10 Superhero Resurrections That Actually Worked

7. Barry Allen/The Flash

The Flash: Rebirth
DC Comics

As far as legacy characters go, they don't get any more prolific (or legacy-y) than The Flash. With a grand total of four flashes having taken on the main mantle at some point or another, the identity has the biggest lineage to boast in DC's library, with the most famous of the four being Barry Allen.

While fans of the character from the early 2000s will maintain that Wally West is very much their Flash (a trend exaggerated by the character's turn on Justice League), for the greater part of the hero's history the main Flash has been Barry, the second iteration of the character, and the successor to Jay Garrick. Barry famously sacrificed himself during the mind-bending Crisis on Infinite Earths Storyline, becoming one with the Speed Force after having disrupted the Anti-Monitor's plan to destroy the multiverse as it then existed.

The character would have to wait a full twenty years before his resurrection in Final Crisis, however, where, in one of the coolest returns in the medium, he's found outrunning death himself, the Black Racer. Barry, along with Wally and Jay, would later lead the racer to Darkseid, who, having already been weakened by a god-killing bullet fired by Batman, died as a result.

Praise be to Morrison that he came up with such a batsh*t brilliant way of resurrecting character, but Geoff Johns too deserves some credit, as it was his second 'Rebirth' storyline that really reinstated the character's presence in the DCU. With over twenty years spent on the sidelines, Barry's return felt more than deserved, and, as the character's popularity looks set to continue with a resurgent presence on TV and cinema too, it's one that DC themselves will surely be thankful for.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.