WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Tales From The Dark Multiverse: Flashpoint #1 by Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Scott Hanna, Alex Sinclair, Jeremiah Skipper & Rob Leigh, on sale now.
Many villains never defeat their heroic counterparts and get stuck in a vicious cycle of planning and failing. But what if an antagonist finally completes their mission to defeat their foe? What mission would then be on the forefront of their mind?
This question is one that the Reverse-Flash, Eobard Thawne, had to answer recently in the Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Flashpoint #1 by Bryan Hitch. After countless attempts to defeat Barry Allen, Reverse-Flash found a reality in the Dark Multiverse where Barry Allen never became Flash and died from the lightning strike that is supposed to give him his powers. With the source of his constant headaches finally removed, Thawne can think of global domination in a way that only a speedster can comprehend.
In a world with no speed manipulating heroes, defense against the Speed Force is essentially non-existent. Using his powers to rearrange molecules, outrun sound, and manipulate the aging process, Thawne defeats Green Lantern, Citizen Cold, Ragman, Cyborg, and the Enchantress swiftly. Thawne doesn’t stop there and runs through heroes and obstacles at an exponential rate, defeating anyone who gets in his way. Without an altruistic speedster to combat Reverse-Flash, few can stop his plight to rebuild the world in his image.
Superman is one of the few heroes who still has the power to best the speedster. Fortunately for Thawne, he isn’t the only person that has an agenda to accomplish. Batman betrays Superman and kills him, clearing the path for Reverse-Flash to do his will. In exchange for this help, Batman wants Thawne to use the Speed Force to save his family. Since Batman is one of his last formidable opponents, Thawne decides to use this opportunity to take him out the best way a speedster knows how: manipulating the Speed Force to change the timeline. Effectively, Thawne can erase Batman’s existence without ever laying a finger on him. By traveling back in time to stop the Wayne family murderer, there is no catalyst for Batman to begin his journey. By saving his enemy, he defeats him, and Thawne no longer has anyone to stand in his way.
This dark take on the beloved Flashpoint story shows just how wrong things could have gone had Barry Allen not succeeded. Through brute force and time manipulation, Reverse-Flash is uncontested as long as Barry Allen is out of the picture. After wiping Batman from the timeline, the world is not only reimagined but “reversed.” Thawne is now the leader of a legion of heroes that he has modeled after his perception of the perfect world.
While readers may find this ending depressing because the villain won, it objectively isn’t as bleak as it seems. Thawne stopped Batman’s painful origin story by allowing his family to live, which brings peace to a character who was created from emotional distress. Gotham seems to no longer need a Batman, which was Batman's goal all along. In fact, Thawne isn’t just a tyrannical leader but has created his own group of super-powered beings. This raises an ethically ambiguous question: is the future that Reverse-Flash creates really that bad? This new world is being criticized through the lens of Thawne’s past, rather than the peace it can bring.