| 1 | New entries on the bottom. '''Spoilers''', naturally. |
| 2 | |
| 3 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 4 | |
| 5 | [[folder: Eobard Thawne Paradox (SEASON THREE SPOILERS)]] |
| 6 | * So, in 3x01 ("Flashpoint"), its revealed that Barry, after stopping Thawne from killing Nora in 2000, brought him to 2016. By the end of the episode, Thawne and Barry travel back to that night. Thawne's arrival on the scene causes both the Barry from the Season 2 finale, and the version of Thawne he defeated, to fade from existence. Thawne then proceeds to kill Nora, seemingly restoring the timeline, and then returns Barry to 2016. The problems resulting from this are twofold- |
| 7 | ** How was Thawne even able to return Barry to 2016 after killing Nora? Originally, after Thawne killed Nora, he lost his powers. His whole motivation in Season 1 was to regain his powers and find a way back home. But here, Thawne seems to be perfectly capable of time-travel even after killing Nora. Why? If Thawne originally lost his powers due to disrupting the Flash's timeline by killing Nora, then the same should have applied this time round as well. And if Thawne originally lost his powers because he'd "exhausted" his Speed Force energy, then again, the same should apply here. But once you get around Thawne's ability to travel through time, there's a bigger problem... |
| 8 | ** The moment Thawne left 2000 and jumped forward to 2016, history as Barry knows it should have been altered again. Barry is the product of a timeline where Thawne was stuck in 2000 without his powers, stole the identity of Harrison Wells, engineered the origin of the Flash etc. But now, Thawne wasn't stuck in 2000. No Thawne in 2000 means that the original Harrison Wells is still alive, the particle accelerator explosion only occurs in 2020, Barry doesn't become the Flash etc. And there's no reason to assume that Thawne would strand himself in 2000 to let events play out as they 'originally' did because a) he doesn't know at this point that he becomes Harrison Wells, and b) even if he did (because Barry told him) he has no real incentive to do so. Its almost certain he's heading off to join the Legion of Doom over in ''Legends of Tomorrow''. |
| 9 | ** [[spoiler: It's possible that Thawne simply arranged for Wells to get the accelerator online sooner. Physics is incredibly complicated so we don't know how long Wells would have been very close to solving the problem. The idea that Thawne could have run into Wells' lab and helped him with some of his math is not impossible. Worse, with him running around 1942 he could also have scattered bits of information that moved lots of science forward slightly.]] Though Time Travel in Flash and Legends of Tomorrow seems to do what it wants, because it wants logic need not apply. |
| 10 | ** The key word here is "seemingly". We can see from the end of episode 1 that the timeline is not quite back to normal, since Iris and Joe are estranged. From the promo of episode 2 we can also see that there are more changes from the original timeline, like Cisco not working at star labs. It could be assumed that these differences are due to the fact that Thawne didn't loose his powers and didn't get stuck in 2000. |
| 11 | ** As Eobard said 'Timeline is restored, at least for me' meaning they could be on the timeline where Harrison Wells is still alive and Barry will not become the Flash until 2020. |
| 12 | ** That can't be the case though because, going by dialogue at the end of the episode, and the promos for the next, it seems like this is a timeline where Barry still became the Flash and most, if not all, of the major events of the last 2 seasons still happened. That wouldn't be the case if there was no Thawne masquerading as Harrison Wells who brought about the particle accelerator explosion in 2013. |
| 13 | ** Maybe it's because of the fact that Eobard was in a cage for some time. Eobard theorized, in the Flashpoint timeline, that the more speed Barry used, the more of his memories would disappear, while he was in a cage and couldn't use his speed and loose his memories. So all that time in the cage was enough to recover his speed and, thus, avoid the problem he had in the previous timeline. |
| 14 | ** The reason why Thawne doesn't loses his speed after killing Barry's mom post-Flashpoint isn't really the issue. The question is whether or not he runs back to 2000, and, if so, does he again kill Wells and his wife and impersonate Wells? On the one hand, Thawne now has no reason to go back to 2000 - as mentioned above, he was only there in the first place after losing his speed. If he didn't go back, then Barry shouldn't get his powers for another 3-4 years. On the other hand, even if you assume he did go back for some reason, did he just (as suggested above) help Wells finish the accelerator and not kill him? If so, shouldn't Wells and his wife still be alive and running STAR Labs? Or did he still kill Wells and build the accelerator himself? Well, then, it would seem he would die by the end of Season 1, and not be alive to join the Legion of Doom on Legends of Tomorrow. Unless he finishes up with the Legion, then goes back and kills Wells. Of course, then we go back to, why?? Seems like no matter how you slice it, with Thawne keeping his speed after killing Barry's mom, Season 1 and 2 can't have happened, and the post-Flashpoint timeline makes no sense. |
| 15 | ** For me the real issue here is that the show seems to regard the "proper" timeline as the one where Barry's mon died, even though it wouldn't have happened if Eobard hadn't killed her. Yet when Barry tries to fix it being saving his mom, he gets hell for it ? Seems the only one in this show who can't do what he wants with the timeline is Barry. Eobard and Zoom can do what they want (Zoom never would have been caught by the time wraith if Barry didn't attracted them, and Eobard still kept part of his speed even though it was unstable). Really seems like Barry is getting the short end of the stick, even though he was just trying to fix what Eobard broke. |
| 16 | ** In this case proper seems to mean the timeline that Barry is native too. While Barry and Eobard leave the Flashpoint pretty quickly and it seemed to be a world as good or better than the 'real' universe time travel is just random. In the comic somehow Barry saving his mother caused Superman to be found by the US government and Wonder Woman and Aquaman to engage in a devastating war. Zoom and Eobard are pretty smart by comparison to Barry, who is no slouch. Its entirely possible that they simply do it better than he does. |
| 17 | ** In addition to being smarter at it, it's also because Eobard and Zoom don't really care all that much about the timeline. I mean they want to make sure that they still exist with their powers intact, obviously, but beyond that, they really don't care about how the timeline is supposed to be. So, Barry gets the short end of the stick because he's trying to fix the timeline, while Eobard is deliberately trying to damage and change it. |
| 18 | [[/folder]] |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[folder: Don't you remember Gary Allen at all ? (SEASON THREE SPOILERS)]] |
| 21 | * The way Barry introduce himself to Flashpoint!Iris is weird. Joe were a very good friend of the Allen familly so it seems weird Iris doesn't recognize the 'Allen' name or doesn't think to ask if he was related to her dad's friends especially since they talked about their childhood. It seems weird too that once Iris meet the Allens none of them recognize the others. |
| 22 | ** The impression one gets from the last two seasons is that the Allen and West families weren't ''that'' close. Barry and Iris were friends in elementary school, and Joe was obviously acquainted with Henry, but there doesn't seem to have been more of a connection beyond that. Maybe, without the murder, and Joe taking in Barry, Iris and Barry just drifted apart. Also, even if Joe was acquainted with Henry, that acquaintanceship may well have ended once whatever happened to Joe's life in the Flashpoint timeline happened to make him an alcoholic. |
| 23 | [[/folder]] |
| 24 | |
| 25 | [[folder: How did Barry trap the Reverse-Flash in a freaking metal cage?]] |
| 26 | * In 3x01 Barry keeps Thawne locked behind glass with metal bars for the door. How does Thawne not just vibrate his way out? Heck, he could probably kick the door down if he tried hard enough. |
| 27 | ** Its not made clear, but presumably Barry constructed that cage in a manner similar to the holding cell in STAR Labs that Cisco modified to hold Thawne, or the cell in which Zoom imprisoned Barry and Jay last year. |
| 28 | [[/folder]] |
| 29 | |
| 30 | [[folder:Shouldn't Cisco have gotten vibes on the alterations to timeline?]] |
| 31 | * When Barry changed the timeline to save Central City from being destroyed by Weather Wizard his powers allowed him to dream the other timeline where Thawne/Wells killed him. Despite changes made to the new timeline Cisco still got his powers. Shouldn't he be vibing visions of his life in Flashpoint or even the original season 2 timeline where Dante lived? |
| 32 | ** Maybe he will. After all, we're only an episode into the new new timeline. |
| 33 | ** He also has better control over his vibes and may be intentionally not doing that. |
| 34 | ** Also, in the case of the Flashpoint timeline, maybe Cisco doesn't even have his powers (or hasn't discovered them yet). |
| 35 | ** Um no, he definitely has his powers, it's what allowed him to help Barry beat the Rival. As for not getting a vibe about the alterations to the timeline, it's possible that he can only really detect alterations by either looking for them, or in the case of his first death, unintentional reminders that bring up that heavily emotional moment. |
| 36 | ** The reference was to Cisco possibly not having powers in the ''Flashpoint'' timeline i.e. the timeline from 3x01 where Nora is alive, Wally is the Flash etc. and not the latest CloseEnoughTimeline that the show is currently set in (where obviously Cisco has powers). |
| 37 | [[/folder]] |
| 38 | |
| 39 | [[folder: Flashpoint]] |
| 40 | * Okay we know from the spoiler: LegendsOfTomorrow that Eobard retains his powers in the "new world" which should have screwed things up way worse than they seem to have. Since he didn't get trapped in our time, he didn't have to kill and replace Wells. So right out the gate for reasons that aren't clear he must have helped Wells bring the Particle Accelerator on board faster than Wells was originally able to just to keep Barry Allen powered up. But since he didn't get stuck and lose his powers how did Season 1 even occur? And why didn't Wells return to his actual plan. Kill tiny Barry Allen, then run back to his time and call it a day? As season two's Zoom aptly demonstrates if a speedster wants you dead there isn't a whole lot even another speedster can to to prevent that long term and regardless Barry came right back to the present. |
| 41 | ** At this point, it's pretty obvious that time travel in ''The Flash'' and ''Legends of Tomorrow'' is guided by the principle of NewRulesAsThePlotDemands. Time travel rules constantly change based on what is most dramatic for each episode, with little consistency between them. Just look at the [[Headscratchers/LegendsOfTomorrow headscratchers page]] for [=LoT=] for proof. This [[BellisariosMaxim wouldn't be such a big problem]] if the writers hadn't made time travel paradoxes such a big part of both shows, thus making it inevitable that the viewers realise there's no internal logic to them at all. |
| 42 | ** My best guess is that the Eobard Thawne who caused Barry to get his powers in 2014 is now a Timeline remnant, since it's really the only way the plot of the Arrowverse makes any sense after Flashpoint. It's really the only explanation I've got, since trying to comprehend the logic behind time travel in the Arrowverse is a good way to give yourself a headache. |
| 43 | ** But if timeline remnants worked like that, that would mean that Eobard couldn't have changed the past by killing Barry's mother - the timeline remnant of her would still remain, and Eobard's timeline wouldn't be changed. But since clearly that didn't happen, and the timeline was changed by Nora Allen not being around anymore, it should've been similarly changed by Eobard not being around anymore. |
| 44 | ** No, I'm saying that a Timeline remnant of Eobard got stuck in the past and went through basically all the events of Season 1, which is the only way the whole Flashpoint thing makes any sense. Nora is still dead, but a version of Eobard remained in the past to go through all the events that led up to Barry becoming the Flash in 2014. That's my best guess anyway. |
| 45 | [[/folder]] |
| 46 | |
| 47 | [[folder: Arbitrary limitation to Mirror Master's power]] |
| 48 | * In the [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E4TheNewRogues "The New Rogues"]], when Mirror Master gets the Top away from her prison cell, they enter the window in her cell, and come out somewhere else. Clearly they didn't come out in the same room, because there was only one reflective surface there. So it seems the reach of Mirror Master's power isn't limited to just the mirrors in one particular room. However, in the climax of the episode, Mirror Master can't escape because Barry makes all the mirrors in the room face each other. Why can't he just escape to some other mirror or other reflective surface further away, like he did in the prison break? |
| 49 | ** It seems he can only jump to a surface he can see from the one he's currently in. The whole point of the circle of mirrors is that the only other glass surfaces visible are the ones in the circle. |
| 50 | ** Yeah, but in the prison break scene there is only one reflective surface he can see: the window of Top's cell. And clearly, once they entered it, they didn't come out of the same window, because otherwise Barry and Joe would've caught them. For them to escape they must've exited through some other mirror. So that scene seems to disprove such a limitation to his power. |
| 51 | ** There's a corridor off to the side that isn't shown on camera which could very well have more reflective surfaces. |
| 52 | [[/folder]] |
| 53 | |
| 54 | [[folder: What was the point of the Shade's first attack?]] |
| 55 | * In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E6Shade "Shade"]], it's eventually revealed that the eponymous villain is working for Dr. Alchemy, and his attack in the open air cinema is supposed to distract Barry while Alchemy tries to lure Wally to him. But before that we see the Shade attacking and killing some random businessman... At this point Alchemy hadn't even contacted Wally yet, so clearly that murder wasn't supposed to serve as any sort of distraction. So why did he kill the businessman? |
| 56 | ** We don't know the backstory of Shade, maybe he has some vengeance to take against the businessman ... or it's just when one gets fantastic powers, one just wants to try them, and the businessman was in the wrong place at the wrong time. |
| 57 | ** He might just like killing people. He ''is'' a merciless criminal. |
| 58 | [[/folder]] |
| 59 | |
| 60 | [[folder: Savitar is a god?]] |
| 61 | * Is Savitar an actual god or what? |
| 62 | ** That depends on you definition of "god". The Series/Arrowverse doesn't have an ''inherently divine'' class of beings in any theological or mythological sense, if that's what you're asking. However, he is a [[NotQuiteHuman clearly inhuman]] being of supreme (one might say godlike) power who seems to be just about totally unique. If he wants to call himself a god, there isn't really anyone who can contest that claim. |
| 63 | ** The Speed Force is a sentient (and somewhat petty) integral part of the universe. The Speed Force may not qualify as capital "G" god but it is a deity by any rational definition. In addition to the correct information above that nobody can contest a sufficiently powerful being, they can simply disrespect them. Like Captain America doesn't acknowledge Thor as a God, just a {{SufficientlyAdvancedAlien}}. |
| 64 | ** The question then becomes: is Savitar actually a part of or specially linked to the Speedforce, or just very powerful in it? At this point, and especially in the Arrowverse, it's really just a matter of definition and belief. To Savitar and his followers, he is a god; to the heroes, he's not. He certainly has godlike power, but whether or not that makes him a god is basically up to the individual. |
| 65 | ** It was initially believed The Arrowverse had no superpowers – obviously that turned out to be wrong – and there was no evidence of superpowered heroes existing before Barry, until the JSA appeared in [[Series/LegendsOfTomorrow Legends of Tomorrow]], so don't be so sure. |
| 66 | ** It should also be noted that while magic and spirits exist (see ''Vixen'', ''Constantine''), actual acknowledged "gods" have not been mentioned. None of those magical beings, or the Speedforce itself, or the {{Time Master}}s, or even any {{Sufficiently Advanced Alien}}s have claimed godhood yet; while Savitar calls himself a god, others of a similar tier might disagree. |
| 67 | ** The midseason finale "The Present" provides an answer - [[spoiler: No. Savitar ISN'T literally a God. He considers himself one because he's powerful enough to make others believe it. Savitar is a metahuman speedster, just like the Flash, albeit one who grew insanely powerful, and who has possibly transcended a normal physical existence on some level.]] |
| 68 | ** Savitar, via Alchemy, is shown to have a small cult of followers, so it seems fair to say he is ''their'' god. |
| 69 | ** Savitar's powers come from his mastery of the Speed Force. In fact, he loses many of them after breaking out of the Speed Force prison, implying it's only possible for him to do it while in the Speed Force. Also, the Philosopher's Stone is eventually revealed to be a calcified chunk of the Speed Force itself, which explains how Savitar and Alchemy were able to use it. |
| 70 | [[/folder]] |
| 71 | |
| 72 | [[folder: What about Caitlin/Killer Frost?]] |
| 73 | * Does Caitlin Snow still have her Killer Frost powers or did she lose them when she rejected her Killer Frost persona? If she still has them, can she use them safely or is she stuck having to wear Cisco's anti-meta bracelets for the rest of her life? |
| 74 | ** Metahuman powers don't just disappear like that (unless someone is messing with your body), they are a part of you. Barry lost his powers several times and he always got him back or they weren't lost from the beginning. Consider Barry bringing Caitlin back at the end of the episode similar to episode 5, when her mother basically did the same. Killer Frost is a part of Caitlin and she needs to control her own emotions better if she doesn't want to let loose again. I imagine (or hope) we will see more scenes where Caitlin trains her powers, so she can use them whenever it's needed without going AxCrazy. Caitlin is still wearing Cisco's cuffs. They will probably only temporary act as a PowerLimiter, there are also still Savitar/Alchemy's plans with Caitlin and that vision Cisco saw when he vibed her. Killer Frost will return, the question remains whether she will be on the good or bad side of the story. (The problem still remains whether, as her mother warned her, her constant EnergyAbsorption will turn her into an irreversible heat vampire, like in the comics, when Killer Frost sought heat to not die and found the cure in Firestorm, who produced endless energy.) |
| 75 | |
| 76 | [[/folder]] |
| 77 | |
| 78 | [[folder:Caitlin's knowledge of Flashpoint]] |
| 79 | |
| 80 | * How did Caitlin know so much about Barry's timeline changes? As far as can be determined he hasn't spoken to her in exhaustive detail what happened pre-Flashpoint and the differences with respect to post-Flashpoint. Yet when she hauls out her TheReasonYouSuck speech, she knows (or at least hints at knowing) details that in some cases only ''Barry'' could know. |
| 81 | ** Barry in private confessed to Caitlin several changes of the current timeline that he caused by creating Flashpoint, Dante's death being among this, in the previous episode in a ItsAllMyFault speech, after she told Team Flash she has powers. |
| 82 | [[/folder]] |
| 83 | |
| 84 | [[folder: Vixen and Steel missing from the episode "Invasion!"]] |
| 85 | * Ok, there in real life there was probably some contractual or other reason why the actors playing Vixen and Steel couldn't appear in the Flash part of the "Invasion!" crossover, but the in-universe explanation is just weak. The heroes know they're up against a powerful alien force, and two out of the three Legends with actual superpowers just stay behind to look after the Waverider? How does that make any kind of a sense? The Waverider has an AI controlling it, so presumably it can take care of itself. And if someone really needs to stay behind, why not one of the heroes with no powers, like Mick or Sara? If they're afraid the Dominators would try to hijack Waverider, and that's why it needs to be guarded, just send it to the distant past or future, where it will be out of the Dominators' reach. But leaving two of the most powerful heroes behind while the others are dealing with a planetary invasion is just stupid. |
| 86 | ** They were left behind for the same reason that Team Flash doesn't want Wally to join in; for all intents and purposes, they're rookies, and this is a challenge none of the superheroes of 2016 have ever faced before. Nate is still learning how to use his powers, and while Amaya may have experience with hers, she doesn't know anything about the 21st Century. Besides, the rest of the Legends really have no idea what they're up against. Once they do, you can bet that Amaya and Nate will be called in to help. They're being overprotective, but also smart. Keeping two of their big guns in reserve mean that the Dominators don't have complete information about Earth's heroes or their capabilities, leaving them as a bit of a trump card. |
| 87 | ** Which was exactly what happened on the next crossover episode in ''Arrow''. They were on the Waverider ready to help out in case things got really bad. |
| 88 | ** Of course, the out-of-universe reason for not every character from every series getting in on it is probably (and ''definitely,'' according to WordOfGod, in the case of all non-Supergirl members of ''Supergirl's'' cast) is the fact that wrangling a large cast is very, very hard. |
| 89 | ** It's actually pretty standard for the Legends to leave one or two teammates behind on the Waverider while the rest go on a mission, whether to guard the ship, to serve as a rescue team in case the rest of them get into trouble, or just because they've got something else to work on. |
| 90 | ** Leaving Amaya behind also might have been because Ray (and probably Sara and maybe some of the other team members) is aware that Oliver and company have interacted with her granddaughter Mari, and thought it was best to avoid any possible temporal issues that her interacting with them might cause. |
| 91 | [[/folder]] |
| 92 | |
| 93 | [[folder: Throw it where Jay?]] |
| 94 | * At this point Team Flash doesn't know much about the Philosopher Stone aside from it has some ability to control your mind and give you visions of dead loved ones and might be indestructible. The fact that a long lost artifact has survived for thousands of years doesn't mean it would survive an acid bath or being dunked in a volcano or given to the the Legends and tossed into the Sun but the team bought that line. Either way Savitar is a speedster of such extreme power that neither Jay nor Barry can even perceive his moves much less fight him. So Jay's solution is to throw the stone, and thus him, into the Speed Force. Of all the options out there including giving the box to Team Arrow where almost everybody dead parents (some killed by others on the team) this is possibly the worst option anybody could have thought up. |
| 95 | ** Firstly, the fact that they say it's indestructible means people have presumably tried before. Even if they try acid, lava, etc, there's no guarantee that would work, and they would still have to figure out some way of getting rid of it. They need a solution that will get rid of it once and for all. While asking Team Legends to throw it into the sun might work (and that's assuming that no one on the team gets curious and opens the box), what's wrong with throwing it into the Speed Force? The Speed Force is said to be infinite-even another speedster probably wouldn't be able to find it. |
| 96 | ** Savitar says he's trapped in "eternity" and they throw it into a place described as "eternity itself" that's the problem with throwing it into the Speedforce. |
| 97 | ** Right, but the thing about eternity is that it's...[[CaptainObvious well, eternal.]] For Savitar to try and find the box would be like trying to find one particular drop of water on Earth. |
| 98 | [[/folder]] |
| 99 | |
| 100 | [[folder:It hit everyone!]] |
| 101 | * Why have no metahuman children even been mentioned? The explosion affected the whole city... |
| 102 | ** Dumb, dumb luck. Sometimes I think that that particle wave explosion had a sense of humor. |
| 103 | ** Magenta is definitely on the young side, so that's one. Granted, she wasn't the result of the particle accelerator explosion, but it's stillan example of a metahuman child. |
| 104 | ** By children I mean younger than 13. It doesn't seem likely that Magenta is.. |
| 105 | ** Maybe Metas are similar to mutants over in Marvel and generally only manifest post puberty or they simply got boring powers and/or had parents who could keep it under wraps. |
| 106 | ** We haven't seen any metas who'd be over 45 either (except for Jay Garrick, but he's from an different universe), and the majority of metas seen so far have been men, even though statistically it should 50% men, 50% women. |
| 107 | *** Stein and [=DeVoe=] were both over 45, and [=DeVoe=] is absolutely a meta...he just falsified the DNA on his mug. |
| 108 | ** That just raises further questions. |
| 109 | ** Why a metahuman should be a hero or a villain. Maybe there is a lot of metahuman that have power they can control and just decide not to use it and continue to have a normal life. So maybe the metahuman is 50% men and 50% women, but a majority of women doesn't see the point of risking their life to play superhero or supervillain. |
| 110 | ** Men are statistically more likely to engage in certain types of behavior. So the female metas may simply be making less noise so to speak. |
| 111 | ** Which still doesn't directly address the children and elderly.If I may add,Savitar and Eobard Thawne are extremely old,the former is even possibly ''centuries'' old,while they didn't get their powers from the particle accelerator,they're still both over 45. |
| 112 | ** Savitar may not be from Earth 1 and strictly speaking Eobard hails from a yet to be revealed timeline and almost definitely had nothing to do with the particle accelerator. More to the point that is a casting choice. You could ask the same of nearly any show out there. Inverse however it could be chalked up to older people simply not being in the zone to commit crimes or be a hero and most of the powers are easily controlled so an adult who didn't want to be noticed wouldn't. It is worth noting that Earth 2's Wells suggests that the number of Metas we have seen are just a drop in the bucket. That he's seen many times more than we did and the Particle Accelerator was far better contained on his Earth than here. So either some of our metas are taking time to develop or are successfully laying low. |
| 113 | ** Was actually mentioned above that their powers aren't from the particle accelerator and no,they haven't even been mentioned,no additional actors would be needed. |
| 114 | ** How about animals? For some reason we haven't seen any meta-pets yet. You'd think that they'd be harder to keep hidden, since animals tend to lack the same level of caution that humans have. |
| 115 | ** Um, Gorilla Grodd. |
| 116 | ** Because we only see those who either become criminals or heroes. There are probably many, ''many'' more meta-beings than those we see ** But why should we care about that 5-year-old who can fill a sheet of paper with a crayon drawing simply by thinking about it? Or that little old lady who can increase the longevity of her house plants? And if my guinea pig could suddenly talk to me, or my cat learned how to levitate, it'd be pretty cool, but it'd probably not make for more than a little comment from the show's main cast. If I used my levitating cat to rob some banks somehow, yeah, but that's fairly unlikely... |
| 117 | ** Since ,as mentioned in the folder "How Did Barry Get Super Speed?",the powers granted to the metahumans are often related to what they were doing when they got hit by the explosion,there should be at least a few Bart expies running around somewhere in Central City and/or Keystone City...we also sure as hell haven't seen all the heroes or criminals,remember Barry's opening narration in the second season premiere? |
| 118 | ** As noted above, the majority of people are neither criminals nor heroes. Most metahumans are probably content living their lives out and using their powers in small ways. And remember, most of the metahuman bad guys we've seen were either a) from Earth-2, b) driven mad from the experience (such as Mirror Master or Blackout), or c) those who already had been long-time criminals, such as the Mist. If you're a metahuman considering using your powers to break the laws, you might well think twice when the Scarlet Speedster turns up and the Central City crime rate presumably plummets accordingly. |
| 119 | ** That doesn't help me AT ALL,and [[WhatTheHellHero is probably extremely ageist]],unless you aren't aware what the question even is, in which case I'm truly sorry,but you're just a fucktard, like most people are. |
| 120 | ** First of all, everybody calm down. To answer the question, all (or almost all?) of the metahumans who got powers from the accelerator got powers related to their violent deaths. Presumably, no children died violent deaths within a few hours of the explosion. There also seems to be a mental element; young children would for the most part lack the motivation and the control to properly use any powers they might have. |
| 121 | ** The handwave explanation could be that metahuman DNA simply doesn't activate until maturity...maybe growth hormones suppress the DNA, and that's what those inhibitor cuffs are actually doing. The OOC explanation is it would just look bad to have Flash fighting children, and there is no demographic motivation (it's TV-14 after all) to have child heroes. Labor laws also factor in...remember that both Kid Flashes started out as kids in the comics, not 20-something like Wally. |
| 122 | [[/folder]] |
| 123 | |
| 124 | [[folder:Why not ask for Supergirl's help against Savitar?]] |
| 125 | * By all accounts, Savitar is way overpowered compared to Barry. But what about Supergirl? The first crossover between the Flash and Supergirl established that she has super-speed too, and is almost as fast as Barry, not to mention that she's way tougher and has other powers that would helps against Savitar. And after their second crossover, Barry has the means of contacting her. So why not ask for her help against a villain who clearly seems to be in a higher league than Barry? |
| 126 | ** Well, besides SupermanStaysOutOfGotham, how is Kara supposed to fight something she can't see or react to? |
| 127 | ** Exactly. Just because she has super-speed doesn't mean she's connected to the Speed Force, which might be a requirement to 'see' Savitar. |
| 128 | ** Not to mention that even if Kara is as fast as Barry (which is still debatable), Savitar is still considerably faster than him. The fights would likely end up being the same, with Kara being unable to catch up to or even land a hit on Savitar, and that's if she could even see him at all. |
| 129 | [[/folder]] |
| 130 | |
| 131 | [[folder:Earth 2 Barry's list of numbers]] |
| 132 | * We see a list of numbers by his home phone, each with the first name of another DC hero. It's a cute nod to them all, but... Earth-2 Barry is not a superhero and is very much a NonActionGuy. Why would he have the whole Justice League's phone numbers, by secret identity no less? Of course, obviously there's no guarantee that any of them are heroes if Barry's not, but in that case, what connection would they have to each other, that anyone would need those specific people's numbers? |
| 133 | ** In all likelihood, none of the individuals are heroes on Earth-2. As to how they know Barry? AlternateUniverse. He could've met them through a variety of ways, but ultimately how they met or why Barry has their numbers really doesn't matter. |
| 134 | ** This. Even if we assume that these characters have lives that ''remotely'' resemble those of their comic-book counterparts, there are any number of ways how Barry could have their numbers. For instance, Barry and/or Iris could once have handled a case involving some Wayne Enterprises property/personnel in Central City, leading Bruce Wayne to befriend them. Clark Kent could be a reporter whom the husband-wife duo came to know professionally and later personally. Iris could have once been part of a (purely ceremonial) security detail when Amazon Ambassador Diana visited Central City. And Hal could just a test pilot whom Barry just happens to be close friends with (maybe he once investigated a crime at Ferris Air). |
| 135 | [[/folder]] |
| 136 | |
| 137 | [[folder: Hasn't Team Flash already changed the future?]] |
| 138 | * The Season 3 mid-season premiere "Borrowing Problems from the Future" is all about Team Flash trying to figure out if they can change the future and prevent Iris' death at Savitar's hands. Now why is this even a question? Leaving aside the fact that changing the future after witnessing it via time-travel is logically no different than changing the past via time-travel (which is clearly possible in this verse), Team Flash has already changed the future at least once before - last season, when Cisco vibed the death of Tina [=McGee=] at the hands of Eobard Thawne hours into the future, and Barry was able to use this knowledge to save her. |
| 139 | ** The writers are trolling us. |
| 140 | ** You can only change an event once you know what actually causes it. Butterfly Effect ignored since it's simply insane the reality is Barry doesn't know how or why Savitar targets Iris. Odds are high (narratively speaking) that the idiot enters the time stream specifically to find out details and provides them instead. |
| 141 | ** To add on to this, Barry now knows what happens when you change time too carelessly – it breaks. As HR put it, it's like dominoes (though why HR would know ''anything'' about the metaphysics of time is another question entirely). Barry could just (for example) send Iris to Earth-2 or something. But that either wouldn't work, as there's almost nothing Team Flash can do that Savitar can't undo; or something goes horribly wrong and Savitar just kills the city or something. |
| 142 | [[/folder]] |
| 143 | |
| 144 | [[folder: Why are Caitlin's powers so different?]] |
| 145 | * Almost every metahuman villain in the show becomes villain because they were already immoral before gaining their powers, so they're more likely to abuse them. Likewise, almost every moral and decent person who gets powers wants to use them for good, and becomes a hero. Now, Caitlin is most certainly a moral and decent person, and her powers can be used for good (like when she saved Barry from Mirror Master's trap), so why would using them inevitably turn her into Killer Frost? It's never been explained why her powers would automatically corrupt her, when that hasn't happened to others. |
| 146 | ** Didn't Magenta have a similar circumstance? Alchemy did as well. Granted, those weren't normal cases, but it shows that some metahumans do develop alternate personalities. |
| 147 | ** Magenta was a deeply disturbed kid who was being mistreated by her step-dad, so gaining powers made her lash out. And Alchemy was explicitly the result of Savitar mind-controlling Julian, he was no alternate personality of Julian's. As soon as Savitar disappeared, so did Alchemy. So both of those cases are very different from Caitlin's, and in both of them there was a clear explanation for the characters doing what they did. With Caitlin, there's no such explanation. It seems that everyone (including the writers) assumes using her powers will make her become Killer Frost just because that happened to her counterpart on Earth-2. But many other Earth-2 counterparts (like Firestorm or Vibe) were evil too, yet no one seems to be afraid the same will happen to Cisco when he uses his powers. |
| 148 | ** From the characters' point of view, it's a bit comprehensible: before they'd met the Earth-2 versions of Firestorm and Vibe, they already knew (or were) their superpowered heroic counterparts so they had no fear of powers turning them evil because they'd already gained powers without turning evil before they knew their counterparts existed. When they met Killer Frost, however, they didn't have a handy comparison in the form of an empowered Caitlin on Earth-1, didn't have any proof that gaining power wouldn't make her go bad like Earth-2's Caitlin and when Caitlin learned about it, she made the assumption that having powers would make her go bad. So it's possible that when her powers emerged she started acting badly ''because'' she thought that's what would inevitably happen, with the example of Magenta not helping, in a form of SelfFulfillingProphecy. It's entirely possible that if she'd just had someone to talk to her early on, point this out, and learn to control her powers, instead of Killer Frost you'd have the Arrowverse version of the heroine Ice. |
| 149 | ** Granted, its not been presented well, but Caitlin ''does'' have issues. Her childhood doesn't seem to have been an entirely happy one. She lost her dad, who seems to be the parent she was closer to. Her mom and her have an (ahem) frosty relationship. Also, in the span of three years, she lost her fiancee/husband Ronnie (twice!) and the other man she got close to, Jay/Hunter, turned out in fact to be the BigBad. Not to mention, encountering her evil Earth 2 doppelganger and finding her to be not so different in certain aspects, and the PTSD she likely suffered after being abducted by Zoom at the end of Season 2 - all of this are certainly contributing factors to Caitlin's fractured psyche. The ''real'' Headscratcher is - why hasn't anyone at STAR Labs suggested Caitlin getting some kind of professional psychiatric help? Even if Team Flash can't trust a civilian psychiatrist, they can surely arrange for one vetted by ARGUS or, hell, the US Government (since the new President owes all the heroes one)? |
| 150 | [[/folder]] |
| 151 | |
| 152 | [[folder: Where did the metahumans in Flashpoint come from?]] |
| 153 | * Perhaps not so much a Headscratcher as something not yet explained, but the lack of explanation is glaring at this point. Where did all the metas in the Flashpoint timeline come from, without there being any particle accelerator explosion? So far, every universe/timeline with metas that we know off has had a particle accelerator explosion - the 'normal' Earth 1 timelines have it, Earth 2 had it, the 'original' Earth 1 timeline Thawne came from had it. So where did the metas in Flashpoint come from? Flashpoint Wally claims he got his powers due to lightning and an incident involving some nitro in a race-car. Does this mean ''all'' the Flashpoint metas got their powers due to random freak accidents (much like the comics)? But the problem is that all these metas appear to be metas in the same way as the 'normal' timeline metas, scientifically speaking - judging by the tests conducted on Wally and the other metas Alchemy 'reawakened' in the normal timeline using the Philosophers' Stone. How could a series of seemingly unconnected random freak accidents result in changes similar to what dark matter energy waves coursing through a city in a single incident accomplished? |
| 154 | ** It's been previously established that not all metas gained their power from the explosion. Deathbolt had specifically been mentioned as not being in Central City when the explosion took place, thus how he gained his power is unknown. Subsequent to that, there was Darhk essentially being a meta through magic, as was both versions of Vixen; and Vandal Savage, the Hawks, Ragman, and Steel, all who received powers in different ways. If one goes by the DC comics idea of metahumans, it's plausible to think that some humans have the capacity to exhibit metahuman abilities and just need a trigger to do so. In the Flashpoint timeline, the triggers were just something else. |
| 155 | [[/folder]] |
| 156 | |
| 157 | [[folder:Did Clive Yorkin have powers in Flashpoint?]] |
| 158 | * If Clive Yorkin was a meta "reawakened" by Alchemy, shouldn't he have had his death touch in Flashpoint? But if so, how did Laura Stone and the other Flashpoint CCPD cops arrest him? Did his powers somehow arise after he was sent to Iron Heights? Was there enough time for that to happen before Barry reset the timeline? |
| 159 | ** Maybe the cops had a more developed Metahuman Task Force in Flashpoint, and had some way of neutralizing his powers at range. |
| 160 | |
| 161 | [[/folder]] |
| 162 | |
| 163 | [[folder: Julian and Caitlin? But doesn't Julian have a girlfriend?]] |
| 164 | |
| 165 | * Many of the episodes following the winter break in season 3 seem to be building up a romance between Caitlin and Julian. However, in "Shade", Julian mentions to Barry that he has a girlfriend. So...was he simply lying at the time? Did they break up at some point between? Did the writers just completely forget about this? Are they polyamorous? |
| 166 | ** You know, that is a good question. Unless it's mentioned, at this point, I'm just going to assume that someone messing with time travel retgone'd their relationship. Either that, or Julian was subconsciously lying to avert suspicion from the fact that he was Alchemy. |
| 167 | ** No, he had no idea he was Alchemy at the time. This was "Shade", and he doesn't find out he's Alchemy until Team Flash tells him in "The Present". Though he may have been lying about having a girlfriend just so he didn't have to accept Barry's invite to the movie in the park, since at the time the two still weren't on the best terms (though nonetheless a huge step up after the previous episode, "Monster"). |
| 168 | ** "No, he had no idea he was Alchemy at the time." Hence why I said "''subconsciously'' lying." Having said that, your answer is also plausible, considering the only mention we ever have of him having a girlfriend was in response to Barry's invitation, which he clearly didn't want to go to. So, it's possible he just made it up so he'd have an excuse to avoid it. |
| 169 | |
| 170 | [[/folder]] |
| 171 | |
| 172 | [[folder: Reverse-Flash suit]] |
| 173 | |
| 174 | * I know that this is out of place somewhat on the chronology of the headscratchers, but it just occurred to me: Reverse-Flash's suit doesn't actually look all that similar to Barry's overall. I mean, I see the resemblance in the pants and boots, and there's the whole cowl and chest insignia, but other then that, they don't look anything alike? I mean, he based it off of the 2020 Flash's suit, and although we haven't actually seen much of it, the general consensus I got was that it was pretty much Barry's suit, only brighter. And what's with the black? It's not that important, I'm just wondering. |
| 175 | ** The whole point of the Reverse-Flash costume is that it's the reverse of Barry's; where Barry's is red, Eobard's is yellow, and vice versa. It's not meant to look like Barry's suit, it's meant to look the reverse. |
| 176 | ** Original Poster: I understand that. What I mean is why doesn't it look like a reverse of Barry's suit? I mean, Barry's got that mesh area on his stomach, while Eobard has this weird leather vest/armor thing there and lightening bolts shaped around his chest symbol, Barry has no shoulder pads on his suit, Eobard has something similar to that on his, etcetera, etcetera. Personally, when you really study the suits, you see that Zoom/[[spoiler: Black Flash]] 's suit actually looks more like Barry's. And I understand with the chest symbols background, but again: What's with the black on the legs, arms, torso, and everywhere else? |
| 177 | ** ... Doesn't everything you just said make it the reverse of Barry's suit? All of the things on Eobard's suit are things that Barry doesn't have, hence it being the reverse. As for the black parts, it also ties into making it the reverse: Barry's costume is (relatively) bright and inspires hope, so naturally Eobard's is darker and inspires fear. |
| 178 | |
| 179 | [[/folder]] |
| 180 | |
| 181 | [[folder: The Plan To Save [[spoiler:Iris]]]] |
| 182 | |
| 183 | Barry accidentally travels to the future and sees Iris get murdered by Savitar, and now the team needs to try and stop this future from happening. Okay, all fine and dandy. What's the plan? |
| 184 | They write down some events that Barry happened to see on the news while in the future and plan to stop them from happening, and that will stop Savitar from killing Iris. |
| 185 | I'm sorry, what? First off, there is absolutely no known correlation between the events on the news and Iris' death, it's just some headlines that Barry happened to see while he was there. When they actually do experience the events listed, absolutely none of them have anything to do with Savitar or the situation leading up to it, yet they all assume that because it wasn't Barry who caught that one random guy 4 months ago, Savitar doesn't end up killing Iris. Nobody, not even some of the most brilliant and intelligent people on the planet, even questions once how this is supposed to save Iris or brings up the fact that what they just did hasn't had anything to do with Savitar at all. |
| 186 | Everyone just treats it as a certainty that changing these entirely unrelated events will stop Savitar. |
| 187 | Their entire plan is like someone foreseeing 9/11 deciding to go take a piss in the woods instead of going shopping that day and assuming that stops the tragedy from happening. There's no connection at all between the actions they take to prevent the future and the event they're trying to stop. |
| 188 | Even if they're just banking on the fact that time meddling in the Arrow-verse tends to break things even if they're entirely unrelated to what was changed, they still have no good reason to assume with such certainty that Savitar killing Iris will just go away just because they changed something at all. |
| 189 | * The idea seems to be that by changing those headlines, they prove that it is possible to ScrewDestiny. Which would be a bigger deal except for the fact that the previous two seasons have ''already'' proven that it is possible to ScrewDestiny (the most dramatic example being Eddie Thawne committing suicide and erasing Eobard Thawne's existence). Then again, given the TimeyWimeyBall that applies to the Arrowverse, perhaps it makes sense for the team to figure out what the 'rules' are in this particular case. Also, other than Barry being adamant about not being the one to stop Plunder, most of the other headlines are things that Barry would want to stop anyway - the gorilla attack, Caitlin becoming Killer Frost etc. |
| 190 | ** OP here. The gang already knows for certain that it's possible to change fate, they even know the specifics that determine what can and can't be changed. (A time limit before a change is cemented, although this mechanic is a headscratcher and plothole in and of itself.) Their efforts since finding out the future has been to change the event they saw (Savitar murdering Iris), the list of things was written explicitly as their plan to achieve that. Every time they change something on the list, it's stated as progress towards stopping Savitar when they actually haven't made any progress at all. So far they haven't taken a single step towards changing the event they're trying to change, so why is everyone acting like stopping Grodd from invading Central City is somehow even vaguely related to stopping Savitar? Either they're actually just hoping that their unrelated actions will genuinely catch Savitar in the ripple effects (A terrible plan), or they outright have no plan and are taking no actions to stop him. (Arguably worse, but at least doesn't involve messing with time.) |
| 191 | ** The main problem with this is that neither the audience nor Team Flash know exactly what will cause Savitar to reappear and murder Iris (yet). With that in mind, they do know some of the events that happen prior to Iris' death, and it stands to reason that changing the events would have some ripple effect that would, at the very least, allow another outcome to save her. So yeah, they're basically hoping that their ripple effects will in some way affect Savitar. It's not a perfect plan, but there's really not a whole lot they can do. |
| 192 | |
| 193 | [[/folder]] |
| 194 | |
| 195 | [[folder: All the gorillas super-powered?]] |
| 196 | * It seemed to me that Solovar had all the same abilities as Grodd and all the gorillas were huge. But Grodd got all his gifts from the particle accelerator accident. The gorillas from Earth-2 were intelligent, okay, but why would Solovar also be telepathic, and all the gorillas as big as Grodd? |
| 197 | ** Maybe on Earth 2, Wells and Eiling were experimenting with lots of gorillas, instead of just one. |
| 198 | |
| 199 | [[/folder]] |
| 200 | |
| 201 | [[folder: Why doesn't Lily Stein help out the team?]] |
| 202 | * She's a brilliant physicist living in Central City and she's worked with the team before (during the Invasion! arc), being the offspring of a former prominent member. She would be a great asset to the team. Though, in all fairness, we could probably ask the exact same questions about Hartley Rathaway following the episode "Flash Back". |
| 203 | ** Team Flash isn't the center of the world. Both Lily and Hartley have their own life, projects and dreams. They can help for big threatening event, but otherwise they just go on with their life. |
| 204 | [[/folder]] |
| 205 | |
| 206 | [[folder: Why does Barry literally get slower with every speed boost?]] |
| 207 | * Barry's speed makes absolutely no sense, it literally varies by orders of magnitudes between episodes, sometimes even within the same one like in Attack On Central City. Barry's fast enough to outspeed a fired bullet that has a head start, but somehow he still gets shield-bashed by Grodd and can't run that relatively short distance to Savatar in 2.5 seconds. Season 1 Barry broke mach 1.5 easily, in season 2 he got (specifically stated) more than 4 times faster, yet his top speed is still treated as mach ~2? What about the fact that season 1 Barry ran literal circles around Central City in seconds? And season 2 Barry outran an actual lightning bolt? How is he being outpaced by cars, gorillas and frickin' blow darts in season 3? It's like Barry's speed in season 3 is being lowered to even lower than season 1 just so Wally can get faster than him without making it as blatantly bullshit. |
| 208 | ** He's constantly getting hit with attacks from villains that realistically should never touch him. I think you just have to roll with it, because speedsters have StoryBreakerPower and there wouldn't even be the possibility of defeat if they were handled consistently. |
| 209 | |
| 210 | [[/folder]] |
| 211 | |
| 212 | [[folder: The Speed Force is kind of a dick]] |
| 213 | * Okay, so in "Into The Speed Force", we learn that the Speed Force is pretty pissed at Barry for creating Flashpoint. Pretty understandable. It claims that it thought Barry had moved on from the trauma of his mothers death, which Barry tells it that he did, till Zoom killed Henry, which the Speed Force implies that it was a test of his resolve, which he failed. Okay, bit of a dick move, but Barry is the Speed Force's champion, so he's held to a higher standard than others to it. But really? [[spoiler: Not letting Wally leave after Savitar trapped him in it?]] That's just not cool. Wally did nothing wrong, he just was tricked by Savitar into replacing him in his prison. Why can't the Speed Force just let Wally go and sic the Time Wraiths or Black Flash on Savitar? And speaking of the Black Flash, [[spoiler: While it was great to see Zoom get what was coming to him]], why didn't it just do that sooner? By that, I mean take his speed like it did to Eobard Thawne. I mean, while Eobard had just murdered Nora and stopped Barry from becoming the Flash, he at least fixed it somewhat, while Zoom was about to ''destroy the entire universe''. And why not do the same to Savitar? |
| 214 | ** It seems to me like the prison ''needs'' a speedster in it-that's why Jay stayed after he rescued Barry and Wally. As for Zoom, if the Speed Force needed him to kill Henry (which is totally a {{Jerkass}} move, but regardless), perhaps it would've stripped Zoom of his speed anyway if Barry hadn't pulled his gambit. For Savitar-honestly, no idea why it didn't set the Black Flash on him, but maybe since he was already (at least partially) in the Speed Force, the rules were different? |
| 215 | ** For the Savitar part, it's possible that the Speed Force saw Barry was handling him generally well (It doesn't think like us, so it has a different idea of handling things), and it also might have been a sense of priority. While Savitar was causing trouble in Central, he was only trying to escape his prison and only Future Barry put him in his prison in the first place, so the Speed Force likely didn't care all that much. Eobard Thawne, on the other hand, was screwing with time, recruiting Damien Darhk and Malcolm Merlyn for the Spear of Destiny to rewrite reality. If I had to chose, I'd kill Thawne first, then ''maybe'' send Black Flash in on Savitar. |
| 216 | ** Okay, but if it was going to take away Zoom's speed if Barry didn't pull his gambit... there ''wouldn't be'' anything it could do, as Zoom would have destroyed the universe. What I was trying to ask was why didn't the Speed Force just take his speed like it did to Thawne, when it saw that he was ducking the Time Wraiths? With Eobard, it has the excuse he was needed for certain parts of history, but ''nada'' on Zoom. |
| 217 | ** Maybe it wanted him to become the Black Flash, so the whole race was a BatmanGambit on its part? Honestly, we may just have to chalk this up to IdiotBall. |
| 218 | [[/folder]] |
| 219 | |
| 220 | [[folder: Just Evil All Along?]] |
| 221 | * So are we ever going to be told where Caitlyn got her frost powers from? It's made clear that it wasn't an Alchemy job, which yet again brings up the wth with her becoming Killer Frost. I don't know if they just missed something, but sudden ice powers I get. She was affected by the blast, blah blah. But what's with the sudden EXACT personality of Earth 2 Killer Frost jumping in? Or is this going to be some lame "It's her suppressed split personality" thing going on? |
| 222 | ** She got her powers from the particle accelerator explosion, but they manifested later (just like Cisco's did). As for her evil persona, it seems it's linked to her "cold" power, which make her "cold" inside as well (uncaring, unfeeling). She is acting the same as Earth 2 Killer Frost because she has the same powers, and her powers are causing the same changes in her personality. |
| 223 | [[/folder]] |
| 224 | |
| 225 | [[folder: Savitar's identity and [[spoiler: 2056 Barry]]]] |
| 226 | |
| 227 | * So [[spoiler: Barry's destiny is to become Savitar at some point...presumably following the events of The Once And Future Flash (February 2024), possibly overlapping with the Red Skies Crisis (April 2024)...but what about 2056 Barry and his message to Rip Hunter? When we see Savitar's face he's clearly not significantly older than present-day Barry...so did he become Savitar and then become good again at some point so that he could send the message to Rip? Seriously, [[MindScrew my head hurts after this reveal, despite long expecting it...]]]] |
| 228 | ** [[spoiler: During the EurekaMoment montage, one of the clips was 2024 Barry mentioning how 2017 Barry would go so far as to create time remnants to fight Savitar, which in itself would seem meaningless and doesn't have anything to do with the reveal, except if one remembers the full quote from the episode was that Barry would create time remnants but Savitar would kill them all, '''mostly'''. That suggests at least one ''wasn't'' killed. That emphasis suggests a time remnant will become Savitar, while Barry originally had no idea this happened and remained oblivious to who Savitar was, and became 2024 Barry and later 2056 Barry. So Barry never himself became evil, but a time remnant of his did.]] |
| 229 | ** Hmm, fair point. [[spoiler: Many of the things Savitar has said about Barry, about how he "took" something from him and so forth, how his past self is the BigBad from his perspective don't make too much sense if there's only a single Barry Allen going through the timestream...even if he's just metaphorically speaking, it doesn't make a lot of sense...but if he's spawned from a time remnant of Barry that he will ultimately create, that should justify a lot of these weird inconsistencies]]. Though it's odd how during Barry's EurekaMoment and remembering his future self saying that line, we actually ''don't'' hear the word "mostly". |
| 230 | ** [[spoiler: The montage only really highlighted the phrase "time remnant".]] When 2024 Barry was speaking, the complete sentence would have been useful to drop a hint to Savitar's identity. By the time it came up in this episode, Barry had already figured out who Savitar is (and the audience should have as well), so there's no point adding that extra bit any more. It wouldn't surprise me if in the next episode [[spoiler: it's made explicit he's a time remnant. This might also take care of the obvious plan of Barry pulling an Eddie to save Iris: as he's already discovered via Eobard Thawne, retgonning doesn't always work if the later "you" is a time remnant]]. |
| 231 | ** ....aaaand that's exactly what happened: [[spoiler: Savitar is revealed as the time remnant of Barry that wasn't killed, and he points out the Eddie-Eobard issue when Barry suggests killing himself.]] |
| 232 | ** Not saying it won't happen but Savitar [[spoiler: turning out to be a time remnant would be incredibly anticlimactic. It means more if Barry Allen -- "our" 100% Barry Allen somehow becomes evil. If it's a time remnant -- even if it's like evil Kirk on STAR TREK "Enemy Within" -- then it's basically an "evil twin" storyline]]. |
| 233 | ** [[spoiler: "Our" Barry did become evil: a time remnant is 100% identical at the moment of its creation, so the implication is that if 2017 Barry goes through everything that Savitar did, Barry would become the same broken nutcase. And in any case, with a FutureMeScaresMe plot, that's simply the evil twin storyline with a small twist on the origin of the twin.]] |
| 234 | ** Another point, aren't all time remnants destined to die? I viewed them as Beta-timeline versions of the hero compared to the alpha timeline version. This is why Zoom's doubles always died, and[[spoiler: Barry destroyed Zoom's plans running to death knowing he would die anyway.]] So why didn't this one die? What makes him so special? Wouldn't the time wraiths destroy him AND Barry for this? |
| 235 | [[/folder]] |
| 236 | |
| 237 | [[folder: According to Legends of Tomorrow, interacting with your past self causes a reality-breaking paradox...]] |
| 238 | * And yet Barry has done this far more often than the Legends have, like in the season 2 episode "Flash Back", all of the times he visited the night of his mother's death, his 2024 self meeting his 2017 self in "The Once And Future Flash", and most ridiculously...[[spoiler: Savitar being a future version of Barry now ''heavily'' messing with his past self's timeline]]. Why hasn't reality broken and time folded in on itself, as ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow'' has demonstrated? |
| 239 | ** The Legends and Time Masters and other time travelers and the speedsters seem to have slightly different rules. The Legends, for instance, haven't been concerned with Time Wraiths. |
| 240 | ** In fact, in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E21CauseAndEffect "Cause And Effect"]], Savitar says that the rules of causality apply less and less to a speedster the more than they time-travel. |
| 241 | [[/folder]] |
| 242 | |
| 243 | [[folder:Did 2024 Barry lie to 2017 Barry about not knowing who Savitar is?]] |
| 244 | * In [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E19TheOnceAndFutureFlash "The Once and Future Flash"]], the 2024 version of Barry tells the 2017 Barry he doesn't know who Savitar is. However, he certainly would've remembered the events of [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E20IKnowWhoYouAre "I Know Who You Are"]], where Barry learns the identity of Savitar in 2017. So did he lie to 2017 Barry? If he did, why would he do that? |
| 245 | ** Not necessarily. Its possible that in the 'original' timeline, Barry never found out who Savitar is and trapped him in the Speed Force in 2021. And in the current timeline, the future has changed, and now Barry discovers who Savitar is in 2017. |
| 246 | ** If the timeline was changed by Barry's future trip, how come Savitar still knew all the details of Barry's and Caitlin's confrontation, right down to the exact words Barry would say? It seems Savitar knows exactly what's gonna happen, which would mean the timeline ''hasn't'' changed. Also, Savitar doesn't seem to be at all surprised when Barry confronts him and tells him he knows who Savitar is. If the Barry of the "original" timeline (whose 2024 version we meet in "The Once and Future Flash") never learned Savitar's identity, that would mean that Savitar should be surprised; since Savitar came to the past before Barry supposedly changed the timeline, his memories should be of the original timeline, where Barry never learned who he was. |
| 247 | ** If we assume that [[spoiler:Savitar is Barry's time remnant]], then it's possible that Savitar is updating with Barry's actions. Every time Barry does something, that gets factored into Savitar's background. |
| 248 | ** That's not how time travel has been shown to work in ''The Flash'' though, RippleEffectProofMemory is very much in effect. For example, when Barry travelled back in time and saved his mom, his memory was still of the pre-Flashpoint timeline. And when he changed the past again and erased Flashpoint, his memory didn't update to include stuff that had changed via ButterflyEffect, such as the death of Cisco's brother. |
| 249 | ** Except that in Flashpoint, Barry was shown to be losing his pre-Flashpoint memories (and indeed, losing them was one of the motivations to try and repair things, again). As happened with Martin Stein when he accidentally altered time resulting in having a daughter, the memories gradually come in. In the cases where Barry was surprised things changed, it was things which he found out almost immediately after he time traveled (Sara Diggle, Dante's death, Joe and Iris being estranged, Julian's presence, Harley being a good guy) and before new memories from the altered timeline might have set in. So, if he'd gone on a vacation right after Flashpoint and before he went back to work, he might have gradually remembered the presence of Julian before actually meeting him for the first time. |
| 250 | ** The timeline was almost certainly changed by the 2024 trip. Barry from 2024 was surprised to see 2017 Barry (as were the other characters) and in the list of things he gives that he tried to use to save Iris and demonstrate the futility trying, "Travel to 2024 to find out who Savitar is" wasn't one of them even though it would be an obvious one. "See, I even tried ''this'' and it didn't work." |
| 251 | ** But if the timeline was changed, and in the original timeline (the one Savitar lived through) the 2017 Barry didn't travel to 2024 and didn't learn about Tracy Brand's work, how come Savitar was able to predict the events that followed Tracy's murder attempt, right down to knowing Barry's exact words when he confronted Killer Frost? None of this would have happened in Savitar's original timeline, the one where Barry didn't visit 2024. |
| 252 | ** Mild SPOILERS for 3x21 ("Cause and Effect") - As per the promos, Cisco is going to do something to Barry's brain in an attempt to "prevent him from making new memories" in an effort to stop Savitar. So clearly, anything and everything 2017 Barry is experiencing now gets 'rippled' to the future and changes Savitar's memories and experiences. Yes, this does seem to contradict the use of RippleEffectProofMemory in other cases - but its never been stated that time-travelers will ''never'' acquire memories of the new timeline (in fact, in 3x01, Barry's memories were slowly being replaced by those of the Flashpoint timeline, and over on ''Legends of Tomorrow'', Martin Stein's memories were also slowly being rewritten to match his 'new' history. |
| 253 | ** This still doesn't explain why none of the other characters in the future told Barry who Savitar was. Even if something happens to wipe Barry's memory, it still doesn't explain why future Cisco, Joe, Julian, HR, etc. didn't know who Savitar was. |
| 254 | ** Because in that timeline, none of them knew. As far as everyone in that timeline was concerned, Iris died and Barry trapped Savitar in 2021 without ever knowing who he was. Its once Barry returns from 2024 with new information from the future that things start changing. If Barry were to run to 2024 now (i.e. post-3x20) he'd end up in a somewhat different version of the future where everyone knows who Savitar is/was. |
| 255 | ** On LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, Stein's memories start to "update" once he accidentally changed the past, which resulted in the birth of his daughter. I presume something similar happened to Savitar after Barry's trip to the future. Note that he doesn't immediately kill Brand once he's released in WRATH OF SAVITAR, which would sort of be a no-brainer. It's because he believed at the time that the team doesn't find her until it's too late to stop him from killing Iris -- presumably a "fixed" point in ensuring he becomes Savitar. |
| 256 | ** Exactly. The way I see it, Savitar, when trapped in the Speed Force, has memories of the 'original timeline' (whatever that is). Once Savitar is freed from the Speed Force however, his memories start updating ''Looper''-style and he starts to remember whatever 2017 Barry does. Savitar is a living, breathing RippleEffectIndicator. His memories and backstory are an extrapolation of the most likely future of 2017 Barry at any given moment. Once Barry returns from 2024 with information about Tracy Brand, Savitar's memories update to remember that he, Cisco and HR went to meet Tracy, so he sends Killer Frost to kill her. Once the first attempt to kill Tracy fails, Savitar comes up with the prisoner exchange plan, but then his memories update and he remembers what Barry says to Caitlin and that Cisco was up in the rafters, so he instructs Caitlin accordingly. Once Barry figures out who Savitar is and runs off somewhere to confront him, Savitar remembers this and runs to meet Barry. And so on. |
| 257 | ** It's entirely possible that until Barry's trip to 2024, Savitar had no idea Tracy Brand even existed, never having found out who was responsible for the tech that trapped him in 2021. It was only after 2024 Barry told 2017 Barry about her that Savitar knew who she was and her importance. |
| 258 | |
| 259 | [[/folder]] |
| 260 | |
| 261 | [[folder:Why didn't Savitar kill Tracy Brand as soon as possible?]] |
| 262 | * The revelations in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E20IKnowWhoYouAre "I Know Who You Are"]] make it clear Savitar always knew Tracy Brand would build the device which would trap him in the Speed Force; that's why he sends Killer Frost to murder Tracy. But if he always knew, why didn't Savitar kill Tracy as soon as he got out of the Speed Force in [[Recap/TheFlash2014S3E15TheWrathOfSavitar "The Wrath of Savitar"]]? At that point Team Flash had no idea who Tracy is, and killing her would've been easy peasy for Savitar. So why does he wait until Team Flash learns about Tracy, giving them a chance to prevent her death? |
| 263 | ** Evidently, he has his reasons. The team remark on how Savitar didn't kill Tracy when he had the chance in this episode. Maybe there is more to it than meets the eye. |
| 264 | ** It was explicitly stated that Savitar had the choice of either getting away with Caitlin or killing Tracy, and he chose the latter. So his choice had nothing to do with not wanting to kill Tracy, he just didn't have the time to do both, and saving Caitlin was more important to him. Also, if Savitar always knew Tracy wouldn't die and/or doesn't want her to die, why was he mad at Caitlin for failing to kill her? |
| 265 | ** As mentioned above, it seems that Savitar's memory is being updated as Barry changes the history that Savitar already experienced. Savitar didn't kill Tracy once he escaped the Speed Force because Savitar didn't ''know'' about Tracy--presumably he never found out who made the trap that caught him in 2021--and he only "remembered" her when 2024 Barry told 2017 Barry about her. |
| 266 | ** Turns out he ''wanted'' her to build the bazooka. |
| 267 | [[/folder]] |
| 268 | |
| 269 | [[folder: Why do Team Flash never send Iris to a different universe to save her?]] |
| 270 | * It's quite egregious that this is never at least mentioned or attempted in the show, especially given the amount of time that they spend trying to change other arbitrary elements of the future and that characters from other universes such as Jesse and Kara are seen in multiple episodes. Surely one of the characters would have had the idea to send Iris to Earth 2/3/38 until Savitar is dealt with. |
| 271 | ** That almost certainly wouldn't work. Savitar is clearly capable of travelling between universes thanks to the Speed Force, so he could almost certainly find Iris if she left Earth-1. And they know this, even before Barry learned who Savitar was, they knew he knew about Jay and Jesse, so they knew he could travel through universes. It would've been nice if they had brought it up, but it makes sense as to why they didn't. |
| 272 | ** Jay had said, when first telling Barry about Savitar, that speedsters across the multiverse had either already encountered, knew, or had heard stories about Savitar. |
| 273 | ** This does eventually come into play in Infantino Street, with it being implied that without Savitar knowing what Earth Iris was on this might have worked. |
| 274 | [[/folder]] |
| 275 | |
| 276 | [[folder: "Cause and Effect" time remnant memories]] |
| 277 | |
| 278 | * It's explicitly stated that the time remnant who became Savitar is created four years after the events of this episode. But after the amnesia hits Barry, he immediately learns who he is and starts rebuilding his life. So how come Savitar still doesn't know his own identity? That would mean that four years later Barry still doesn't know who he is, when in this episode he learns that the same day. |
| 279 | ** Actually, that seems to be an assumption on Cisco's part. In 3x19, 2024!Barry claims that he created time remnants in a bid to stop Savitar from killing Iris, which would have been in 2017. Regardless, as far as the memory thing goes, Savitar is pretty much a RippleEffectIndicator. He immediately reflects any change made to Barry in 'real-time'. So maybe, in the next four years, the amnesiac Barry slowly rebuilds his life and identity, but in the immediate present he hasn't, and so the Savitar in the immediate present doesn't remember any of it. |
| 280 | |
| 281 | [[/folder]] |
| 282 | |
| 283 | [[folder: "Cause and Effect" time remnant existence]] |
| 284 | |
| 285 | * If for some reason Barry's memory still isn't working four years later, that would mean he doesn't know how to create time remnants either, so Savitar would never be born. So Savitar not remembering who he is, and Savitar existing to begin with, are mutually incompatible facts. If Barry's memory isn't fixed in four years, Savitar shouldn't inherit his amnesia, he should cease to exist. |
| 286 | ** Well, TimeyWimeyBall is pretty much a fact of life now in the Arrowverse, as said by Savitar himself. Maybe Savitar has messed around with time-travel so much that he can't be erased from existence physically (he says as much to Barry), but that doesn't stop him from being a RippleEffectIndicator affected by anything that happens to 2017!Barry. |
| 287 | |
| 288 | [[/folder]] |
| 289 | |
| 290 | [[folder: "Cause and Effect" Wally's powers]] |
| 291 | |
| 292 | * Barry's amnesia leads to Savitar not giving Wally powers, which is fine in itself. But Savitar got freed from the Speed Force only because of Wally and his powers. So if Wally's powers are retroactively gone, that should mean Savitar is still trapped in the Speed Force. Which he clearly isn't. |
| 293 | ** Again, somehow due to TimeyWimeyBall, only Savitar's memories are affected, not his physical existence. Things like being trapped in the Speed Force or escaping the Speed Force are probably immune to 'normal' time-travel related changes anyway. |
| 294 | |
| 295 | [[/folder]] |
| 296 | |
| 297 | [[folder: "Cause and Effect" Wally's powers and memories]] |
| 298 | |
| 299 | * How is it possible that Wally loses his powers, but he still remembers having them? If the powers are retroactively gone, so should the memory of them. It doesn't makes sense that Wally's powers don't have any ripple proof, but his memory does. And Savitar's "updating" memories show that RippleEffectProofMemory doesn't work here. |
| 300 | |
| 301 | [[/folder]] |
| 302 | |
| 303 | [[folder: "Cause and Effect" Julian]] |
| 304 | |
| 305 | * Wally loses his speed powers because the amnesiac Barry never goes on to create Savitar, who was responsible for giving Wally his powers. All well and good. But why is Julian Albert still in STAR Labs, unaffected by the same event? His working with STAR Labs was a direct result of Savitar interfering with his life and turning him into Alchemy. So why wasn't he instantly effected the same way Wally was? |
| 306 | ** Because the physical existence of Savitar wasn't affected, neither was the physical history of his actions in the timeline. Wally not having his powers is a weird effect though. The best answer one can come up with for that is - rewriting timelines affects certain individuals more than they do others, perhaps because of the nature of their powers and/or circumstances. For instance, last season, when Team Flash imprisons an earlier version of Thawne, Cisco starts getting adversely affected - probably because Cisco is a meta only because of Thawne's future actions, and the nature of Cisco's powers probably makes him more sensitive to the effects of time-travel and broken causality. Similarly, Wally, being a speedster, is probably more sensitive to the break in causality caused by 2017!Barry losing his memory, causing him to lose his powers - even though everyone else is unaffected physically. |
| 307 | [[/folder]] |
| 308 | |
| 309 | [[folder: No second murder attempted by Savitar?]] |
| 310 | * As happy as I am that Iris is alive, when Savitar got new memories of killing H.R. instead of Iris, what exactly was stopping him from going back to Infantino Street or S.T.A.R. Labs and killing her again? |
| 311 | ** That is odd, especially considering that Barry later says when they offer to help Savitar that him killing Iris now wouldn't change anything for him. Having said that, it's also possible that it wasn't just the death of Iris that would assure Savitar's existence (if it was, he could've simply killed her the moment he escaped the Speed Force), but also Barry's own knowledge of her impending death, doing everything in his power to stop it, only for it to be for naught. Changing the timeline back, even if for a moment, would help quell the despair that ended up creating Savitar. Alternatively, it's also possible that Savitar himself may not have wanted to kill Iris. Despite his claims otherwise, he clearly does still love her, so it was likely really hard for him to actually go through with it. He probably had to spend a lot of time psyching himself up for it, steeling himself for what he had to do to ensure his own existence. And the specific date was probably easier for him too, since something like that is easier to prepare for when you know exactly when it's happening instead of just going for it on a whim. But once he fails, and kills the wrong person, he just can't bring himself to try again, since it hurt so much the first time. |
| 312 | [[/folder]] |
| 313 | |
| 314 | [[folder: Wally's Powers After The Events "Finish Line"]] |
| 315 | * In the season 3 finale, unsurprisingly, BigBad Savitar is killed. However, two episodes ago, Barry lost his memory which in turn caused Savitar to lose his own memory, disrupting the StableTimeLoop...with the ultimate result being that Savitar was never able to travel back in time and give Wally powers, causing Wally to lose his speed. Since Savitar is outright killed in the season finale, shouldn't the same thing happen? And yet Wally is shown to still have his SuperSpeed. I'm hoping season 4 will at least ''try'' to address this apparent inconsistency, though somehow I doubt it. |
| 316 | ** The Philospher's Stone exploded and released another energy wave (possibly creating more metahumans) before Savitar was killed, and while Wally still had his speed. Since he gained his power from the Stone in this timeline in the first place, it's possible that this protected him and the other metas who gained power due to Savitar from being depowered by Savitar being erased. |
| 317 | [[/folder]] |
| 318 | [[folder: Why is Barry "permanently" stuck in the Speed Force?]] |
| 319 | * At least, until Season 4 finds a way to undo it. |
| 320 | ** The explanation is that a speedster must be inside the Speed Force to keep it stabilized (which just raises [[VoodooShark further questions]]), but why does it need to be Barry on a permanent basis? The show has four recurring speedsters and Cisco has already demonstrated an ability to send speedsters in and out of the Speed Force. Could they not take turns on some schedule? |
| 321 | ** Logically, that might work. Thematically, however, Barry has to serve penance for having caused the whole Savitar crisis in the first place by having used his powers to create The Flashpoint reality. Sacrificing himself in this way also [[RedemptionEqualsDeath redeems Barry somewhat]], given his selfish and, at times, outright dickish behavior to his friends over the past year. |
| 322 | [[/folder]] |
| 323 | [[folder:The Speed Force Prison and The Events Of "Finish Line"]] |
| 324 | |
| 325 | * Why does The Speed Force Prison still exist after Savitar's death? The only reason it was created was to contain Savitar in the future. The only reason Savitar was created in the first place was because of Barry creating (and then neglecting) a time remnant. Since Iris killed Savitar, none of that ever comes to pass and Savitar winked out of existence. So why is The Speed Force Prison still demanding that the piper be paid when it shouldn't logically have ever existed along with Savitar? |
| 326 | ** Time travel rules in the Arrowverse make no sense, news at Eleven. More seriously, the Speed Force exists outside conventional time, so erasing Savitar didn't quell the need for the Speed Force prison. It does beg the question as to whether or not the prison always existed, and if so, who or what was in there in the first place. |
| 327 | |
| 328 | [[/folder]] |
| 329 | |
| 330 | [[folder:Savitar's existence makes no sense '''!!!SPOILER!!!''']] |
| 331 | * So it's revealed that Savitar is the future version of a time remnant of Barry created during Future-Barry's final fight with Savitar after Iris' death. Savitar gets locked in the Speed Force prison, but left TR-Barry alive knowing he'd eventually become him. So TR-Barry turns evil, goes time travelling to create the myth of Savitar as the "First Speedster" and the "God of Speed", then eventually gets the armour he's known for. Then after Flashpoint, Savitar learned of the time travelling being done that gave him an opportunity to escape the Speed Force. Except... he escapes it in 2016 before he even existed? How does that work? TR-Barry was jumping around time before and after he became Savitar, I get that, but this Savitar everyone's fighting was a prisoner in the Speed Force, ergo he already killed Iris which led to the final battle with him and Future-Barry that caused TR-Barry to be created. So how could he not only escape in a time before he was imprisoned, but also redo the whole "killing Iris" shtick when logically he would've already had done before Future-Barry threw him into the Speed Force prison? [[MindScrew Ow, my head...]] |
| 332 | ** Presumably, since the Speed Force exists outside of normal time, he can mess around. On a more serious note, a lot of people misunderstand what "time remnant" means. It's a perfect ''temporal'' clone. This means that the second he's "created", Savitar is a completely separate entity from Barry, allowing him to mess around and do what he wants, so long as the events leading to his existence are the same or extremely close enough. Alternately, he's trapped in a cycle: Savitar kills Iris, Barry creates time remnants or such to stop Savitar, they lock Savitar away, time remnant is rejected by others, becomes Savitar, travels back to kill Iris, rinse and repeat. It's not much, but there's so much conflict with Arrowverse time-travel that we can basically just try and grasp at what meager straws there are. |
| 333 | [[/folder]] |
| 334 | |
| 335 | [[folder:Is Barry rich?]] |
| 336 | * At the beginning of Season 2 it's mentioned that "Wells" (Thawne) left STAR Labs to Barry, so presumably Barry is still the owner. While STAR Labs' financial situation isn't really mentioned, it was pointed out that "Wells" had a surprisingly luxurious pad so presumably it was doing at least ok financially. So that sort of raises the question of what all was left to Barry. Considering that his apartment with Iris is rather roomy and luxurious, and there's still money to pay the other STAR Labs staff, it's possible that Barry has more money than we're led to believe. |
| 337 | ** Pretty much, yeah. |
| 338 | [[/folder]] |
| 339 | |
| 340 | [[folder:Savitar's Plan]] |
| 341 | * Alright, so I might just be being stupid here, but what exactly were Savitar's plans? He wants to be a God, kill Iris to ensure his own existence...what exactly was his full plan for everything? What was Alchemy supposed to be doing? Can someone just explain the whole plan to me? |
| 342 | ** His goals in order are 1) Escape from the Speed Force 2) Kill Iris (to ensure he comes into existence) and 3) Become a god. The whole Alchemy thing was essentially just a (very convoluted) way for him to achieve 1) by giving Wally powers and tricking him into throwing the Philosopher's stone into the Speed Force. When 2) failed he had to rush and go 3) before he got paradox'd out of existence. It's implied (but not stated outright) that after he achieves 3) he wants to use his powers to create a world where he's the "real" Barry and the other one is the time remnant, as he told Barry that he'd be the one "abandoned and forgotten" once he becomes a god. |
| 343 | [[/folder]] |
| 344 | |
| 345 | [[folder:Future Flash becoming weaker]] |
| 346 | * In season two, we see Flash basically curb stomp Reverse Flash. Then he does it again when he goes back in time. Beating Reverse Flash seems to take minimal effort for Barry. Yet, whatever future version of Flash that's initially fighting Reverse Flash seems to really have trouble with him and is on even ground. Why is Flash from the future so much weaker than present Flash if Flash gets stronger and faster over time? |
| 347 | ** The first time Barry beats Eobard is when Eobard is just starting his own supervillain career, so that Reverse-Flash is inexperienced compared to Barry. The second time around was simply because Eobard wasn't expecting it. His version of the Flash had vanished with his younger self, and so wasn't likely to come back. The season 2 version of Barry simply blindsided him. |
| 348 | [[/folder]] |
| 349 | |
| 350 | [[folder:Flash immortal?]] |
| 351 | * Since Savitar is Flash, and he went back to ancient history to write himself as a god then took the SlowPath to the present, then does that mean Barry Allen is immortal? |
| 352 | ** In could have something to do with the armor Savitar was wearing. We have no idea where Barry got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it completely halted his own aging. |
| 353 | ** It also could have been time travel--there's nothing to say he's taken TheSlowPath. |
| 354 | [[/folder]] |
| 355 | |
| 356 | [[folder:Time Travel Logic]] |
| 357 | * Is anyone going to mention how often the writers of The Flash play fast and loose with basic logic? For instance, by all means, it should be IMPOSSIBLE to change the past, for one simple reason: When you change the past, the future you won't have a reason to go back in time to change it. If you actually change the past, it eliminates the need for you, in present day, to go back and change it. The same logic applies to trying to change the future. If you see into the future, wish to change it, and do so, than the past you will see the future you created, meaning that past you will not do anything to try to change it. In both cases, the only logical outcome is you being unable to change the past/future, ensuring the past/future you still goes back/forwards to change. This happens twice, once when Barry saves his mother, and when he saves Iris. In the case of the first one, future Barry would have no need to go back to save his mother if she was already alive, and in the second, Barry would have never seen Iris die, therefore he would have not made any preventative measures.\ |
| 358 | \ |
| 359 | There are other similar examples of this blatant violation of basic logic. For instance, if Eddie shot himself, and this prevents Eobard from existing, then Eobard wouldn't have attacked in the first place, removing the need for Eddie to kill himself. Therefore, the only possible outcome would be Eddie being unable to kill himself (i.e. someone stopping him, the gun misfiring, him having second thoughts, etc.) \ |
| 360 | \ |
| 361 | Before I move onto the second violation, I need to explain something about Savitar (stay with me, because here it gets tricky). Savitar is a classic example of a Causal Loop, or in layman's terms, a Bootstrap Paradox (something creates itself via time travel, such as someone taking a copy of a book back in time and giving it to the writer) In my humble opinion, I have an idea of how the Paradox works. The book is written by the writer, and you get it from the unchanged timeline, before changing the timeline so that the book seemingly creates itself, when in reality, the book was originally written by the writer and you changed the timeline with said book. I think the same applies with Savitar, the Flash probably fought another foe when the Time Remnant was created, which then became Savitar and decided to create itself by running into the future. As we just explained however, Savitar WOULDN'T be able to create himself, as that violates the above mentioned logic. In addition, Barry would have most likely fought the foe that created Savitar in the first place later on, which means that Savitar's creation would be inevitable regardless and it would just be an endless time loop of him getting created and killed. \ |
| 362 | \ |
| 363 | And on an unrelated note, the whole episode with Barry losing his memories doesn't make any sense either. Why would Savitar lose his memories if they fix Barry's memories later on? If Savitar isn't created, how does Barry still have his speed? How do any of them retain their memories? Idk, it just seems like the writers weren't really thinking that hard on this one. |
| 364 | ** This just in: Time travel rules in the Arrowverse make absolutely no sense whatsoever, news at eleven. Seriously, it's pretty clear that the writers are just using time travel shenanigans to justify whatever they want to happen, rules be damned. At this point, you just gotta roll with it and try not to think about it too hard. |
| 365 | [[/folder]] |
| 366 | |
| 367 | [[folder:Savitar's apothesis]] |
| 368 | * Savitar said he would be spread throughout every moment in time to become a god. First off, aren't we always stretched across every moment in time? We are only aware of one at a time, but if you were alive and aware from the universe's birth to death, you would just be overloaded with information that you have no means of processing. Secondly, how is that different, if he could process it, from regular life for him? he can already time travel and alter the timestream. Also, wouldn't all this make him more vulnerable to the time wraiths/black flash? He froze Black Flash in the present, so that effects the future, but BF is still alive in the past, Kill Frost isn't always, and time wraiths may not be able to be frozen to death. Now they don't need to track him because he would always be there to capture/kill/torture/whatever unkillable ghosts controlled by the concept of motion due to annoying people. HOW does any of this make him a god in any sense of the word? |
| 369 | ** Presumably, the 'present' Savitar would now exist outside of time, beyond the reach of the Black Flash. He would be able to see the results of all his actions,and change all actions to benefit himself, and be capable of processing all relevant information. Essentially, he wouldn't just time travel...he would, in a literal sense, BE a sentient version of time. He would also be unkillable. At that point? He would be omniscient, and omnipotent. At which point he IS a god. It's different from a regular life because the amount of EFFORT it takes to time travel would be meaningless. He would also likely be outside paradoxes. |
| 370 | [[/folder]] |
| 371 | |
| 372 | [[folder:Danton Black, common thief?]] |
| 373 | * Revisiting Season 1 for a moment, why did Danton Black rob Stagg's award ceremony in "Fastest Man Alive" instead of going after Stagg while he was out in the open? As we later learn, Black isn't motivated by financial gain. He has a personal grudge against Stagg and wants him dead. Maybe it was a cover, but he spends considerable energy on the robbery, using multiple clones to carry it out. Did he even send one after Stagg? |
| 374 | [[/folder]] |
| 375 | |
| 376 | [[folder: Kadabra's handcuffs]] |
| 377 | * How do the metahuman handcuffs negate Abra Kadabra's powers? There are two glaring problems with this, the first being that he is not even a metahuman and the second being that his technology is CENTURIES ahead of the present day. |
| 378 | ** It's possible that the cuffs dampen ALL powers, not just meta ones, and as for the jump in technology...well, a flint arrowhead is nowhere as advanced as the bullet from an AK-47, but either will still kill you just fine. |
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