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As Barry begins to doubt himself in “Armageddon,” the true supervillain behind The Flash’s Arrowverse event makes themself known in a surprise move.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Flash Season 8, Episode 3, “Armageddon, Part 3,” which aired Tuesday, November 30th on The CW.
Ever since The Flash Season 8 began, Barry Allen began to doubt himself after the extraterrestrial antagonist Despero accused him of eventually going mad and destroying the world by the year 2031. As the season and its crossover event “Armageddon” kicked into high gear, Barry started to show increasingly troublesome signs of mental instability that led to him accidentally attacking Team Flash, losing his memories of the past six months and evidently striking out at innocent civilians throughout Central City. And as Barry confronts his prophesied descent into villainy, the true master manipulator behind these events makes himself known: Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash.
More than anything else, Barry believed Despero’s apocalyptic predictions were true when it was revealed that Joe West tragically died six months before the start of “Armageddon,” with Barry retaining no memory of losing his adoptive father or him being dead in the interim time. Joe’s daughter Iris was completely convinced that her husband was rapidly losing his sanity, investigating the circumstances behind Joe’s death, believing him to still be alive and Barry’s descent as an elaborate scheme by an unseen manipulator. And encouraged by Black Lightning over suspicions that Despero’s claims about the future are true, Barry decides to see this doomsday vision of 2031 for himself, racing to the future where he sees his old nemesis apparently staging his insidious revenge.
RELATED: The Flash: Armageddon Brings Back A Group of Arrow Villains – With an Upgrade
The Reverse-Flash was last seen in The Flash Season 7 finale, tacitly working with the Scarlet Speedster against their common enemy in Godspeed. After defeating the white-clad speedster, Thawne predictably tried to betray Barry, only to find that his lifelong enemy had grown far faster than him. Seeing Thawne no longer as much of a viable threat, Barry let his old foe go while Thawne vowed to find a way to outmatch the Flash once more. And given how Season 8 has unfolded so far, it appears that the Reverse-Flash’s most effective way to continue this longstanding vendetta is by targeting the thing Barry holds dearest: his family.
It’s not entirely clear how Thawne has managed to threaten Barry’s mind while distorting Barry’s perception of time, but it would be linked to the inverse reaction of Team Flash restarting the Speed Force and creating new Forces in Season 7. Deon Owens, the avatar of the Still Force, an elemental force governing time itself, observes that someone has appeared to tap into a Negative Still Force to kill Joe and change history. Given that Thawne’s super-speed comes from the Negative Speed Force, the opposite reaction to the Flash’s Speed Force, this makes the existence of a whole set of Negative Forces probable. And given that the Sage Force can manipulate the mind, Thawne could be using a Negative Sage Force to fuel Barry’s mental instability.
At the end of the day, all roads for Barry eventually lead their way back to Eobard Thawne, with the supervillain orchestrating some of the biggest tragedies in Barry’s life. With the Reverse-Flash still on the loose following the battle with Godspeed, Thawne has wasted no time in exacting his revenge on Barry and looks to subvert the life he built for himself by working his way into the Flash Family and wider Arrowverse superhero community. With many of the Arrowverse heroes evidently in Thawne’s thrall, the Flash stands alone with the Reverse-Flash pitting the heroes against the Scarlet Speedster.
To see Reverse-Flash’s return, The Flash Season 8 airs Tuesdays at 8pm ET/PT on The CW, with new episodes available to stream the following day on The CW App.
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