User blog:Eobard95/Savitar's timeline

Savitar’s timeline is confusing but I think I’ve more or less figured it out. Savitar’s timeline is confusing because what we watched was a different timeline not only because of Barry’s interventions but also Eobard Thawne, Rip Hunter and Rex Tyler in Legends of Tomorrow, and subsequently Savitar himself also made interventions to compensate. Below is more or less how I think things originally went before it was changed and it is a bit confusing so I’ll try to explain best I can. I am going to go over some already known facts but it's important to revisit these facts to understand how the story works.

I think in the original Post-Flashpoint timeline Barry never learned who Savitar is, he never heard the message from 2056-Barry in 3x08 and never went into the future in 3x09 and 3x19. After meeting Savitar he fought him several times and watched him murder Iris West and the vengefully fought him for three more years, abandoning everyone he cared for. In 2020 Savitar returned to destroy Central City and since Flash was unable to keep up with him, he was forced to create an army of time remnants to stop him. However Savitar slaughtered all the time remnants except one, though he still afflicted him with a massive scar upon him, and escaped after laying waste to most of the city. However the surviving remnant, as depressed as prime-Barry, was neglected by him and then sought out the other members of Team Flash but as he was just a copy of prime-Barry, they shunned remnant-Barry too because they had been abandoned by prime-Barry and didn't view remnant-Barry any differently.

Broken and alone remnant-Barry became spiteful towards his prime-self and sought revenge on him and developed his speed to unimaginable levels. Eventually he became so fast that be believed himself a God and finally realized that Savitar was in fact his own future-self. This finally made remnant-Barry snap out of hatred towards prime-Barry for causing their fiancee's death and embraced his destiny as the God of Speed. After spreading his myth throughout the Multiverse Savitar returned to 2020 to get revenge on Flash and ensure his existence by destorying Central City, forcing Flash to create an army of time remnants to fight him. Savitar killed all the remnants except his own younger self so he could continue the loop, remembering when he fought against Savitar. Then Savitar left until his younger self started his journey and returned to fight Flash again but this time Savitar was imprisoned by Flash in the Speed Force with the help of Tracy Brand.

Savitar was imprisoned for centuries trying to escape but eventually realized the only way to escape was to complete the loop by killing the woman he loved. Remembering his own encounters with Savitar in 2016-2017 as the Flash he knew exactly what to do. Manipulating events between 2012-2017 he used Julian Albert as Doctor Alchemy to turn Wally West into Kid Flash to replace him in his Speed Force prison. Savitar then returned murdered Iris in front of Flash to ensure his existence. However Savitar was still unable to kill Flash as Savitar's younger selves, the original remnant and the Savitar who was imprisoned in the Speed Force, hadn't yet continued to loop. Instead Savitar waged war against Flash between 2017-2020, during which he aligned with Killer Frost, paralysed a vengeful Kid Flash (which I think he did by murdering Jesse Quick and revealing his identity to Wally after viciously beating him half to death) and killing several people as Flash couldn't keep up with him. I think he may have also aligned with Abra Kadabra which is how he knew Savitar's identity in 3x18 who then left for Earth-19 which allowed him to retain his memories of this timeline. Eventually in 2020 Savitar abandoned his conflict with Flash so his younger selves could carry out their side of the loop, which led Flash to believe he'd succeeded in imprisoning Savitar. In reality the oldest version of Savitar was still roaming free and had decided to let Flash live out the rest of his life in misery until at least 2056.

So this is how I think the story of Flash and Savitar played out originally. I hope I've explained it as best I can because this next part is where it really starts to get tricky so I'll try as best I can to explain it.

I think the reason why things didn’t play like this is because 2056-Barry, desperate to change his fate but unwilling to risk creating another Flashpoint, sent a carefully worded message to Rip Hunter in 2016 who actually was present for the Dominator invasion originally. I think 2056-Barry's intention was to have Rip fix his mistakes by stopping Savitar's existence, possibly by killing 2016-Barry and knew he wouldn't share such a secret with the others. However because of the interventions of Eobard Thawne and Rex Tyler the timeline was ruptured and Rip vanished which caused him to be absent from the Dominators invasion this time. Because of this the Legends found 2056-Barry’s message and shared it with 2016-Barry which gave him some insight into his future that he didn't previous have which also clued him into Iris' name being absent from the 2024 newspaper. Since the version of Savitar imprisoned in the Speed Force remembered everything Barry did he would have remembered new life events that he himself never lived, and became fearful that his existence was now jeopardized even if Iris died.

Fearing that Barry wouldn’t complete the loop due to 2056-Barry altering events of which Savitar was unable to stop in his imprisonment he then devised an alternate method of preserving himself using Tracy’s bazooka as a quantum splicer to make himself immortal so no timeline alteration could endanger his existence. To achieve this he deliberately send his younger self into the future in 3x09 to watch Iris die so he’d become desperate enough to save her by altering the future. This would lead to Barry travelling to 2024 in 3x19 to learn of Tracy and prompt him to seek her out to build the trap 3 years earlier so Savitar could have Cisco to adjust it into the splicer. He also aligned himself with Killer Frost knowing that his plan would draw the attention of Black Flash. As a contingency however Savitar still carried out his plan to murder Iris if only to buy himself more time to execute his plan if Tracy was unable to build the trap in 2017 as the events of Savitar's creation would be different and wouldn't play out as they should've, which is why Savitar willingly revealed his identity to Flash in 3x20 as he was so confident it wouldn't matter anymore.

Ok finally done. I’ve thought about this a fair bit considering how utterly messed up this is but I think this is roughly how things played out with Savitar’s timeline. However the Flash producers really didn’t do the best job explaining it in the show. Obviously I don’t know for sure if this is how things are meant to be for Savitar but I can’t think of how else it all ties up. We really should have gotten an appearance from 2056-Barry in the series though to explain all this though or had a flashback into Savitar's past so we could see it played out first hand.