WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Flash #760, by Joshua Williamson, Christian Duce, Scott Kolins, Luis Guerrero, Hi-Fi and Steve Wands, on sale now.
There is no villain that has left a greater impact and steered the entire course of Barry Allen's life than Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash. Growing up in the far future as an obsessive fan of the Flash, Thawne's mind snapped when he learned that he was destined to become his greatest nemesis. This culminated in the evil speedster traveling back in time to Barry's childhood, murdering his mother Nora Allen and framing his father Henry for the crime. With their feud having continued to escalate ever since, the Reverse Flash has finally realized his lifelong fantasy of becoming his childhood hero by possessing Barry's body while leaving his consciousness stranded inside of the Speed Force.
While masquerading as the Scarlet Speedster around Central City, with the general public none the wiser about the true identity of the man behind the mask, it becomes evident that Thawne's body swap is not permanent. As Max Mercury helps Barry acclimate to the pocket dimension and navigate his way out to regain control of the body, Thawne realizes his grip on his new form is slipping. Assembling the Legion of Zoom in Central City's cemetery, the Reverse Flash issues a particular macabre order to the villainous ensemble: Unearth the corpse of Nora Allen from her grave.
Thawne reveals that when he traveled back in time to change history by murdering Nora, he had inadvertently left temporal residue on her body as he killed her. While Thawne's grasp on the relative present of the DC Universe, much less his control of Barry's body, already tenuous because of his multiple deaths causing temporal paradoxes, the residue remaining on Nora's corpse would help ground Thawne to this time period and Barry's body, effectively untethering Barry's consciousness and leaving him trapped in the Speed Force for good, with Thawne's possession of his greatest foe's body complete.
The one thing that the Reverse Flash didn't count on was that the Rogues have their own strict moral code, underscoring the old axiom that there is honor among thieves. While the villains were all too eager to follow through on their longstanding grudge against the Flash, the desecration of an apparent random woman's grave is a step too far for the group; Thawne had purposefully neglected to tell his associates the Flash's true identity and his connection to the grave they were tasked with digging up. Trickster was particularly affected by the morbid assignment, tipping off the rest of the Flash Family on the Reverse Flash's scheme, with Impulse and Jay Garrick leading the charge to stop Thawne's plot from coming to fruition giving Barry the time he needed to regain control of his body.
The opening salvo of the Reverse Flash's plan had gone off without a hitch, with the Legion of Zoom systematically dismantling every aspect of Barry Allen's life before ambushing him and aiding Eobard Thawne in seizing control of his body. However, in a twisted move harkening back to Thawne's most heinous crime of murdering Barry's mother, the Reverse Flash's plan quickly began to unravel as his associates became leery at the twisted lengths the villainous speedster would go to complete his revenge. Barry is back in the driver's seat of his own body while the Reverse Flash has been expelled back into his own. And as the battle lines are drawn, it's clear that this feud will be brought to its explosive conclusion here and now.