Will they make Barry Allen a villain on The Flash ? This season has been teasing this idea since the very first episodes. Remember when Reverse-Flash screamed out to Barry “who’s the villain now?” Maybe that was foreshadowing more than we realized. People have been wondering if maybe somehow the current villain, Savitar, is actually an evil future version of Barry, but what if there’s even more to it than that?
Savitar has said repeatedly that he’s the future Flash. Does he mean this in some abstract kind of way, or is he essentially saying that he’s Barry Allen? As the season has gone on and some viewers have speculated about this possibility, the plot laid out by the writers and the producers seemed to direct us away from this to other possible suspects. For a while, we wondered if Savitar might be Wally, Julian or even Jay.
#TheFlash explores whether Barry is a hero or a villain on this week’s episode https://t.co/Ef19UBwHdC pic.twitter.com/oyH54CgOXV
— Tracking Board (@MyTrackingBoard) March 16, 2017
But as pointed out by CBR , clues pointing to Barry are actually fairly compelling . And with time travel as a plot device, there’s no reason why Barry can’t be the one who imprisons himself in the Speed Force.
More than this, recent episodes have seemed to point in this direction again. And there’s no question that Barry as the Flash seems to cause more problems for more people than any of the recognized villains on the show.
It was Barry who decided at the end of last season to toss everyone else’s concerns and lives out the window and travel back in time to save his mother – and incidentally his father. Even though he tried to fix the mess he created with Flashpoint, everything that has gone wrong this season was a direct result of Barry’s rash and selfish decision.
Thanks to the Flash, Diggle lost his daughter, Caitlin is becoming killer Frost and – oh yes – and alien race invaded the Earth and tried to destroy all the meta humans. Nice job Barry.
From an emotional standpoint, Barry never seems entirely stable. Yes, he’s faced tragedy after tragedy in his life. But his response to this tragedy seems a bit unhealthy. He’s always trying to find a way to reverse – no pun intended – the situation.
So it’s easy to see how Barry might finally crack entirely and go full tilt evil. After all, why bother being a good guy if whatever he does screws up the universe anyway? In a way, this makes Barry’s speed powers seem less like a blessing and more like a curse.
Supposedly, in the upcoming The Flash episode will we see the arrival of the time traveling magician Abra Kadabra. This guy supposedly knows who Savitar really is, so if Savitar is Barry we should look for a few more hints in this direction. But it’s unlikely that they will fully reveal Savitar’s real identity in this one.
But even aside from the possibility that Barry will turn out to be this season’s villain, a more interesting scenario would find him continuing to be the big bad for next season. After all, unlike the previous seasons in which the bad guys were revealed by this point, we’re probably not going to learn the actual identity of Savitar until the season finale. It would be awesome to have a multi-season bad guy, especially if it was Barry himself.
It’s all Barry’s fault! #Flash #Speedforce No speedster villain for Season 4 of The Flash https://t.co/lDuZyfqKjw
— The Blurred Nerds (@TheBlurredNerds) March 20, 2017
But this means that the team’s efforts to do something about the hypothetical Barry/Savitar would have to wait until next season. Yes, the producers have indicated recently that the big bad for the upcoming season will not be a new Speedster. However, making Barry Allen a villain would mean that it would not be a new speedster, but one we already know.
[Featured Image by The CW]