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Flashpoint (event)

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For other uses of "Flashpoint", see Flashpoint (disambiguation).

"So, uh, what should we call this, uh, brave new world that you've whipped up for us? I was thinking... Flashpoint."
—Eobard Thawne mocking Barry Allen for changing the timeline[src]

An alternate timeline, coined "Flashpoint" by Eobard Thawne, was created by Barry Allen when he traveled back in time and saved his mother Nora Allen from Reverse-Flash. The timeline was reset when Reverse-Flash ran back in time and killed Nora again, restoring everything pretty much to how it was before, albeit with some minor differences. However, after Barry Allen used a superseding form of speedster time travel to live in this timeline's version (Flashpoint) of 2016 for three months, he found the world much different to the timeline that existed before, with Cisco Ramon becoming the genius industrialist instead of Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan, Wally West becoming The Flash instead of Barry, and The Rival becoming a new menace of Central City.[1]

As Jay Garrick later explained to Barry, speedsters are not gods and can never recreate a timeline to their liking; it would be akin to gluing together a broken cup; it remains visibly cracked and isn't back to exactly the way it used to be.[2]

The Flashpoint timeline was seen again when Cisco vibed it to figure out the name of the officer Clive Yorkin was planning to kill.[3]

History[]

Shortly after Zoom killed his father, Barry, so distraught over all the tragedy that he had experienced, ran back in time to stop the Reverse-Flash from killing his mother. Barry arrived in the year 2000 shortly after his future self from 2024 took his younger self to safety, and once the coast was clear, Barry ran into the house and tackled the Reverse-Flash to the ground just before he could stab Nora, and beat him unconscious. He assured his petrified mother that she was safe and ran back to the present with the Reverse-Flash. He watched as the version of him from back in 2015 vanished in thin air as he altered time.[4]

Barry Allen holding Eobard Thawne prisoner in Flashpoint.

Barry Allen holding Eobard Thawne prisoner in Flashpoint.

Barry took Thawne and ran them to the 2016 version of the new timeline he created and placed him into a cage that dampened his speed. For the next three months, Barry lived in a life of pure bliss with both his parents alive and well, he still was a CSI for the CCPD and spent a lot of his spare time at CC Jitters waiting for the right time to ask Iris on a date. He noticed that there were a few differences around the CCPD such as there was a new captain and Joe West was an alcoholic, in danger of losing his job as a police officer. On the day he was finally going to make his move and ask Iris out, Barry heard on the news about a fight happening across town between The Flash and The Rival. Barry was happy that this new reality had its own Flash so he didn't have to be a vigilante speedster, but that changed when he realized that the alternate Flash was Iris' brother, Wally. He also saw that they didn't have the same resources and aid that he had trying to protect the city.

Following this, Barry revealed himself to the West siblings, explaining what the truth of what had happened though Wally and Iris were a little skeptical. He tried to go and receive the help of Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow but their lives were so much different than from his own timeline and neither seemed to want to fight crime like their previous selves did. Soon, Barry began to notice that his memories of his previous life were fading away and Thawne revealed that this world was starting to rewrite their old one and if he didn't let Thawne go and reset it soon, Flashpoint would be permanent when Barry's memory of being the Flash faded. Barry didn't want to lose his parents or his chance to be with Iris in this new world and refused. Barry decided to help Wally stop The Rival and teamed up against him. In the fight Barry managed to defeat the Rival with the aid of Joe but Wally became gravely injured, so much that his hyper healing didn't seem to be enough to help him. Barry realized that all of his friends were starting to pay the price for him to have happiness in this new world and knew he had to put things back to normal.

He freed Thawne and told him that he needed to go back and kill his mother to put everything back. Barry, weakened by the loss of most of his memories, was taken by the Reverse Flash back to the year 2000 to when Barry had saved his mother. When they arrived, the versions of Thawne and Barry there vanished and Thawne preceded to kill his mother as before. Once they returned to the present, Thawne smiled at Barry and hinted that things may not be exactly as Barry had left them. When Barry reunited with Joe and Wally, he immediately noticed a number of massive changes.[1]

(It is unclear whether three months had passed in comparison to the previous timeline's moment of Zoom's defeat, or if Barry returned to the exact same time. In the case of the first assumption, some of these changes may have happened during that time frame regardless of Barry's alteration of the timeline; only the changes older than three months are known for sure to be a result of Barry's time traveling.)

Legacy[]

The Flashpoint timeline can still be accessed by those with dimensional awareness even though this timeline was reset by Eobard. This was shown when Cisco vibed into Flashpoint to determine Clive Yorkin's next victim. The victim was thought to resemble a cop in Flashpoint.[3]

When learning of how anachronisms damaging the timeline would set Mallus free, Wally considered it worse than Flashpoint. He even mentioned to Amaya about the negative repercussions Flashpoint had when trying to convince her not to save her village.

Upon learning of what Barry had done, many of his closest allies berated him and/or temporarily became estranged from him, especially Cisco after Barry refused to go back and save his brother; tensions only became worse when Cisco learned Barry went back and saved his mother. John Diggle was shocked upon finding out his daughter was inadvertently erased from existence and, along with the majority of the Legends, temporarily refused to work with him (or with Oliver when he defended Barry). Others, such as Oliver and Kara, were more understanding, the former knowing anyone would want to save their parents too if given a chance and accepting that everyone makes mistakes, and the latter assuring him that she'll always trust him even if the others don't; Martin and Jax were also less critical, the former knowing that he had messed with time when he unknowingly pushed his past self into having a daughter and therefore would be a hypocrite to judge Barry. By the end of the Dominator invasion, however, everyone seemed to had forgiven him, Cisco having learnt the hard way during the Invasion that time travel can have devastating consequences and finally understood how bad Barry felt about his actions.

In the original timeline, Ralph Dibny was killed following the activation of the particle accelerator. In the new timeline, this never happened; Ralph eventually went on to become Elongated Man and soon after became a full member of Team Flash.[5]

After Savitar's defeat, a Speed Force storm emerged due to Jay Garrick being freed from the Speed Force prison causing an imbalance. Barry willingly went in to a portal to stop it, knowing he might never come out and the personal torment that previous inhabitants, such as Wally and Jay, went through, as he still held himself responsible for everything that happened and truly believed that this fate was his penance. However, he was assured by the Speed Force (speaking as "Nora") that he wouldn't go through that same hell.[6]

Years later, in 2021, Thawne would enact his ultimate revenge against Barry by creating his own Reverse-Flashpoint, swapping lives with Barry, resulting in Armageddon in the effort to erase this timeline.[7]

Changes between the Pre-Flashpoint and Flashpoint timelines[]

  • Henry Allen and Nora Allen are still alive. Barry grew up with them and still lives in their house.
  • Barry Allen didn't get to bond with the West family, as he never lived with them. He did not keep in touch with Iris West after elementary school. He has a simple coworker relationship with Joe West and they are not that close.
  • Joe West is estranged with his daughter and son and he is an alcoholic.
  • Wally West became The Flash instead of Barry Allen, gaining a connection to the Speed Force after his experimental race car was struck by lightning, with Iris being his only ally.
  • Edward Clariss became the speedster known as The Rival, Frankie Kane became the magnokinetic meta-human known as Magenta, an unknown man became the umbrakinetic meta-human known as Shade, and Clive Yorkin gained the power to disintegrate objects with a touch. (It is unclear how these individuals got their powers; there may have been a particle accelerator explosion that empowered people, as in the original timeline, or they may have gotten their powers through other means.)
  • Clive Yorkin was arrested and put in Iron Heights.
  • Julio Mendez became the captain of CCPD instead of David Singh.
  • Cisco Ramon became the CEO of Ramon Industries (which had been S.T.A.R. Labs in the previous timeline) after or instead of Harrison Wells.
  • Caitlin Snow became an ophthalmologist.

Changes between Pre-Flashpoint and Post-Flashpoint timelines[]

For a list of events taking place in the Post-Flashpoint timeline, see Timeline of Earth-1 § Post-Flashpoint timeline.
  • Joe West and Iris West became estranged for a time due to the revelation of her mother being alive.
  • Dante Ramon died in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. (This may have happened during those three months regardless of Barry's time traveling.)
    • This caused Cisco Ramon, Dante's brother, to request that Barry travel back in time to save Dante from his fate, to which Barry refused (both the time remnant that took the original Barry's place in the native timeline while the latter lived in Flashpoint, and the original Barry after Flashpoint), driving a wedge between the two close friends. After it was revealed by Killer Frost that Barry's time-traveling may have been a cause of Dante's death, the relationship between Cisco and Barry worsened until Cisco inadvertently made a change to the timeline during the fight against the Dominators, leading the two to make amends.
    • It's possible that Joe and Wally West hanging out at the West house was an altered version of the get-together from the previous timeline. Felicity Smoak stated that Barry came back to the moment he left after Flashpoint was reversed (repeating what Barry himself had told her off-screen). It's implied that Barry and Iris never had their conversation on the porch. Taking all this into account, in addition to the fact that Cisco and Barry's relationship was damaged and Joe and Iris not speaking, it would make sense for Iris and Cisco to not have attended the get-together, leaving only Barry, Joe, Wally, and Caitlin. Caitlin's absence could be explained by the fact that she may not have wanted to come to the get-together if not everyone was there, especially since Cisco is one of her best friends on Team Flash.
  • S.T.A.R. Labs now has a speed lab where speedsters can train.
    • However, it's unknown when exactly the speed lab was created, as when Barry and Nora West-Allen traveled back in time from 2018 to 2016, the room with the treadmill where Zoom stole Barry's speed still existed.[8]
  • The members of Team Flash now have "panic buttons" installed on their phones.
  • John Diggle doesn't have a daughter anymore, but a son instead. In addition to the gender difference, Diggle's child was also born a month later in the new timeline.
  • Julian Albert started working at the CCPD as a CSI in late 2015. He also inadvertently released Savitar three years prior, and unknowingly became Alchemy as a result.
  • The future has changed, one specific change being Iris getting killed by Savitar in the future before the year 2024, with the future newspaper article instead being written by Julie Greer. However this was later averted, and Iris's name appeared on the article afterwards.
  • Ralph Dibny, who was one of the fourteen people who died in the particle accelerator explosion, survived the event.[9][10] This later led to him becoming a "bus meta" after Barry was released from the Speed Force a year after Flashpoint and a member of Team Flash who later became known as the Elongated Man.
  • Bruce Wayne/Batman disappeared in 2015 after killing the Joker causing someone else to replace him.[11]

Additionally, the following events occur as a direct result of Flashpoint:

  • It created a time loop in which future Flash created several time remnants to trap Savitar in the Speed Force, only for Savitar to slaughter most of them, except one. This one that was spared had become shunned by Team Flash for being a time remnant, and not the "real" Barry. Alone and overwhelmed by his painful memories, he became desperate to end his pain eventually coming to a realization that "God" feels no pain and he eventually decided to become one himself, later becoming Savitar and continuing the loop.
    • However, since the death of Iris West in 2017 was necessary for Savitar to be born and H.R. Wells sacrificed himself to save Iris from her fate, a new timeline set where Barry would never go on to create the time remnant that became Savitar. Consequently, the Speed Force was alerted to Savitar's paradoxical status and erased the speedster from the timeline.[6]
  • Julian Albert as Alchemy while possessed by Savitar is able to restore the superhuman abilities of seven meta-humans who only had powers in the Flashpoint timeline: The Rival, Magenta, Shade, Clive Yorkin, Wally West, and two other unidentified people.
  • The Dominators launch an invasion of Earth, as they were alerted to Barry's time traveling and seek to prevent Earth's meta-humans from doing further damage to the universe. (Mostly out of fear that some would be sadistic like Agent Smith, who tortured/interrogated a Dominator.)[12]
  • Because Barry removed Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash from his native time period in the act of saving his mother, Eobard was able to exist as a time remnant and as a result, avoid his erasure by Eddie Thawne in 2015. Eobard's paradoxical status caused him to be recklessly hunted by the Black Flash, a demented Speed Force enforcer, in order to remove him from the timeline.[13] As a result, Eobard assembled the Legion of Doom and began a campaign to retrieve the Askaran Amulet and Spear of Destiny in order to rewrite reality and forcibly make himself a part of the timeline, during which he changed history several times, antagonizing the Legends. Despite his initial success and the creation of an alternate reality where he captured the Black Flash, the new reality was eventually reversed by the Legends and Eobard was subsequently erased from existence by the liberated Black Flash.

Creation of another multiverse[]

The creation of the Flashpoint timeline resulted in the splintering of the multiverse into two halves, leading to a version of the multiverse where Flashpoint occurred, and one where it didn't. The timeline of these two multiverses had a number of differences, with the no-Flashpoint multiverse having a Crisis in 2018 and having an Earth-27 with a significantly changed timeline.[14][15][16][17] These changes include:

  • Savitar never existed, so H.R. wasn't killed and remained a member of Team Flash.
  • The Thinker was easily defeated due to H.R.'s help.
  • Ricardo Diaz was easily defeated thanks to the Flash's help. As a result, Oliver never went to jail.
  • Barry never met his future daughter.
  • Barry has faced criminals such as Hocus Pocus, Abra Kadabra, and Earthworm.
  • Barry interfered in Earth-27's timeline.
  • A series of bombings were caused by Ambush in Star City.
  • Brie Larvan remained comatose and Joe met her brother, Bert Larvan.
  • Barry traveled to two different futures, where he met the Tornado Twins and fought the techno-wizards.
  • A Crisis happened in 2018 which involved speedsters from Earth-27 stuck on Earth-1 after the destruction of their Earth by the Anti-Matter Man. This also caused the Crime Syndicate of America to invade Earth-1.

Appearances[]

The Flash[]

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8


DC's Legends of Tomorrow[]

Season 2[]

Season 3[]

Arrow[]

Season 5[]

Novels[]

The Chronicles of Cisco[]

Trivia[]

  • The Speed Force and the Dominators' memories weren't affected by Flashpoint.[18] The latter ended up causing an invasion to eradicate the meta-human population.[12]
  • Other Earths in the multiverse (Earth-2 and Earth-38, for example) were not affected by Flashpoint, due to them each having their own timelines.[19]
  • As Joe mentions Barry just lost his father upon his arrival to the new timeline, this may be implying that his war with Zoom carried on for three more months, although this is unlikely as it would constitute a fairly major change to the timeline. Alternatively, Thawne dropped Barry off on the night right where he left off before he time traveled, but this is contradicted by later statements indicating that time has passed since Flashpoint began.
  • It is unknown, how all the meta-humans in the Flashpoint timeline gained their powers. One could assume that since Barry took Eobard Thawne away, he was never able to kill and assume the identity of the original Harrison Wells. Thus, it is possible that Harrison Wells built the particle accelerator, and somehow it could have given the meta-humans their powers, but this is purely a conjecture, and it can't be confirmed, since the S.T.A.R. Labs had become Ramon Industries.
  • While Flashpoint's world-affecting consequences to Earth-1 stay true to the comics, Flashpoint itself did not follow the comic arc, which had personal and global stakes, making it a do-or-die situation for Barry. This alternate timeline instead focused on Barry's personal stakes of forgetting his current life, and the world remained seemingly fine.
    • Ironically, Thawne's Reverse-Flashpoint time line did a better job of adapting the Flashpoint comic arc. Not only did Barry lose many of his allies, he also had to risk destroying the world to reset the timeline and restore his own existence.
  • While it was not explicitly stated in the series that Ralph Dibny's survival of the particle accelerator explosion was a post-Flashpoint change, it was alluded a few times in Season 5.
    • In "Nora", Ralph referenced the idea that in another timeline, he could have been killed in the particle accelerator explosion.
    • In "Legacy", Eobard stated that Ralph should be dead.


Behind the scenes[]

References[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Flashpoint"
  2. ↑ "Paradox"
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Untouchable"
  4. ↑ "The Race of His Life"
  5. ↑ "Legacy"
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Finish Line"
  7. ↑ "Armageddon, Part 4"
  8. ↑ "What's Past is Prologue"
  9. ↑ "Power Outage"
  10. ↑ "The Flash: About that Ralph Dibny reference in season 1…" - Entertainment Weekly
  11. ↑ The Flash: Supergirl's Sacrifice
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 "Invasion!"
  13. ↑ "The Legion of Doom"
  14. ↑ The Flash: Hocus Pocus
  15. ↑ The Flash: Johnny Quick
  16. ↑ The Flash: The Tornado Twins
  17. ↑ The Flash: Green Arrow's Perfect Shot
  18. ↑ "Into the Speed Force"
  19. ↑ "Magenta"
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