Hello and welcome to Comic Drake, where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake!
Having all of the Infinity Stones in one place would basically make you the king of the universe
because it grants well… infinite power, but the Speed Force over at DC Comics has
allowed speedsters to do all sorts of crazy nonsense.
It’s a part of the multiverse itself, but would the power of the Speed Force allow The
Flash to outrace the snap that comes at the end of Infinity War?
Let’s find out.
Okay so before everybody goes crazy in the comments, the main Marvel universe is not
connected to the Speed Force and The Flash rapidly loses his powers as soon as he’s
transported there.
The Infinity Stones on the other hand only work in their native universe so they could
never be used in the main DC continuity.
That all means that this could straight up never happen, but where’s the fun in that?
So let’s ignore those stumbling blocks and get right into it.
So in order to help determine if The Flash could really outrun the Infinity Stones, how
does he compare against all six individually?
First up is the Time Stone.
We all know that The Flash is able to run so fast that he can travel forwards and backwards
through time.
In fact, the Speed Force essentially IS time itself.
It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but yeah.
While Barry and Wally need to use the Cosmic Treadmill to precisely get where they need
to go in the timestream, they could still time travel to escape the clutches of the
Time Stone albeit without finesse.
If someone used the gem to put The Flash in a time loop then we’ve seen that he’s
able to notice it and eventually overcome it.
So this one is an easy pass.
How about the Space Stone?
Well space is just distance which is basically a joke to The Flash.
After all, he could be faster than instant, but I did make an entire video going in more
detail about it with my friend Tyler from The Imaginary Axis.
But what if someone wielding the Space Stone used its ability to halt the kinetic energy
of objects in motion?
Surely that would freeze a speedster!
Well if that was the case then The Flash could just use his ability to steal kinetic energy
to get it right back, as plainly put by Wally West right here.
That’s really no contest.
Okay great, he can overcome space and time.
That’s not really anything new for long time readers of The Flash.
What about something entirely different from the universe?
What about reality itself?
The Reality Stone is arguably the most dangerous of the bunch and canonically, using it alone
could be disastrous.
The Reality Stone allows the wielder to rewrite reality itself, much like a Cosmic Cube.
It COULD be argued that Barry Allen can alter reality as it’s currently up in the air
if the Flashpoint universe he made is an alternate timeline or an alternate universe, especially
with how ambiguous it was left in recent books, but regardless, the Scarlet Speedster could
just transport himself to another universe by vibrating at the right frequency and escape
the effects.
He’d probably be stuck there though since as soon as he returns to the main universe,
he could just be attacked with the Reality Stone all over again.
Though ever since Secret Wars in 2015, the Reality Stone seems to have been noticeably
nerfed, simply allowing for multiversal travel and multiversal communication.
Which is pretty lame if you ask me.
Let’s move on to the stones that focus on things a little less physical.
Mental forces are usually the hardest thing that The Flash has ever had to deal with such
as threats from Gorilla Grodd and The Thinker.
The Mind Stone not only grants psionic powers, something The Flash is no stranger to facing,
but allows mastery of all thoughts.
However, we’ve seen both Barry and Wally think ridiculously fast, like thinking at
the speed of an attosecond fast!
This kind of crazy fast thinking is insane and allowed for feats like Wally being able
to completely purge The Thinker from his brain when it was taken over.
When it comes to thoughts, the Speed Force allows for some crazy fast nonsense there
as well.
Then there’s the Soul Stone which is admittedly a bit hard to tackle since it’s the least
defined out of the stones with a bunch of vague powers.
Most attacks from the Soul Stone revolve around beams and I mean come on!
He’s so freaking fast that The Flash can just run to a time where the concept of death
no longer exists and this is precisely how Wally outran the Grim Reaper of speedsters,
the Black Flash.
All that’s left is the Power Stone and that’s not really an issue.
See, this gem embodies all power in the universe and while it can make someone insanely strong,
it’s more of a battery than anything else.
I highly doubt that I could outrun a bullet that was fired at me, but I’m pretty sure
that I’m faster than a gun lying on a table.
Hell, I might even be faster than a gun if someone were to throw it at me.
I should point out though that none of the other gems are able to reach their full potential
without the help of the Power Stone so some of the absolute craziest stuff couldn’t
even be possible with just a single gem.
But the real question isn’t if The Flash could outrun any of the gems alone.
It’s can he outrun them all TOGETHER as a part of the Infinity Gauntlet?
While the Power Stone does a great job of boosting its fellow stones, having more than
one of the Infinity Stone buffs the powers of the total and in the recent Infinity Countdown
series, we know that they directly influence each other, making up what is known as the
Infinity Circuit.
Here’s the thing, these aren’t called the INFINITY Stones just because it’s a
cool name.
I mean okay… that’s probably the original reason, but it’s gone on to mean so much
more.
Infinity is a concept that seems easy to grasp, but goes beyond our perception as normal human
beings.
With the complete gauntlet, the wielder of the stones is a complete master of the entire
universe.
While all of the feats that we’ve seen Barry and Wally perform are indeed impressive, there’s
no doubt that they are all finite.
Sure, The Flash can think insanely fast, but the Mind Stone could just work faster than
that since it has INFINITE power.
He could NEVER think so fast that the stone couldn’t just catch up because at the end
of the day, he’s just a man.
Could The Flash steal back his kinetic energy if someone using the Space Stone already stole
it from him?
Well sure, but that would be like a toddler playing tug of war with an adult or like…
an infinite number of adults.
After all, in Secret Wars 2015, Black Panther was able to use the Infinity Gauntlet to defeat
Doctor Doom who had absorbed the power of the Beyonders.
Now the original Beyonder was one of the most powerful beings in the entire multiverse and
despite multiple retcons making him weaker and weaker as time goes on, the original Beyonder
has been stated to be a child in comparison to the rest.
Doctor Doom was in control of the power of MULTIPLE Beyonders so for the gauntlet to
be able to defeat that…
It’s just… wow.
Okay so Black Panther doesn’t actually defeat Doctor Doom with the Infinity Gauntlet since
it was all just a distraction, but Doom didn’t actually finish his fight with T’Challa
so that’s still kind of up in the air.
Of course, the Speed Force does whatever the writers want it to do so I’m sure that under
the right special circumstances, The Flash could find some way to weasel his way out
of things.
However, if that snap were to actually end up happening without notice, I’m pretty
sure that the Scarlet Speedster would just end up as dust in the wind.
I know this conclusion might seem a little underwhelming because I’m honestly in the
same boat as well.
I really thought that at the beginning of researching this video that The Flash could
find some crazy Speed Force nonsense to overcome the complete power of the Infinity Stones,
but if you really look at it.
No matter how you slice it, nothing can beat infinity.
Well… except for like Aleph Null or other infinite infinities, but… yeah no.
The Flash can’t do that.
But if you like this video then why not consider subscribing or even watching another one?
In fact, if you want to know more about the Infinity Stones then I actually did an in
depth video going into what they are and how they work.
I uncovered A LOT of interesting information so maybe go give that a look if you want to
know more.
Anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new and maybe I’ll see you next
time!