- [Scott] Time travel is just so fascinating to me,
especially paradoxes, and Flash is a perfect example
in comics of ...
have I done this already?
(hard rock music)
- Welcome to Comic Misconceptions,
I'm Scott and the Flash season finale
happened when we were on hiatus so forgive me
if this video seems a tad late to the party,
but the episode gave me an idea to talk about
one of my favorite things in fiction,
time travel, specifically time travel paradoxes.
Flash, especially with his relationship to Professor Zoom,
aka Reverse-Flash, has had many adventures that dealt with
time travel over the years, and a lot of those adventures
deal with paradoxes as well, even if it's not necessarily
the main focus of the story.
The best place to start, of course, is with Flash's origin.
Now, I know that the Flash really got his powers
from a magical imp named Mopee,
but his more commonly known origin goes like this:
Barry Allen was struck by lightning and covered in chemicals
that granted him super-speed, however, there is an idea
that has been showcased a few times in comics.
Barry, through a means of time travel,
actually becomes the very lightning bolt that struck him,
giving him his powers.
In Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Anti-Monitor created
a giant antimatter cannon that he was going to fire
at Earth, multiple Earths technically,
but really not important for this video.
Flash sacrifices himself in order to destroy the machine,
saving multiple universes from imminent demise.
Secret Origins Annual #2 shed some more light on this scene.
It's shown that Barry had to run hundreds of times faster
than the speed of light in order to shut down the cannon,
which is absolutely nuts, but hey,
he's the Flash, so he gives it a go.
When he breaks through the light barrier,
he becomes a being of pure energy,
energy that's rapidly traveling back in time,
until he eventually becomes the very bolt of lightning
that originally struck him, granting him his speed.
A similar thing happens in Flash Rebirth,
where we see Reverse-Flash traveling back in time
to kill Iris West before her first day with Barry.
Right before he accomplishes his goal,
Barry and Wally catch up to him through the Speed Force
with so much power that they create
the lightning bolt that initially struck Barry.
This is known as an Ontological Paradox.
It's the idea where an object or piece of information
has no real origin and exists solely
because of its own existence.
Flash got his powers from Flash,
but who gave that Flash his powers, another Flash?
Then where'd that Flash get his powers from?
It just keeps looping without any real origin.
Flash got his powers from himself,
who got his powers from himself
and just repeat that loop forever
until they finally retcon Mopee back into the picture.
Another interesting time travel paradox
is the Predestination Paradox.
In this one, going back in time with hopes to prevent
an event from occurring, is actually what ends up
causing the event in the first place.
We can see a version of this
in the start of The New 52 Flash run.
In issue number two, there's a mysterious
electromagnetic pulse that appears out of nowhere
and knocks out power to the entire city.
Now since there was no electricity,
Doctor Elias had to use an experimental
electromagnetic generator to power a genome recoder
in order to save a whole bunch of clones from dying,
you know, comic book stuff.
But the generator was unstable,
and Flash had to create a vortex around it
in order to prevent it from causing large scale destruction.
But he ran around the blast so quickly
that he actually sent the energy backwards in time
by three days, and that's where the original EMP came from.
This creates a Temporal Causality Loop,
where Event A causes Event B, which causes Event C,
which causes Event A all over again.
So because there was an EMP that caused a blackout,
Doctor Elias had to use his electromagnetic generator
to power his lab equipment.
But it accidentally created an EMP that Flash
sent back in time, which originally created the blackout
that would cause Doctor Elias to have to use
the electromagnetic generator and so on.
We can find another example of this
with the origin of Reverse-Flash.
Some quick backstory on Reverse-Flash
aka Professor Zoom aka Eobard Thawne.
He was a scientist from the 25th century
who was a big fan of the Flash.
He spent his entire life trying to replicate
the experiment that gave Barry his powers,
and used the Cosmic Treadmill
to travel back in time to meet his hero.
He accidentally arrived in the wrong era,
but took the opportunity to visit the Flash Museum.
Remember that Thawne was a huge Flash fan.
He had read up on him a lot, but there was still
some information that was lost through the passage of time.
One key bit of information that was unavailable
in his century was the true identity
of Flash's greatest foe, Professor Zoom.
Luckily, or perhaps unluckily,
the Flash Museum did indeed have a record
of Professor Zoom's real name.
When Thawne read his own name on the plaque,
he freaked out and couldn't believe
that he would be the enemy of his greatest hero.
Not only that, but he also knew that he would eventually die
at the hands of the Flash someday.
HIs mind was slipping, and the effects of traveling
through time probably didn't help any.
He started to lose it and convinced and himself
that he wasn't Eobard Thawne, no no no.
He was Barry Allen.
He took the Cosmic Treadmill again
and traveled back a few more years
and impersonated Barry as the Flash.
He started off okay, but quickly went back
to his violent nature.
This event took place after the real Barry Allen
had sacrificed himself on Crisis on Infinite Earths,
so the acting Flash of the time was Wally West.
Thawne was enraged that it seemed like
people had forgotten about Barry
and all of his accomplishments,
so he decided to destroy Central City
for being ungrateful and replacing him with Wally.
In his madness, he decided to embrace his destiny
and don the yellow suit to become the Reverse-Flash
for the first time.
In essence, he tried to avoid his inevitable fate
as a villain by finding escape in the life of Barry Allen.
But all that did was spark the fire that would lead
to him becoming Professor Zoom in the first place.
Kinda like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Wally knows the only way to get rid of Reverse-Flash
is to send him back via the Cosmic Treadmill.
Thawne realizes this so he threatens to destroy the machine,
but as Wally points out, if Professor Zoom destroys it now,
then it won't exist in the future for him to use
to travel back in time initially.
This here is a really good example of the next paradox,
the Grandfather Paradox.
The classic example of how this paradox goes is like this:
you go back in time and kill your grandfather
before he meets your grandmother.
Now, because of your actions, you are never born.
But if you were never born,
then you couldn't have gone back
to kill your grandfather in the first place,
which means you were born.
This paradox isn't exclusive to killing your ancestors,
however, it more broadly represents the idea
of going back and eliminating
the means of how you could go back in time.
In Professor Zoom's case, this is represented
by the Cosmic Treadmill.
If he destroyed the device in the past,
then it wouldn't have been around in the future
for him to use to go to the past at the start,
meaning he wouldn't have been able
to go back and destroy it.
Another example of the grandfather paradox
in the comics still revolves around
Professor Zoom's relationship to the Flash.
In Flashpoint Reverse Flash, we see the man in yellow
going back in time to kill Barry.
But he then gets the idea to just undo the accident
that gave Barry his powers instead.
But it doesn't work.
He concluded that Barry has to become the Flash
so that he, Eobard Thawne, can become the Reverse-Flash.
If Barry never got his powers and never became the Flash,
then Thawne wouldn't have been inspired in the future
to replicate that same accident
and become the Reverse-Flash.
And without any powers, Thawne wouldn't have been able
to travel back in time and stop Barry
from becoming the Flash in the first place.
Of course, this is one of the main points
of the Flashpoint story arc.
The past was altered and Barry never got his powers,
but Thawne still existed because he was traveling
through the Speed Force when the timeline was changed.
Professor Zoom became a living paradox.
He could kill Barry if he wanted to
and it wouldn't affect his future at all.
But then Batman comes along and stabs him
through the chest with a broadsword,
which is actually exactly how I wanna die.
The Flashpoint event revolves around paradoxes,
I mean, the movie was called The Flashpoint Paradox.
In case you aren't familiar with the story,
it goes kinda like this:
when Barry was young, his mother was killed
by a time traveling Professor Zoom.
In the Flashpoint event, Barry goes back in time
and saves his mother from being killed,
which creates a whole host
of radical changes to the timeline.
One of those changes is that Barry never got his powers,
but if he never got his powers,
then how could he have gone back in time to save his mom?
It also showcases a variation of the grandfather paradox
called the Hitler Paradox.
The classic example for this one
is that a person travels back in time to kill Hitler
before he does all of his evil Hitler things.
The problem is that if you are successful,
then you wouldn't have had a reason
to go back in time in the first place,
so you never would have
and Hitler would still be alive anyway.
The key difference is that while the grandfather paradox
might eliminate how you can physically travel through time
the Hitler paradox eliminates the reason why you went back.
So if Barry was successful in saving his mom,
and she wasn't killed by Reverse-Flash,
then there would be no reason for him
to go back through time and save her in the first place.
This is all just a little confusing.
What do you guys think?
What other examples of time travel paradoxes
have you found in Flash comics
or comics in general?
I'm sure characters like Kang the Conqueror
or Booster Gold have some interesting stories.
Let's talk about it all in the comments below
'cause time travel is just so fascinating to me,
especially paradoxes and Flash is a perfect example
in comics of ...
have I done this already?
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Once again, I'm Scott, you can find me
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