In a universe where heroes travel through time, battle ungodly villains, and come back to life
as easily as they die, a meaningful relationship can bring everything back into focus — and that's
exactly what Iris West does for Barry Allen. But who is this mysterious woman out of time?
It's probably worth knowing that Iris West isn't like any old superhero love interest.
She's not a damsel in need of saving, or a simple shoulder to cry on. In fact, Iris's
story is deeply ingrained with the strange and knotted mythos of the Flash. The most important
thing to know about her, however, is that she comes from hundreds of years in the future.
See, most people tend to think of the Flash as a guy who runs really fast.
"That feels like an oversimplification."
Indeed, while that's not untrue, the truth is that a significant portion
of the Flash universe is centered around the idea of travelling through time. Barry Allen
frequently journeys to the past or future to right wrongs or prevent great atrocities,
often finding that his meddling causes as many problems as it solves. Even the smallest change to
the timelines can have life-changing consequences for Barry and the people he cares about.
1971's The Flash #203 provided a good example of Barry Allen's chronological shenanigans,
in which the speedster discovers that his wife Iris is actually a time traveler from
the 30th century. Though different versions of the story have her coming back in time
at different points in her life, one of the most prominent puts Iris' time travel
in her infancy, leaving her with little recollection of the far-off future.
Like Barry, Iris West grew up in Central City. Different versions of the Flash have given her
different occupations over the years, but her attraction to Barry remains pretty consistent,
regardless of which continuity the story happens to be in. Most versions of Iris have her working
for the Central City newspaper as a reporter, which is how she meets Barry. Some iterations,
like the CW's Flash series, portray Iris and Barry as being friends since childhood.
In the television series, Barry was essentially raised as a part of Iris' family
following the death of his mother, who was killed by the villainous Eobard Thawne.
No matter how they end up meeting, however, Barry and Iris always seem
to end up together — and although they have their differences, they clearly love each other dearly.
They were even engaged and eventually married for a while in the comics,
with Iris finally learning that Barry is secretly the Flash about a year after they tied the knot.
Being in love with a superhero certainly has its perks, but it also inevitably leads to great pain,
too. After all, if you have an enemy who has dedicated their entire life to seeing you suffer,
a non-superpowered loved one is basically a flashing neon target. Naturally,
with Flash's nemesis Reverse-Flash looking to harm Barry Allen in every possible timeline,
it was only a matter of time before the supervillain tried to bring her down, too.
Reverse-Flash isn't exactly one for subtlety, but he was once able to find a way to corner
Iris without sacrificing any of his characteristic flair. In this story, he finds Barry's then-wife
at a costume party, where he is cleverly disguised... as himself. Iris, meanwhile,
is dressed as Batgirl, a character who has been attacked by more than a few supervillains herself.
During the party, Reverse-Flash, who is then known as Professor Zoom,
uses his speed powers to vibrate his hand through Iris' skull, scrambling her
brain and killing her instantly. Though Iris remains dead for a while in Barry's timeline,
it's later revealed that she's actually doing well elsewhere. In the meantime,
Barry falls in love again, and Zoom, true to form, attempts to kill his next fiancée, too.
"That's rude."
While Iris is absent from Barry's life for quite some time,
another Iris exists further up the timestream. After yet another battle with Professor Zoom,
Flash takes a trip into the future to visit Iris' birth parents, the Russells, who sent Iris into
the past after enlisting the help of that era's Flash, John Fox. But things have gone wrong in
the 30th century — when Iris died in the past, it created a paradox in their own time. Luckily,
the Russells were able to solve the problem by putting the consciousness of Iris in another body.
When Flash visits the Russells, he meets this new Iris and they quickly fall back
into their old ways, with Barry vowing to stay in the 30th century for good.
Unfortunately, a villain known as the Anti-Monitor soon travels into the 30th century and kidnaps
Barry. After bringing him back into his original timeline, the villain tortures the Flash as he
sets about destroying a number of different versions of Earth. The Flash finally breaks
free of his restraints and destroys the antimatter machine at the heart of Anti-Monitor's plan — but
the exertion of this feat ultimately proves too much for Barry, who is killed in the process.
During Barry and Iris' month together in the 30th century, Iris becomes pregnant. She eventually
gives birth to twins, who are also imbued with the power of the Speed Force. Named Don and Dawn,
the two children become collectively known as the "Tornado Twins," and grow up to fight crime
in their own time — until they're both killed in an attack by the Dominators.
Before Don's death, he has a child named Bart with Melodi Thawne,
the descendant of Professor Zoom. They hope that their relationship will finally put an end to the
eons-spanning war between the Flash and Zoom, but the combination of their superpowered genetics
creates a child that ages far too quickly. Out of concern for Bart's long term health,
Iris travels back in time to seek a cure for his condition. She teams up with Wally West,
who is then fighting crime under the mantle of the Flash, and finds the solution,
leading Bart to start his own superpowered vigilante career as the hero known as Impulse.
As you might imagine, Iris tends to feel deeply uncomfortable living in the 20th century.
Being in an entirely new, more primitive time makes her uneasy, to say the least,
so she decides to go into hiding rather than deal with the demands of 20th century life.
Unfortunately, it's hard to stay under the radar when you hold the secrets of the future.
The history contained in her brain makes her a massive target for villains hoping to get one
over on their enemies. When Iris sticks her neck out to help Johnny Quick win a battle
with the Speed Force-worshipping cult leader Savitar, she ends up giving herself away.
She is subsequently kidnapped by Polaris and Abra Kadabra so that they might plot
world domination using her insight. When she manages to escape, she goes underground again,
eventually publishing a history of the Flash from an undisclosed location.
After becoming embroiled in a case of mistaken identity regarding Wally West's supposed
illegitimate child — Iris opts to come out of hiding and spend more time with her family.
Iris' new-found family life is turned on its head by the Flashpoint miniseries. In this
massive line-wide event, Barry Allen realizes that he's woken up in an alternate world — and is the
only one who remembers life as it's supposed to be. Superman's place in the pantheon has been
taken up by Cyborg. Thomas Wayne is not only not dead, but he's actually Batman. Meanwhile,
Wonder Woman and Aquaman are locked in a forever war — and the Justice League doesn't even exist.
In this reality, Iris West is married to another reporter.
Though her nephew Wally West still exists, he has nothing to do with the Speed Force
and is eventually killed during the events of the story.
In an attempt to set the world right, Barry and Thomas Wayne try to reawaken his speed powers
so that he might fix the altered timeline. The first attempt goes poorly to say the least,
and Barry ends up horribly burned. The second attempt works, though it nearly kills Wayne,
and Barry's powers are restored.
The Flash is later confronted by Eobard Thawne,
who reveals that the new timeline was created by Barry's attempt to go back in time and save
his mother. Because the resulting shift wrote him out of the history of the Flash,
Thawne gloats that he could kill Barry without endangering his own timeline. After Batman defeats
Thawne, Barry successfully resets the universe — wiping out ten years of DC canon in the process.
In the wake of the Flashpoint storyline, DC rolled out a hard reboot of their titles, dubbed "The New
52." This reset brought back Barry Allen and started his story from the beginning, before
he was involved with Iris. In the New 52 timeline, her feelings for Barry get stronger and stronger —
but, unlike the old version of the character, Barry doesn't actually feel the same way.
The New 52 was semi-abandoned just five years later with the DC Rebirth event.
This time around, Iris realizes that she once lived another life. She sees visions of herself
married to Barry Allen, and begins to understand that the timeline has been altered somehow.
Iris begins to uncover the events of Flashpoint, and when she realizes that Barry is responsible
for altering the timeline due to his frequent time travel shenanigans, she starts to push him away.
Iris knows that Barry is fully aware of the differences that exist in a post-Flashpoint
universe, and that he kept that knowledge from her. With some hard work and a decent apology,
however, Barry is ultimately able to win back her trust.
The Arrowverse version of The Flash picks and chooses portions of Iris' comic book backstory.
While she remains a journalist in Central City, other parts of her story are less
defined by comic history. Wally West is her brother in the television series, for example,
and she's not romantically involved with Barry — at least, not at first.
Over the course of the Arrowverse Flash series,
Iris positions herself as a crucial part of the Flash's world. Indeed, she's been
more than explicit about the importance of the non-powered team in Barry's life.
"You're human. And we have a purpose too: we remind superheroes what they're fighting for."
Over time, she grows close to Barry, and the pair eventually marry. She has a child with Barry named
Nora, but in true Flash fashion, the child turns out to be unstuck in time, and is subsequently
raised by Iris entirely alone after Barry winks out of existence. Iris then hides Nora's speedster
powers by implanting a limiting chip in her daughter and steering her away from stories
about her father. In time, Nora learns of her abilities and grows resentful of Iris, traveling
back in time to join Team Flash as an adult — and finally meeting her father for the first time.
Over time, Nora West-Allen becomes obsessed with the superpowered serial killer known as Cicada,
a villain that her late father never caught. When she travels back in time,
she attempts to help her parents put a stop to his crime spree. Unfortunately,
mucking about in the timestream alters the future so much that Nora herself ceases to
exist. Before she's erased from reality, Nora is able to embrace Iris and Barry one last time.
The sudden loss of Nora shakes Iris deeply, but she doesn't have much time to dwell on it.
Just one season later, Iris herself is whisked out of the Flash's universe,
finding herself trapped in a dark parallel universe called the Mirrorverse. While the
Flash showrunners have revealed that Iris will return from the Mirrorverse in season 7,
she'll likely be deeply traumatised by her time in that parallel universe. Luckily, if anything
is clear about Iris West by now, it's that she always finds a way to triumph over adversity.
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