Speed Force

"The Speed Force is eternity itself, an endless void of time and energy."

—Jay Garrick^[src]

Speed Force
Information
Location	Multiverse
Use(s)	Extra-dimensional energy source

The Speed Force is an extra-dimensional source of energy where a group of meta-humans called Speedsters draw their power to run extraordinarily fast and to utilize a number of abilities including time travel and traveling between dimensions. The Speed Force also acts as a sort of purgatory-like realm for speedsters who when killed appear inside the Speed Force and are offered the chance to leave but without their speed, but will restore their power if they prove themselves worthy enough to wield it again. The Speed Force also has enforcers called Time Wraiths to pursue those who use time travel for selfish or foolish reasons, either killing them to prevent further disruption of the timeline, or to imprison them within the Speed Force itself as punishment. Particularly dangerous time travelers or aberrations are hunted down by the Black Flash. The Speed Force is also somewhat sentient, manifesting itself in the forms of those closest to speedsters within the Speed Force to communicate with them. The Speed Force itself claims to have been around since the beginning of time itself and will exist until at least the end of the known universe. It is not known yet whether the Speed Force represents a physical or a metaphysical aspect of reality itself.

History

"When the first subatomic particle sprang forth from the Big Bang to form reality as you know it, we were there. When the last proton decays, stops vibrating, and plunges the universe into heat death, we'll be there too."

—A manifestation of the Speed Force describes itself to Barry Allen^[src]

The time remnant of Barry Allen from 2020 or 2021 travelled back to an unknown period and spread his legend throughout the multiverse and across time, with the lie of his power being the first speedster to ever be granted power to the Speed Force, eventually becoming the fastest out of all of them who desired to challenge other powerful speedsters who threatened his power to battle before taking over their Earths.

Between 2180-2190s, Eobard gained a connection to the Speed Force and eventually traveled back in time to an unknown time period and under unclear circumstances, he became the Reverse-Flash.

In the original timeline, Barry gained a connection to the Speed Force in 2020, because of the particle accelerator from S.T.A.R. Labs created by Harrison Wells and Tess Morgan, but, because Eobard killed his mother, he gained access to Speed Force in 2013 in the current timeline because the particle accelerator from S.T.A.R. Labs created by Harrison Wells (which is actually Eobard in the form of Harrison Wells because he killed him and his wife in 2000)

After traveling back to the year 2000, Eobard Thawne lost his connection to the Speed Force due to copious amounts of time travel. Fifteen years later, while masquerading as Harrison Wells, Eobard was able to use a tachyon prototype to access the Speed Force, absorbing some of it and allowing him to run at high speeds, and vibrate his body and voice.

Sometime later, needing to remove a small bomb from the Flash's wrist without it exploding, Eobard motivated the Flash to become one with his speed, thus becoming one with the Speed Force, allowing him to better hone his ability to vibrate and phase through a tanker, leaving the band on the other side.

In 2013, on another Earth, a serial killer named Hunter Zolomon became connected with the Speed Force. However, this speedster was proven unworthy due to abusing the Speed Force for his own benefit, such as killing others. He also time traveled recklessly throughout the timeline, forcing the Speed Force to clean up his mess. Hunter later developed a drug to make him go faster, thus further abusing his speed to terrorize more Earths throughout the multiverse. One day, while on an unknown Earth, Hunter found out that the drug was killing him and he attempted to manipulate the Speed Force. Because of all of his selfish actions until now, The Speed Force responded by constantly sending Time Wraiths after Hunter, since he has been proven too much of a threat to the timeline to remain alive. However, these efforts were to no avail since the unworthy speedster went into hiding.

The Flash runs so fast that he can physically see the Speed Force.

When trying to travel back in time to rescue his mother from being murdered, Barry Allen was able to physically see the Speed Force after passing Mach 2, viewing events from his past, present and future all at once. To travel where he wanted to go, Barry had to think about a specific time and place, before transporting into his childhood home and into his bed room, just as his younger self-was walking down the stairs to see his mother trapped in the tornado of light, that was actually Reverse-Flash and the future Flash fighting over the younger Barry's fate at super speed.

A few months later, Barry traveled back in time to where his former teacher, Eobard Thawne, was alive since he was desperate to run faster to beat Zoom aka Hunter Zolomon. Because of such an invalid reason, The Speed Force sent a Time Wraith after the rookie speedster. However, this Wraith failed to do its mission, as it was obliterated by outside help from Barry's friends.

When Barry tried to regain his powers through a second particle accelerator explosion, instead of him simply regaining his powers, the will of the Speed Force pulled Barry into itself. It was inside of the Speed Force that Barry discovered that the Speed Force had a personality and could be spoken to. Before the Speed Force allowed Barry to regain his powers, he had to prove himself worthy of retrieving his powers again. In order for Barry to regain his powers, the Speed Force gave him a trial, to catch a dark speeding shadow. The shadow at every stop led Barry to places of great personal importance where the Speed Force manifested itself as an important person in his life to speak to him. During the trial, Cisco created a breach to the Speed Force dimension and a vortex of energy appeared to Barry. The Speed Force told Barry that if he did not complete the trial before leaving, he would be returning to Earth without his powers. By accepting tragedy and moving on instead of letting it define him, the Speed Force allowed him to become a speedster again with the shadow appearing before Barry so that he could catch it. The shadow was revealed to be a manifestation of Barry as The Flash, before Barry transformed into the figure. Barry then left the Speed Force dimension with the help of Iris calling out to him through the vortex after hugging the Speed Force's manifestation of his mother. After defeating Girder, Barry visited Jesse in her coma where he touched her hand and a spark of energy woke her from the coma. It is unknown whether or not this ultimately helped activate her abilities.

The Speed Force later sent two Time Wraiths after Barry when he created a time remnant during his fight with Hunter. Upon arriving however they discovered Hunter and realizing that Barry used the time remnant to clue them into Hunter's location, the Wraiths spared Barry and attacked Hunter instead. Badly beaten and weakened from the race, Hunter could only scream in terror as the Time Wraiths surrounded him and began forcibly transforming him into a demonic-looking skeletal being, changing the lightning-bolt emblem of his costume red as well as its outline and the earpieces, turning the emblem circle white and turning his speed lightning red. The Time Wraiths then reopened their portal and dragged the decaying form of Zoom into the Speed Force. This made him lose his remaining sanity, his humanity, his free will and decayed his body to an undead state similar to that of the Wraiths. Whatever punishment he received was unknown but what is clear is that he suffered a fate far worse than death and months later it was revealed that he was transformed into a worse and most powerful version of time specters.

Later, Jay and Barry attempt to trap Savitar for good in the Speed Force by throwing the Philosopher's Stone in a wormhole Barry created. Barry is then shown a possible future where Iris West dies, explaining that either Savitar was freed after being thrown in the Speed Force, or that the Philosopher's Stone will reappear in the future. This became commonly known as the Speed Force Prison, where one with a connection to the Speed Force must remain. It was later then revealed that Speed Force was where the future Barry locked up to Savitar and the team Flash unconsciously they gave him the stone, except for a bit that Savitar needed free himself from the Speed Force and Caitlin had stolen for herself, and when Wally threw the last bit into the Speed Force, it took him in place of Savitar. When rescuing Wally, Barry enters the Speed Force and the Speed Force shows up in the form of people from his past, such as Ronnie, Eddie, and Snart. When he finds Wally, with the help of Jay, Wally is trapped in his own personal hell: his mother's death, over and over. Savitar faced this when he was in the Speed Force, and Jay is also facing this in the present as the Speed Force needed someone in place of Wally and Jay took that place.

In the final battle with Savitar, Savitar created a Speed Force portal and was using an inter-dimensional splicer to splice himself throughout reality, space, and time. In an attempt to stop him, the Speed Force dispatched Hunter to erase him from existence. However, Killer Frost who was beside Savitar the whole time defeated Hunter with a cold blast. When Savitar used the splicer, however, Jay was finally freed and assisted Team Flash in defeating the former. This, however, had very destructive consequences as the Speed Force had become unstable due to the vacancy of the Speed Force Prison, which in effect caused a Speed Force Storm which devastated Central City. Realizing that the only way to stop the storm was to go into the Speed Force, Barry voluntarily went with the Speed Force for his past crimes of creating Flashpoint and his use of time travel.

Physical manifestations

Lightning coloration

When accessing the Speed Force, speedsters can generate lightning/electricity from their bodies, most noticeably trailing their bodies as they run. The color of the lightning that is generated normally is indicative of the specific type of connection that a speedster has achieved with the Speed Force.

• Yellow: Yellow lightning is generated by speedsters with a pure or natural connection to the Speed Force. Yellow is the typical lightning color beginner speedsters start out with. Speedsters who develop their powers over time, such as Jay Garrick and Barry Allen eventually begin to exhibit yellow lightning of a darker shade, almost orange, as their powers grow and evolve. This is seen from Barry Allen, his time remnant Savitar (without his armor), Jay Garrick, Jesse Wells, Wally West, Blitzkrieg and also formerly from Hunter Zolomon and Eliza Harmon. It has also been demonstrated that speedsters may alter their lightning color (typically to this color) by running slower than usual. This is demonstrated by Hunter Zolomon when taking Velocity-9 to stop Adam Fells whilst Barry Allen was away on Earth Two.

• Red: Red lightning is typically the result of a speedster having a corrupted or negative connection to the Speed Force. This is supported by Eobard stating to have replicated the reaction that gave Barry his powers, yet claims the essence of his powers is the exact opposite to the Flash's. This is seen from Eobard Thawne and Edward Clariss. Also, speedsters such as Hunter who are taken by Time Wraiths into the Speed Force also have their lightning turned red.

• Blue: Blue lightning generation is the result of an individual speedster who artificially develops/boosts a connection through a strong enough dosage of the "Velocity". While greatly increasing the user's speed, it also comes with lethal/life-threatening side-effects as seen with speedsters like Hunter Zolomon and Eliza Harmon.
• White: White lightning is uniquely generated by the original speedster and the self-proclaimed "god of speed" Savitar, who is actually a time remnant of Barry Allen. It is a result of his lightning reflecting through his armor when he wears it.
• Purple: Purple lightning generation has been produced solely by "Accelerated Man", uniquely enough that he is currently the only known speedster in the multiverse that is able to do so. It is unknown why he has this coloration.

The Flash emitting yellow lightning.

The Reverse Flash zipping around the football field.png

Reverse Flash emitting red lightning.

Zoom emitting blue lightning.

The Flash's time remnant, Savitar, emitting white lightning.

Accelerated Man emitting purple lightning.

Eye transformation

Users of the Speed Force, sometimes by tapping into their power, can cause their eyes to transform in some way, either by being filled with yellow electricity, which can cause the surrounding skin to glow yellow, shining blue light, shining dark red light or electricity that can even cause the surrounding parts of the face to glow red, or the entire eye becoming pitch black. The first occurrence is the sign of a natural connection to the Speed Force and can even manifest for users of Velocity before it begins to degenerate them. The fifth is caused after such degeneration. It is unknown how the third and the fourth occurrence originates, and the second has shown to solely occur with the self-proclaimed "God of Speed", Savitar, due to the armor's lightning.

Yellow lightning flickering in Barry Allen's eyes.

Barry Allen's glowing blue eyes while wearing his armor.

Red lightning flickering in Eobard Thawne's eyes.

Eobard Thawne's glowing red eyes while disguised as Harrison Wells.

Hunter Zolomon's black eyes.

Inside the Speed Force dimension

When trapped inside of the Speed Force, the body of the speedster will appear in a vortex of electrical energy, while the speedster will be inside a dream world similar to where they are from on Earth, albeit without people. The sentient will of the Speed Force can choose to manifest itself to a speedster as someone in their life and speak to them. The Speed Force can then put a speedster through a trial and choose to give powers to a speedster should they not have them. In the dream world, the trial will manifest as the former speedster having to catch a shadow-like, vibrating blur of motion that moves at superspeed and represents their powers. However, they must be able to remove mental blocks from themselves in order to do so, such as guilt. They must confront the source of their pain and overcome it, which will cause the shadow to come to them and restore their powers. However, the only known way to leave the realm is through a portal made from the outside, while it is unknown if the Speed Force will make a portal for the speedster to travel through, though it most likely can.

Time Wraiths

As the Speed Force has sentience, it also has enforcers whose mission is to keep time traveling speedsters in check. The Time Wraiths are interdimensional, corpse-like beings that automatically hunt speedsters that are a threat to the timeline by moving through time. It is believed that only speedsters who are reckless and without forethought of how their presence in established events could damage the timeline will be hunted down, while more careful ones will not be. They are not always able to find their target immediately but will never stop until they succeed. These creatures are capable of effortlessly following a speedster through time and possibly through other dimensions. They are able to match most speedsters in speed, or by taking it from them and quickly overpower them. Most prominently, they are able to drain a target of life through physical contact and age them to death. It can also drag them through dimensions, though what exactly happens to this particular victim is unknown. It is known that in the process they can physically degenerate a person, causing them to take on a Time Wraith's corpse-like appearance while turning their lightning red, as well as some parts of their uniform should they have one on.

Black Flash

After Hunter Zolomon/Zoom was caught by Time Wraiths, after his race with The Flash, he endured a punishment far worse than death, for it seemingly caused him to lose his remaining sanity, his humanity, his free will and decayed his body to an undead state similar to that of the Wraiths. Condemned to serve the will of the Speed Force for eternity, he was transformed into a savage, demonic speedster driven by a lust to kill and operating on a newfound ability to sense the use of the Speed Force by other speedsters. He finally emerged out of the Speed Force as a monstrous speedster-hunter set on bringing down the Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash ever since he and Barry Allen returned to 2016 following the erasing of Flashpoint, to a world where Thawne wasn't supposed to exist and therefore was a paradoxical threat. Hunter was summoned by the Speed Force to attack Barry when he comes into the Speed Force to save Wally West/Kid Flash, but its physical form was destroyed. He succeeds in erasing Eobard Thawne for good after Sara Lance used the Spear of Destiny to free him of Thawne's jail. Later, after Savitar fails to kill Iris West, the Speed Force sends him after Savitar, but Killer Frost destroys the creature's form for the second time before it can reach Savitar.

Protecting the timeline

It is possible that the Speed Force is what protects time itself as well as giving speedsters their powers. After Eddie Thawne killed himself in an attempt to erase Eobard Thawne from existence, the Speed Force acted as a bomb shelter that protected Eobard from erasure. The timeline needed Eobard to live to prevent further paradoxes so the Speed Force protected Eobard and placed him in the timeline where important events such as the day Nora Allen died or the day in 2016 when Eobard first met Barry in his timeline as time remnants. It let him live until the point in his timeline when he was supposed to be erased. However when Barry created Flashpoint, this did not happen right, so Black Flash as a servant of the Speed Force was sent to remove Eobard from the timeline to correct the aberration. This is why Eobard needed the Spear of Destiny, to prevent his erasure and keep Zoom from coming after him. It is unknown if this happens with anyone of importance that is accidentally erased or just speedsters whose time travel led to their erasure.

Speed Force Prison

In the possible future from which Savitar was created, the future Barry Allen used a Speed Force bazooka to create a prison within the Speed Force that needed to be filled by a speedster, in which he trapped Savitar. While the true nature of this prison is unknown, it seemed to become permanently inside Speed Force and still existed in a timeline in which the technology was not used on Savitar, even after he was erased from existence by his failure to kill Iris West. As such, the Speed Force would destabilize if there was no speedster within the prison, which would result in an inter-dimensional storm of energy that potentially threatened the entire planet if it was not filled. Aside from Savitar, the prison has been inhabited by Wally West, who was tricked into taking Savitar's place within it, Jay Garrick, who willing took Wally's place, and Barry Allen, who chose to enter it to keep it from destabilizing. The prison has been described as "hell" due to the prisoner being isolated and left unable to age or die, while it also forces them through an endless temporal loop of their most painful experience for eternity. This is what drove Savitar mad with a vengeance for Barry Allen and what nearly traumatized Wally West by having him witnessing his mother's death repeatedly.

Despite this, Barry Allen was told by the Speed Force that he would not experience the hell that Wally, Jay and Savitar went through when it brought him into it.

Six months later, the Speed Force opened a giant portal in downtown Central City, releasing Barry from it, while at the same time exposing a bus full of twelve people to dark matter, turning them into metahumans.

Powers and abilities

Powers

The Speed Force enhances all movement, momentum and force exerting capabilities of its user, down to a microscopic level, as well as giving the user conscious control over it. This enhances overall acceleration, agility, reflexes, coordination, balance, and reaction time to inhuman levels. In addition, the body becomes conditioned beyond human potential, allowing them to handle extreme physical exertion and performance, which is also enhanced. The Speed Force is also able to have a sentient will much unlike any element or energy seen in The Flash, allowing access to their energy and properties to be given to a worthy user for them. Users of the Speed Force have demonstrated the following abilities:

• Accelerated healing factor: All chemical, cellular, and neural processes, as well as brain activity, are far faster than normal, which enhances the speed and efficiency of physical healing and metabolism to inhuman levels. This causes users to be able to be completely healed from non-lethal injuries as severe as broken bones, burns, and even paralysis, in a matter of hours or days without any linger effects, therapy, or treatment, unless the injuries are immediately lethal. Users are also more resilient to physical impacts and collisions, giving them immunity to being stunned, dazed, unbalanced or staggered by great forces, especially while moving at super speed.
• Superhuman longevity: Due to their accelerating healing factors, speedsters age much slower than normal humans; for example, Barry Allen a speedster known as the Flash, spend 6 months inside the Speed Force, which possibly could have been 10000 years, he looks exactly the same from the day when he first became the Flash, also in a potential future of the year 2024, Barry who has been the Flash for 10 years, has not aged much.
• Aerokinesis: A user using super speed while moving their entire body, or part of it in a repetitive motion, such as back and forth, spinning, or otherwise circular motions, can manipulate air flows and currents and therefore generate powerful winds and manipulating them with there repeated motions. These motions can also be achieved by the user moving or running back and forth or in a circle. The user can therefore create intense whirlwinds, cyclones, tornadoes, vortexes and vacuums of air with these motions, or propel themselves through the air. This can allow the user to disperse the physical force from oncoming targets or propel them away.
• Bodily vibration/Intangibility: Since these enhanced movement and acceleration capabilities affected the user microscopically, it allowed the user to manipulate the movement and acceleration of their cells, and even their molecules, allowing them to shake and vibrate their bodies or parts of it by willing their cells to do so. These vibrations can enhance physical force produced by physical contact, and distort the users image to the point where the user becomes a vibrating blur of motion, even when they are not using their speed. A user can disguise their appearance with this, as well as their voice by vibrating their vocal cords, which can produce an electronic, distorted voice or a garbled, deep growl. Vibrating also allows a user to cause tremors and jolt through physical contact, enough to perform feats such as breaking metal locks or part of a mug by touching the object, or generating enough friction to level a bridge by running on it repeatedly. By vibrating their hand, the user can generate the force of a buzzsaw, enough to effortlessly punch and smash through machinery and saw through metal chains. Some users can even use their vibrations to punch through flesh and bone, much like phasing through solid objects, though it is unknown how they accomplish this without harming themselves.Also by vibrating their bodies at different frequencies allows a user to become intangible and pass through solid objects, even people. Some users can even phase objects into people or infuse various objects with intangible with physical contact, though this is especially straining. through people can be lethal, as villainous speedsters will often vibrate their arms through a target and cause them to drop dead. With this, they are able to phase into people, while still being able to touch and grab tangible objects, which allows them to damage the victim from the inside. However, it is not always lethal, as a user could phase into someone to pull objects, such as bullets, out of the person, to put something they holding inside of a person without breaching their skin, phase their momentum-enhanced punch into a the targets of greater resilience to incapacitate them, or even run right through others without harming them. The ability could even cause an opponent's attacks to pass through the user, even if the attacker is someone as powerful as Supergirl. Vibrating through something electrical, such as a computer, can cause it to overload and fry.
• Electrokinesis: Connection to the Speed Force causes Speedsters' bodies to generate electricity, which they can learn to manipulate. It generally acts as a bolster, amplifying their running speed to much high levels. By running within a circular motion with enough intensity, they are able to envelop their arms in electricity, that they can then throw at a target, though other speedsters may be able to solidify it through touch, and throw it back (however, Savitar does not always need to run in circles as he can throw lightning while running normally, as seen in Finish Line). Also, by focusing friction of a specific part of their body, such as their hands, they can generate a strong static shock that is powerful enough to restart a person's heart. The great amounts of electricity generated from the body has been demonstrated be able to cause nearby electronics to glitch and fluctuate. This Speed Force lightning has been shown to vary in color between the differing speedsters seen so far. Speedsters' electrical generation seems to have a connection to how they can alter the color of their eyes.
  • Speed Force sharing: Certain users can share their powers with other people by physical contact. In one instance, a speedster was able to share a spark of the Speed Force to stabilize the condition of someone who was hit by a wave of energy from a controlled particle accelerator explosion and suffering from the same initial side effects that a speedster usually goes through once went through when they first get their powers.
• Accelerated perception: The increase in speed and activity within bodily systems can enhance the user's physical performance to great extent, as well as increasing these systems overall reaction speed, resulting in adrenaline, dopamine and other endorphins to be produced quicker and the user being able to think, read, scan and comprehend concepts and ideas, and retain all said information in seconds while their powers are in use. Therefore, the user's mental speed and efficiency, as well as physical, is also enhanced to inhuman levels. They can see the world moving in slow motion, while others can only see them as a vibrating blur of motion, usually accompanied by an aura of differently colored electricity.
• Superhuman senses: Connection to the Speed Force enhances the user's senses, allowing them to see and hear perfectly normal when moving at superhuman speeds, even at or above the speed of sound, where sound would normally not be heard.
• Superhuman momentum: Users of the Speed Force have inhuman motion and momentum capabilities, allowing them to generate and channel extreme amounts of kinetic energy, friction, inertia, and other applied and contact forces. This enhanced movement and physical force allow a user to be able to increase the power of physical impacts and collisions and generate the force to simulate superhuman strength by charging their attacks with extreme amounts of physical force. While this can usually be done only at super speed, most users can quickly learn to charge their attacks with force while at normal speed, or by attacking using a brief burst of super speed. With this, users not only can send people flying through the air, but to smash through, crush and dismantle machinery and circuitry with only their fist or bare hand. Villainous speedsters have even shown the capacity to use this to punch a gaping, bloody hole through people, with some even tearing out the heart of their victim. In fact, some speedsters have used their speed to kill opponents though fatal high-speed collision. They can also cause tremors and jolt through physical contact, usually while vibrating at the same time, enough to level a bridge by running on it repeatedly. Users of the Speed Force also have inhuman stopping power and can usually come to a full stop despite the fact that they are moving with extreme momentum.
  • Geokinesis: Speedsters that exert great amounts of force are able to induce extreme amounts of jolt and friction, either by intensely running past the speed of sound or touching an object while vibrating. Savitar possessed intense enough speed and force to cause a small earthquake near him and Trajectory was capable of causing a bridge to fall apart by running back and forth on it repeatedly with great intensity. Barry Allen managed to shake S.T.A.R. Labs when he passed Mach 2 for the first time.
• Superhuman strength: Connection to the Speed Force heightens the user's strength to various levels, enough to exert superhuman force without using super speed. Some users possess strength around peak human levels, while other users possess strength at a near-superhuman level. Users with advanced strength levels have been shown to easily pick up and throw full grown humans with one hand. Savitar's armor, due to its size and mechanized parts, augmented evil time remnant's base strength enough for him to effortlessly pick up, drag, throw and send people flying with one hand.
• Superhuman durabilty: Connection to the Speed Force also grants the user superhuman durability. This greatly increases their bodily resilience to inhuman levels, allowing most speedsters to develop inhuman resistance to lack of breathable air, exposure to toxins or sedatives, and impact with physical forces that would easily crush or kill normal humans. Users of the Speed Force can withstand great amounts of physical damage and sustain little, to no injury. Notably, many speedsters are shown to survive being sent flying across city blocks, blasted with energy, falls from buildings and other great heights, and attacks from beings with enhanced strength with little need for recovery.
• Superhuman agility: Connection to the Speed Force also grants the user inhuman agility, coordination, balance, equilibrium, and dexterity, which allows the user to not be tripped by great forces, especially as they move at super speed. Users can also use this to perform feats such as run on vertical surfaces, as well as running and jumping along falling debris.
• Superhuman reflexes: User's of the Speed Force possess reflexes that are also enhanced to inhuman levels, whether they are moving at super speed or not. This allows them to react instantly to almost anything, including fast moving projectiles such as bullets.
• Superhuman stamina: User's of the Speed Force possess stamina that enhanced to inhuman levels. They are able to withstand the stresses of moving at superhuman speeds, without tiring or becoming weak.
• Superhuman speed: Primarily, the Speed Force gives users the ability to move at inhuman speeds. This ability allows the user's overall speed to rival the fastest vehicles at low levels, while advanced levels allow the user to break the sound barrier and moving at supersonic speeds. The user's speed usually causes them to appear as vibrating blurs or streaks of motion. Users are fast enough to move on vertical surfaces and ceilings, as well as on water, with ease. With enough speed, users can enhance their ability to jump, allowing them leap or spring several feet through the air, to the point where they can jump across the length of a freeway bridge. It was also recently revealed that if a speedster runs fast enough, as demonstrated by Barry in the Flashpoint timeline, they can even run inside tornadoes. Recently it has been revealed that prolonged exposure inside the Speed Force greatly amplifies the user's speed growth due to access to its pure energies.
  • Speed mirages: Skilled users have been fast enough to distort light and create a holographic, mirage-like projection of themselves and appear to be in two or more places at once by moving from one location to the other fast enough and therefore create an after image of themselves. These projections become less realistic looking when the user is creating more than one.
  • Time travel: Advanced users can create a hole in the fabric of space-time and travel through time. Upon doing so, they can enter the timeline independent from themselves, or "merge" with their temporal counterpart to be reinserted with that timeline. When performing the later, should any changes happen to the timeline, the speedster will retain all memories of the previous timeline in addition to the new one, even able to differentiate between the two. This ability is also the most dangerous, as altering the events of the past in the slightest could distort the user's present and future, usually with devastating results.
    • Time remnant construct: The most skilled of users could shift back in time momentarily to manifest a "clone" that, unlike a speed mirage, is as alive and independently thinking as they are. They do not always share the user's current personality as the further back they go, the less like their current self the time remnant becomes, but only if their past self is any different from their current self. If they shift through years, their time remnant will not possess their current memories and most likely not have their current personality. However, the user can shift back minutes and even seconds to create a clone that is truly the same as them. It has been stated that one needed to be willing to kill their time remnant, and therefore willing to kill themselves, in order to be able to create them.
  • Interdimensional travel: Like time travel, advanced users can create a hole in the fabric of space-time to create portals between dimensions and travel to different universes. Savitar has demonstrated a complete mastery of this ability, to where he can instantly warp to anywhere in Earth One's Central City. However, it's possible that the reason for this is because, at the time when he was shown to be able to do this, he was trapped in the Speed Force, and subsequently fast enough that he was completely invisible to non-speedsters, even when standing still. After tricking Walley into freeing him from the Speed Force prison, he was slower, enough so that he was visible to non-speedsters.

Weaknesses

Speedsters may show one or more weaknesses despite their connection to the Speed Force. Whether this hints towards inherent limitations of the speed force itself or just to limitations of its users' control over it, is not known for sure, but the latter seems more likely.

• Cold temperatures:: Because speed is produced by a build-up of heat in the target's atoms, speedsters are vulnerable to extremely cold temperatures. It will also temporarily stunt their healing capacities.
• Electricity absorption: Speedsters' unique biology causes their body to produce massive amounts of electricity, which charges their molecules and allows them to accelerate their movement. Should a speedster be drained of this electrical energy, they will lose their power. However, the Speed Force is genetically coded to their DNA, meaning they are incapable of losing their potential for enhanced speed. If this electricity is absorbed by another source, all of their powers will be suppressed, including their healing and accelerated perception. Much like an electrical device, which needs to recharge, speedsters must electrify themselves to a great extent in order to jump-start their powers once more.
• Gravity: While deprived of gravity, a speedster's lack of weight prevents them from accessing their speed.
• Hyper-metabolism: While moving at accelerated speeds, speedsters burn calories much faster than a normal person. This requires them to consume large amounts of nutrients (about 10,000 calories from a single day of exertion) to maintain peak physical performance. Continued usage of his speed while deprived of such will render them disoriented and weak before ultimately passing out as a result of low blood glucose. Also, because of their accelerated healing, they are unable to be given painkillers, sedatives, or anesthetics, as their body's metabolism burns through them too quickly for them to have any effect. Likewise, even a highly concentrated drug or toxin will only affect them for a few seconds before completely wearing off.
• Kinetic energy absorption: Because their abilities are derived from movement, the removal of the kinetic energy built up by speedsters will leave them in a state of temporary paralysis. However, if they can build back up enough kinetic energy within themselves, the effect can be instantly negated.
• Nanites: Nanites entering the bloodstream of a speedster will temporarily disable their powers, as shown when a particular speedster was shot with a nanite arrow.
• Viber Energies: The Extra-Dimensional energies used by Vibers like Cisco, Cynthia and Josh can temporarily disrupt a Speedsters connection to the Speed Force. Making them decidedly slower than they usually would be or outright stopping them dead in their tracks, as was the case made against Kid Flash with Gypsy as well as Flash with Breacher. His speed being weakened to the point he can't scale a sheer building wall after receiving a few blasts.
• Time alterations: While a speedster's speed allows him or her to break through the temporal barrier, it is not without drawbacks. In addition to potentially causing unforeseeable, damaging changes to the timeline, reckless travels through time can alert the Time Wraiths. These temporal guardians become instinctively drawn to the careless speedster, driven to capture the person who disturbed the timestream and draw the person into the Speed Force with it. Also, as revealed in "Flashpoint", reckless alterations any speedster makes to the timeline can also affect the user's memory, gradually making even him forget how events originally were.
• Resonance field disruption: Speedsters create a resonance field when moving at super-speed, which the Cisco Ramon of 2024 made a device capable of disrupting. The result of this device made a speedster unable to move through time despite moving fast enough to do so, though it is unknown if it is capable of otherwise dampening their powers. Harrison Wells designed similar technology capable of causing decrease or even draining speedster's of their power.
• Speedster weapon: A special kind of rifle can fire an energy pulse that could render a speedster stunned and cut off from the Speed Force. However, the effects are only temporary.

Known users

Earth One

• Barry Allen/The Flash/Savitar
• Edward Clariss/The Rival (deceased)
• Eliza Harmon/Trajectory (deceased; artificially; temporarily using Velocity-9)
• Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash
• Wally West/Kid Flash

Earth Two

• Jesse Wells/Jesse Quick
• Hunter Zolomon/The Flash/Zoom/Black Flash (deceased)

Earth Three

• Jay Garrick/The Flash

Earth Nineteen

• Accelerated Man

Earth-X

• Blitzkrieg

Unknown Earth

• "Music Meister" (formerly; temporarily absorbing Barry's powers)

Appearances

The Flash

Season 1 "The Sound and the Fury" (mentioned) "Tricksters" (mentioned) "Fast Enough" Season 2 "Flash of Two Worlds" (mentioned) "Running to Stand Still" (mentioned) "The Reverse-Flash Returns" "Fast Lane" (mentioned) "Welcome to Earth-2" "Trajectory" (mentioned) "Flash Back" "Versus Zoom " (mentioned) "Rupture" (mentioned) "The Runaway Dinosaur" "Invincible" (mentioned) "The Race of His Life" Season 3 "Flashpoint" "Paradox" "The New Rogues" (mentioned) "Killer Frost" (mentioned) "The Present" "Borrowing Problems from the Future" (mentioned) "Untouchable" (mentioned) "The Wrath of Savitar" "Into the Speed Force" "Duet" (mentioned) "The Once and Future Flash" "I Know Who You Are" (mentioned) "Cause and Effect" (mentioned) "Infantino Street" (mentioned) "Finish Line" Season 4 "The Flash Reborn" "Mixed Signals" (mentioned) "Luck Be a Lady" (flashbacks) "Elongated Journey Into Night" (mentioned) "Therefore I Am" (mentioned) "Don't Run" (mentioned) "The Trial of The Flash" (mentioned) "Honey, I Shrunk Team Flash" (mentioned)

DC's Legends of Tomorrow

Season 2

• "Compromised"
• "Outlaw Country" (mentioned)
• "The Legion of Doom" (mentioned)
• "Moonshot" (mentioned)

Behind the scenes

• In the DC comics, the Speed Force is an extra-dimensional energy that allows the various Flashes, as well as most other speedsters, to be able to move through time and reality, as well as enhancing their speed and giving them other powers of movement.
• A very slight difference found in the lightning generated by speedsters in the series is shape: The red lightning produced by Eobard Thawne's speed trails is notably more serrated, or unstable in form as it flows off of him, while Barry Allen's golden speed lightning is often smoother, with rounder edges in the arcs of lightning he produces. Savitar's white lightning is very blade-like in shape, almost like a scimitar in shape, and whenever Savitar opens breaches, a lightning symbol is formed. Zoom's blue speed trail lightning also has a unique shape to it as it flows off him (even when he is not moving), being very straight, with fewer arcs.
• When speedsters run, they produce a sound-effect. For instance, when Barry runs, it sounds like electricity crackling, and the same is true for Savitar, although his sound is louder. When the Reverse-Flash runs, a squeaky helicopter-like sound is produced, and when Zoom runs, it sounds like a high-pitched warping sound.
• When Barry enters Savitar's armor, the armor becomes red, and when Barry breaks the armor, a red flash is emitted. It would appear that if Barry ran in the suit, due to the suit's refracting, he would produce red lightning.
• When Eobard shows a speed mirage to Cisco for the first time, it is unknown why he does not emit red electricity although when he kills Cisco, red lightning is shown near his hand. This may be because he was deriving his speed from tachyons and not the Speed Force itself.