but the idea that one of them might be a vital link in history never comes up. The idea seems to be that there are very few people whose existence is truly irreplaceable, and that most of the time history will keep chugging along In Spite of a Nail.

edited 10th Dec '17 8:59:44 AM by RavenWilder

We don't see enough of the Flashpoint timeline to know for certain, but Barry not being under the mask would be problematic going off his ties to both post-stabbing timelines.

Barry is explicitly of both cosmic and temporal importance, so him not being the Flash any more is a big deal, yeah.

edited 10th Dec '17 10:05:42 AM by KnownUnknown