Facts About The Speedsters of Arrow-Verse:
The Arrow-Verse is home to a flurry of superheroes. There are people that hop from one building to another shooting arrows. There are people who wear red, blue and gold and are from another planet. There are people who can control lighting. And then there are speedsters. The conduits of the extra-dimensional speed force dimension, the Speed Force allows a Speedster of the Arrow-verse to run faster than light itself. They are the fastest beings on the planet, chief amongst them being Barry Allen aka the Flash – the Fastest Man Alive. But there are certain things about the Arrow Verse Speedsters that do not make any semblance of sense. Here are certain facts that may or may not have come to your notice.
1. The Flash has Zero Close Combat Skills
It was understandable when Barry became the Flash in Season 1. He was just learning how to be a Superhero and he had no knowledge about fighting people in close quarters. So most of the time, the veteran criminal masterminds got the upper hand in a one on one battle. But Barry has learned how to fight since he has had so much more experience at handling criminals. Moreover, his speed force powers would mean that he has super-fast reflexes and he could deconstruct the fight in super slow motion. That would mean that the Flash should never be hit by a punch or a kick because he could see it coming from a mile away. He still gets his butt handed to him many times.
2. The inconsistency in powers of Wally and Barry
The Flash has the ability to open Speed Force Portals and enter the Speed Force dimension. When Wally West gains Speed Force powers, he too should have gained the same ability to enter the Speed Force by creating dimensional portals. But he could not. The Flash explains that the reason Wally is not able to open a Speed Force portal is that he is mentally unprepared to do so. But as far as we know, the ability to open a portal is purely based on how strong and well-connected you are to the speed force. Since Wally was faster than Barry at that time, he should have been able to open one.
3. The Meta human Prison
After the particle accelerator explosion, the entire Central City ended up becoming a war zone. The reason was that the dark matter that gave Barry his superpowers also spread into the entire city, giving random individuals amazing and unique superpowers. The Flash would get help from Star Labs to apprehend the Meta Humans that are way out of line and are taking the law into their own hands. They would then be held captive in prison cells fashioned out of the Particle Accelerator system. The fans have kept asking just how the prison cells allow the prisoners to take a bio break. Team Flash is yet to give us an answer.
4. The Flash’s villains always manage to get away
He is literally the Fastest Man Alive. Or so he claims to be. Central City sees a new villain every alternate day spring up and wreaks havoc. But most of them are not speedsters. So the Flash must not have any trouble defeating them. But the Flash somehow always manages to let the bad guy slip through his fingers. This is literally the scenario every time a new villain turns up – he or she catches the attention of the Flash, baits him into saving a bunch of innocent civilians in the crow fore and then slips away into the wind, never to be found again. But if the Flash were smart, he would know that the guy or girl that was creating all sorts of ruckus just now could not be too far away. He or she would be just around the corner and all he needs to do is just spend run the entire block (a feat he could do in one or two seconds since he is the Flash) to find the villain. He still has not figured it out.
5. The Rules of Time Travel don’t apply to them
Time Travel may look and sound cool but it is one of the most potent weapons available in the entire universe. Time Travel can create alternate timelines or erase an entire time stream from ever existing. But the casual approach in which Speedsters travel across time in the Arrow Verse, changing events as they wish defies logic. If they did something that even had a minuscule implication in the past, the resulting ripple effect would lead to huge changes in the future – a phenomenon called the Butterfly effect. The Legends of Tomorrow reveal the actual implications of playing around with time, something they deal with on a day to day basis. Why Speedsters are exempt from that rule!!
6. How is Eobard Thawne still wearing Harrison Wells’ face?
This is a huge plot hole that the writers of the show have just decided to keep themselves away from answering because every time they try to, it only ends up complicating things even more. When the Reverse-Flash came into the scene in Season 1, he was impersonating Harrison Wells. But Eddie Thawne gave up his life to ensure Eobard never existed in the first place. The Reverse-Flash returns revealing that he is not only alive but he is still impersonating Harrison Wells! That does not make sense considering that Eddie Thawne killing himself would mean that Eobard never had a chance to go back to the past and kill the Original Harrison Wells to steal his face.
7. Barry is not at all the Fastest Man Alive
Every Episode of the Flash begins with Barry Allen’s Monologue claiming that he is the fastest man alive. Ardent fans of the show would know that Barry Allen is far from being the fastest man alive. Every Speedster supervillain that has shown up has ensured Barry Allen follows their trail. Savitar showed Barry his place more than once in Season 3. Zoom in Season 2 revealed that he may not even be the fastest man alive in his own universe. Reverse Flash aka Eobard Thawne regularly beat the Flash in a race. So why does he keep claiming the same thing over and over again even though he knows that he has been beaten every time?
8. The Mind Control Effect
As a Speedster that is running at the speed of light, one thing is certain – they have to think and act a million times faster than what an average human brain could be able to. They have to react to obstacles on the way at least a thousand times quicker than a normal human being’s. Their thought process also works at lightning speed. They can have more than a hundred thoughts running through their heads in a second. And this also gives them one other ability – they are highly invulnerable to mind control since no telepath could keep up with their lightning-fast thoughts. Gorilla Grodd is somehow an exception to that rule. He has managed to mind control Barry Allen on several occasions.
9. Barry’s Speed limits keep changing
All the seasons of the Flash show him as not being fast enough just when a new supervillain arrives. In Season 3, the speed limit we are talking about kept fluctuating beyond control. Sometimes Barry was faster while sometimes he would fail to cover a distance of 30 Meters to save Iris West. The explanation given to us was that a fraction of his speed was stolen. But how is that relevant. If a guy can traverse through the time stream simply by running fast enough, he has to be faster than the Speed of light itself according to the laws of physics. He could run on water too, a speed that is way faster than what is required to cross that 30-meter mark needed to save Iris from flying shrapnel! This just does not make any sense.
10. Barry’s love-hate relationship with gravity
No matter how fast you run, if you are in mid-air gravity will grab you and pull you down. The same applies to Barry Allen aka the Flash. During his fight with Savitar, the Flash managed to defy gravity and even use it to defeat the God of Speed. The Flash cannot fly but he sure repeated the same again when in Season 5, he grabbed hold of Iris West while both were free-falling from atop a building and landed safely. Barry had no surface to run. So does it mean that he can fly now?? Because that is the only explanation for how he achieved that feat.
