CW's Flash

Barry is critically important to Eobard Thawne's personal history, but the history of the world at large wouldn't necessarily change too much if a different speedster took up largely the same role.

The Flashpoint timeline is secretly Earth Twelve

edited 10th Dec '17 11:20:34 AM by Windona

By "explicitly," I mean that it's given as fact outright and repeatedly by both the Speed Force and people in the know like Rip Hunter that Barry Allen - as the Flash - is an linchpin to both the series' temporal and cosmological stability. We can posit that another speedster could take his place as a Close-Enough Timeline, but we know for a fact that's not true because multiple Arrowverse series have already indicated that it isn't.

In the Speed Force's case, actual actions back up those words - and the Speed Force letting Flashpoint, and the risk of Barry-as-Flash never existing, even happen is given an actual explanation in The Flash for that reason (it was trying to teach him a lesson).

edited 10th Dec '17 1:05:08 PM by KnownUnknown

A lesson that didn't make any sense and just caused more problems. Can't Barry leave it braindead or something?

Where exactly was any of this said?

Barry being too important to the timeline to tamper with is explicitly the reason why Rip didn't recruit him for the Legends, for one.

edited 10th Dec '17 9:09:58 PM by KnownUnknown

Well, Rip was looking for expendable people and based on one of their early missions where they were being more mindful of how their actions effect time they met with a person to get information clone enough to his original time of death that his dying a bit early would not register as a problem.

Grabbing Barry out of the timeline after he's become the Flash is a different proposition than causing him to never become the Flash in the first place. In the latter scenario, if a bolt of dark matter charged lightning doesn't hit Barry Allen and give him super speed, it can still presumably hit someone else and give them superspeed instead. But in the former scenario, the speed granting lightning has already been used on Barry, and won't spontaneously reappear to empower someone else if Barry is removed from history.

I was hoping Wally would join the legends to replace jax as mechanic but since barrys gonna be sidelided it looks like he can stay on flash.

If that was the case, the Eobard wouldn't have lost his connection to the speed force upon killing Barry's mom (because past/future Eobard would've just been able to imitate someone else), nor would he have had to time his actions such as to make absolutely sure that the lightning bolt hit Barry specifically.

A lot of that is straight up assumption, and it doesn't match up well with what writers have told us over the years.

edited 11th Dec '17 1:52:27 PM by KnownUnknown

Wasn't his loss of speed attributed to his altering time by murdering the mother?

It was attributed to him having no connection to the speed force any more.

edited 11th Dec '17 4:43:12 PM by KnownUnknown

Thawne straight up tells Barry that they aren't the only two speedsters. He could have been inspired by any one of them to become the Reverse Flash, but the Barry Allen Flash is the only one who gets that reaction from him. A different Flash (like Wally West) attracts a different evil speedster (like the Rival).

Like I said, for Eobard Thawne's personal history, Barry becoming the Flash is crucial, but as long as there's one heroic speedster fighting one villainous speedster, the history books aren't going to change much.

So would his loss of connection with the speed force be an example of speed force doing something about him even if it didn't do more in response to his actions?

edited 11th Dec '17 4:55:19 PM by Darthwyn

Again, all complete assumption unsupported by the actual series. You're really just going "no it isn't" at this point. As I've already explained, no part of the Arrowverse supports the idea that Barry's specific existence is not important to the timeline or its cosmology.

edited 11th Dec '17 5:06:55 PM by KnownUnknown

Probably not since his speed was still there to a degree and he knew how to strengthen his connection. Had the Speed Force sicced a Time Wraith on his ass for all the crap he pulled to reach that point it would be a different story

edited 11th Dec '17 5:05:28 PM by Cross

'd my edit:

Possibly. It's either the speed force punishing him for his actions or the result of him cutting off the thing that connected him to the Speed Force in the first place (the original idea was almost certainly the latter, but the former becomes possible with the later developments made in regards to the Speed Force).

edited 11th Dec '17 5:06:19 PM by KnownUnknown

I'd say Flashpoint is a pretty good indicator that Barry's specific existence isn't necessarily important. In an alternate timeline where Barry never becomes the Flash, a different Central City resident (one only a couple degrees of separation from Barry, in fact) gets superspeed around the same time and starts fighting metahuman criminals while wearing a similar outfit and using an almost identical codename. He even has his own speedster supervillain who's obsessed with being faster than him. That's pretty clear In Spite of a Nail stuff.

It’s also something the Speed Forfe only allowed to exist in order to teach him a lesson: there’s an explicit reason why the Speed Force didn’t go up in arms about it - it was messing with him. The implication in that reason is that it expected him to put things right, and it’s unknown how it would react or what would happen if he failed to.

Barry was also an anomaly for the alternate timeline, retaining his memory and power - and thus his connection to the Speed force. Flashpoint isn’t an example of the speed force being just fine without Barry, because there was never actually a point where he was disconnected from it.

Barry was slowly losing his memories and Speed Force connection in Flashpoint, though. It was just a gradual thing. And I'll say again: we've only seen the Speed Force take any sort of action when a speedster has entered it or at least opened a portal to it; there's no evidence that it can affect people outside of those circumstances. It was sending Time Wraiths to hunt down Zoom for a long while, but he kept avoiding them, and it could only catch him when Barry opened a portal to the Speed Force right on top of him.

If the Speed Force says it could have stopped Barry from making Flashpoint but chose not to, then that's exposition and there's no reason to assume it's not true.

The exact words the Speed Force uses concerning Flashpoint are "we allowed you to do that", but that can be interpreted a couple different ways. One is that, if the Speed Force had decided not to allow Barry to alter the past, he would have found himself unable to go back in time or had his speed suddenly disappear. But another way to interpret it is that they allowed it in the same way that a police officer who sees a speeding car but decides not to pull them over is allowing the person to speed; the police officer doesn't actually have the power to prevent the person from speeding, but can bring consequences down on them once they do. In this case, the Speed Force allowed Barry's creation of Flashpoint in the sense that it decided not to sic the Black Flash on him like it did with Thawne.

That feels like a rather complex way of interpreting something that was likely meant to be direct.

I mean, if the Speed Force operates the way you're proposing, then why are there even Time Wraiths or a Black Flash in the first place? Why not just instantly strip powers from speedsters who muck around with time in ways they don't like?

The fact Mick gave them 40 toasters was just amazing.

I also like the fact Devoe was smart enough to use his wife's amazing tech to imprison Barry rather than relying on the same power dampeners everyone else uses.

I feel like I'd like Amunet better if she wasn't literally selling human beings.

I dunno, it kinda of rubbed me the wrong way a bit how the way she was presented sympathetically like she had a point.

Yes, her experiences were bad but if you're going to start a literal slave trade after getting powers you probably are not a good person.

edited 14th Dec '17 9:11:00 PM by 32ndfreeze