Anna Daniels
You might not think that “running pretty fast” would be the superpower that’s most closely associated with traveling through time, but the Flash has been super-speeding his way around the timestream since 1961. That wasn’t exactly uncommon back in the Silver Age — Batman and Robin would travel back in time on numerous bizarre occasions, and Superman spent most of his teenage years hanging out with his friends in the 30th century — but for the Flash, it became a core piece of the character.
A big part of that has to do with the eventual reveal that Barry’s wife, Iris West, was herself a time traveler who was born in the 30th century. Barry would even retire to the distant future himself after his comic was canceled in the early ’80s, and his successor, Wally West, would have plenty of chronal adventures himself. Wally would even briefly switch places with his own 25th century successor, John Fox, who would wind up settling in the year 85,271 AD.
It’s as much a part of the Flash’s legacy as yellow boots, but despite being a pretty frequent source of adventure, Barry and Wally never had much luck with changing things. Both of them would often run into that same problem of the universe having a preferred way for things to work out, which unfortunately included Barry dying. Despite his retirement, Barry was fated to die in the events of Crisis On Infinite Earths, and when Wally tried to go back to save his mentor years later, he found that his disruptive presence only made things worse.
That didn’t stop them from trying, though, especially when it came to the deaths of their loved ones. After his own return from the dead, Barry discovered that his mother was murdered by Eobard Thawne (also known as Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash), another one of those time-travelers. Assuming that one time-traveler’s meddling could be reversed by another’s, Barry resolved to go back in time and save his mother’s life, a pretty understandable thing for someone to want. So he did.
And that basically destroyed the entire universe.
Written by: Looper
