The
Flash season finale – which if you’ve not seen it yet,
STOP: BE WARNED – SPOILERS AHEAD … Should have been called “Flashpoint.” Because that’s what it was, except that it
bypassed the view of the warped universe that was the subject of the
miniseries.
What was Flashpoint? Flashpoint
was the 2011 DC miniseries where Barry Allen wakes up in a totally messed up world,
one in which he had saved his mother but as a consequence had never become the
Flash. In one changed instant everything
about the old Post-Crisis on Infinite
Earths DC Universe that had prevailed from 1985 to 2011 (with a couple of
tweaks along the way – 1994’s Zero Hour,
2006’s Infinite Crisis) was altered –
for the worse. Sure, Barry Allen’s
mother had lived, but he did not become the Flash, and the world was now on the
brink of catastrophe, torn by warring factions between unstable super-beings
because, to name a few other differences (DC milked it for all it was worth, of
course – in addition to the seven-issue main story, there were something like
fifteen ancillary three-issue miniseries telling side-stories; I read only the
main story and a couple of the side-stories):
Instead of Thomas and Martha Wayne being killed and inspiring Bruce
Wayne to eventually become the Batman, Bruce was killed, leading to Thomas
becoming a darker, murderous vigilante Batman – and Martha becoming his
archenemy, the Joker; the spaceship carrying young Kal-El was discovered by the
U.S. military who had raised him secluded away from yellow solar energy; a
diplomatic marriage between King Arthur of Atlantis and Princess Diana of
Themyscira had been scuttled by an Atlantean assassination of Queen Hippolyta,
leading to a global conflagration between the two superpower nations that by
now threatened to destroy the world; and so forth. To make a long story short, Barry eventually
does find a way to regain his speed just as an Atlantean-Amazon Armageddon is
destroying the Flashpoint Earth, he
runs back through time and prevents himself from saving his mother … and the DC
Universe is restored – except it isn’t.
It is now different than it had been before. It was the “New 52” Universe that has
prevailed since 2011. (The fact that I have grown to dislike the direction DC
is going is beside the (flash)point (sorry, couldn’t help it!) – there were developments
that I found increasingly repugnant even before; the New 52 just hastened
things along, in my opinion.)
