12 Worst Time Travel Goofs In The Flash (So Far)
11. What Caused These Effects?
Narratives like this love to show subtle and nuanced variations in alternate histories, blindsiding the protagonist and the audience with the fascinating parallel versions of familiar characters. In this world, Cisco’s a villain! Laurel Lance is still alive, and a villain! Caitlin’s got ice powers - and she’s a villain! There but for the grace of god go we!
Okay, maybe not that subtle and nuanced.
In the Flashpoint timeline, Joe is a depressed, drunken screw-up on the verge of losing his job while Caitlin isn’t a virtuoso bio-engineer, but a pediatric ophthalmologist: an eye doctor for kids. Flashpoint Cisco, on the other hand, is still a boy genius, but a power-suited billionaire douchecanoe boy genius.
Why? No one knows for sure. You could explain the butterfly effect in the West family by saying that without having to step up and raise a traumatised Barry, single father Flashpoint Joe descended into depression and alcoholism, and became estranged from his kids and his old friends the Allens.
You could explain it that way… but they don’t, just as they don’t explain why Flashpoint Caitlin and Cisco’s lives were so radically different. At least Joe knew the Allens. How did Nora’s survival change the career trajectories of two total strangers?
Once again, we’re left with ‘oooh, alternate timelines/parallel worlds, they so freaky’ as the default interpretation. It's infuriating when stories like this - which are supposed to be about cause and effect, and the consequences involved - are told without showing the cause of the effect.
That would have involved the show’s writers actually having an explanation for the changes, which they clearly don’t. Like inventing evil versions of heroic characters for the hell of it, it doesn’t actually make sense: it was just done for sh*ts and giggles.