12 Worst Time Travel Goofs In The Flash (So Far)
3. The Horrifying Case Of Sara Diggle, Part 2
The second issue is more complicated. Unbelievably, the loss of Sara Diggle is actually played for laughs in the opening scenes of ‘Paradox’, when Our Barry sees the picture and realises what’s happened.
It’s not like Sara has just been gender-swapped. All this timef*cking has erased a toddler from the world, a baby girl that, last season, Diggle murdered his own brother to protect.
You might be thinking “yes, but Diggle will never know what he’s lost” - and you might be right. If Felicity and Barry never tell them, he and Lyla might go through the rest of their lives in blissful ignorance of the loss of their daughter.
But we’ve already had two people, Iris West and Edward Clariss, who’ve somehow realised that their changed timeline wasn’t quite right. I’ve got a two-year-old daughter myself: I’d rate Diggle and Lyla’s connection with little Sara as far deeper than Iris’ feelings for her soulmate and Clariss’ longing for his superpowered ‘Rival’ persona.
Barry may have doomed Diggle and Lyla to forever look at their son and wonder why it is that he doesn’t feel right to them. That’s… horrible, like a kind of existential postpartum depression that never goes away.
Imagine if everyone who suffered a loss as a result of all this meddling felt that way. That’s a vast amount of psychic trauma being inflicted upon the world. Who knows, maybe this is part of the reason why Cisco is so devastated about the death of his brother - because Dante is supposed to be alive. Talking of which...