Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-28265951-20160421125919/@comment-28555794-20160601185833

Pointreal wrote: And also, could someone explain 'alternate timeline'? What does it mean when a speedster goes to an alternate timeline? I hate it when people use "alternate timeline" so loosely. Basically anyone who time travels is coming from an "alternate timeline", or the timeline they travel to is alternate, by sheer virtue of their presence in the timeline.

For example: as someone noted above, Zoom 1 is the one who appeared from the future and goaded Barry into killing him. Zoom 1 is from "an alternate timeline" in which a future version of himself did not appear next to him during his battle with Barry. Zoom 2 was already there. Zoom 2 killed Zoom 1 when Barry refused.

Using the term "alternate timeline" in that instance is just a confusing way to say "Zoom 1 travelled into the past and got killed by Zoom 2".

I too got confused initially when people said "alternate timeline".