Flash Fact: Fans are bothered by one hard-to-miss plot hole in "The Flash." Are they just hungry to
complain, or does this plot point actually get left behind in the dust? Spoilers ahead!
"The Flash" is a superhero movie that juggles a lot of big ideas,
and with all the balls it has in the air, it's not all that surprising that
the film might drop one or two. But one major, hard-to-ignore plot hole is the
fact that "The Flash" uses much of its first half to establish a very specific limiter to
Barry Allen's speed powers ... and then spends the rest of the movie ignoring it altogether.
From his very first moment on screen, it's clear that Barry needs to eat a whole lot
to maintain his pace. With great power, in his case, comes great metabolism — and
if he neglects to keep up with his calorie intake, his powers effectively vanish. This
creates tension in the opening hospital rescue scene, as a nearly depowered Barry has to smash
a free-falling vending machine for a super-fast emergency refueling session. The Flash's constant
need to feed is further established when the younger alternate-universe Barry gets his powers
and finds out that his body is screaming for sustenance after just a short superspeed session.
"I call it the speed force. It causes me to burn
a tremendous amount of calories so I am just a black hole of snacks."
With this elaborate setup, it's easy to assume that the protagonist's specific
dietary requirements will come into play later down the line. However,
around the time Michael Keaton's Batman enters the fray, the whole calorie-counting thing
starts disappearing into the background, to the point that every Flash in the final
act can function for absurd amounts of time without so much as a chocolate bar.
The food situation is still somewhat in play in the movie's second act, as younger Barry continues
to eat whenever he can. We see him noisily wolfing down Bruce Wayne's multiverse-explaining
spaghetti dish, commandeering his other self's coffee mug, and even accidentally overhearing
older Barry's reason for time-traveling while tucking into a snack in a nearby hidey-hole.
However, when push comes to shove, neither Barry seems to remember that they constantly need to
refuel. In the massive final fight against General Zod's forces, both versions of The
Flash spend a prolonged period in the heat of the battle without having a single bite to eat,
raining blows and throwing lightning blasts all over the place with gusto. And that's before the
younger Flash figures out how to time travel. Once that aspect of the plot comes into play,
they start rewinding the same battle over and over — once again, with no food in sight.
Though the main Flash soon realizes that it's futile to fight the battle with slightly
different tactics, he still runs the gamut more than once — and based on what the early parts
of the movie establish, he should be pretty drained by the time he stops. Still, even if
we assume that the Flashes simply had a huge meal before the big battle, it still doesn't explain
the younger Barry's exploits. As the main Flash keeps imploring him to stop his time shenanigans,
the alternate-universe one just keeps going, running through the same time loop over and
over again. Not only does he rewind himself back into battle non-stop, but he becomes more injured
with every turn, forcing his body to heal around the debris that gets stuck in him. At no point is
there any indication that he eats even nearly enough to fuel any of these metahuman feats.
And then there is the Dark Flash, alternate Barry's older self who has been stuck in the
same self-imposed time loop for an unspecified, absurdly long time. Just like his younger self,
he's extremely driven, and the implication is that he's been trying to figure out how
to win the battle non-stop all these years. The battlefield still doesn't have any food, so it
remains unclear how he manages to do this without any calories — after all, he's clearly not stuck
in a timeless state himself, considering that he's aged and deteriorated into a monstrosity.
Of course, "The Flash" is all about time travel, and the younger alt-universe Barry specifically
says that he considers time meaningless, so it's technically possible that he and Dark
Flash keep leaving the battlefield for a quick burger run every few hundred miles. However,
the fact that the movie's final third doesn't address the various Flashes' need to maintain
their calorie intake breaks the very rules the movie itself took great pains to establish.