12 Worst Time Travel Goofs In The Flash (So Far)

9. Why Does A Happy Barry Still Waste His Life?

The Flash Time Travel
The CW

So, in the Flashpoint timeline, Our Barry saves his mother from Eobard Thawne, and his father doesn’t go to prison. That means that Young Barry grows up with both parents, isn’t fostered by Joe West… wait a minute, why does he become a police forensic scientist in this timeline?

The whole point of the Flashpoint timeline is that this Barry grows up to be a happy Barry, unscarred by bereavement and loss. He might have a weird story to tell about the night that an impossible man invaded his home - but without that tragedy to hang it on, why would an incredibly intelligent eleven year old boy devoted to science, whose hero is Dr. Harrison Wells, decide to become a CSI?

In the first Flash timeline, Barry becomes obsessed with paranormal phenomena and with finding evidence that this ‘impossible man’ was there that night. For fourteen years, he’s consumed by it, putting everything else in life on the back burner, because his mother was murdered and his father wrongly convicted of the crime.

Without either of those motivations in play and with no police officer as a de facto father figure, why would Barry become a scientist for the police in the Flashpoint timeline?

As with most of the other changes to the timeline, we’re not given a reason. No cause and effect is established for it within the storyline. We’re just expected to believe that Barry’s ‘supposed’ to be a bottom rung lab monkey, when he’s got parents like Henry and Nora Allen to encourage him to do the great things he’s clearly capable of.

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Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.