Who really killed Barry Allen’s mom in The Flash? It’s shenanigans.

Modern time travel movies will naturally leave audiences with questions no matter how hard they try to keep the story straight. That is possible The flash also, given the complicated multiverse view of time travel. But there’s one big question that the movie just doesn’t want to answer.

WHO Actually murdered Barry Allen’s mother?

The movie has vague answers. The comics have deeper answers.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for The Flash, the movie.]

If you’ve seen it The flashthe DC movie that is one of the last entries in the Snyderverse continuity – or if you’ve seen it The flash, the TV show on the CW – then you know. Barry Allen’s emotional origin story is that when he was a child, his mother was murdered and his father was convicted of the crime. Barry was inspired to become a forensic analyst, in part to find evidence to overturn his father’s conviction.

The events of The flash the movie, as well as the comic book crossover event Flash pointare sparked when Barry pushes the limits of his speed ability to travel back in time and try to prevent his mother’s murder altogether.

So who killed Barry Allen’s mother?

Barry Allen as a character has been around for almost 70 years and he hasn’t always had a tragic childhood. That is a detail that was grafted onto him in 2009 The Flash: Rebirth comic series, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Ethan Van Sciver. Their troubles begin with Barry being uncharacteristically preoccupied with his mother’s untimely death, as well as his father’s death in prison, hitherto unstated details of his backstory.

The twist reveal was that it was Agatha all along.

Image: Disney Plus

Just kidding.

If Rebirth reveals, one of Barry’s oldest villains, Eobard Thawne (aka Professor Zoom, aka the Reverse-Flash) had traveled back in time, and not only did he kill Barry’s mom and frame his dad for it, he actually caused all the other bad, sad or disappointing thing that ever happened to Barry. Retrospectively, because of his meddling in the timestream, Barry had always had a tragic childhood.

Who is the Reverse Flash?

Image: Geoff Johns, Andy Kubert/DC Comics

There are several versions of the character in comics, but the most famous is Eobard Thawne, who looks a bit like The Flash’s Joker.

Thawne is a scientist from the 2400s who was an obsessive fan of the ancient superhero The Flash, so much so that he had plastic surgery in the future to look just like Barry and painstakingly recreated Barry’s accident using chemicals and lightning to self-speed forces. He then traveled back in time to meet his hero, only to discover an exhibit about the villain Reverse-Flash at the Flash Museum in Central City. In a very time-travelling way, the evidence that Thawne was destined to become his hero’s worst enemy – and eventually die at the hands of Barry Allen – broke his psyche and became his villain origin story.

Image: Mark Waid, Greg LaRocque/DC Comics

In Flash: Rebirth, a lot of jokes are made about the fact that time-traveling Flash characters can’t really change the past; events that happen anywhere in the continuum just loop around and cause themselves, as with the Reverse-Flash origin story. But for comic book reasons you don’t need to know, Thawne’s speed powers work differently than Barry’s, and he can change the past.

But this presents Thawne with a challenge. He can’t kill Barry, or prevent him from becoming the Flash, because then he himself would cease to exist. So The Flash: Rebirth is the story of what he decided to do instead. He went back in time to secretly track every spare moment of Barry’s life and make it the worst it could bewhile Barry is still enough of a hero to inspire Thawne to become the Reverse-Flash.

And, I mean, the man was thorough. Was Barry Allen ever able to have a party balloon without accidentally popping it into the air? Was he ever able to eat an ice cream cone without tripping over something too fast to see and watching the scoops crash to the floor? It seems unlikely.

Image: Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver/DC Comics

The crowning glory of it all, of course, was that Thawne framed Barry’s father for his mother’s murder, which Barry discovered in the pages of The Flash: Rebirth. Barry’s attempt to travel back in time and reverse Thawne’s meddling in his life – and how things went very badly – was the story of Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert’s Flash point miniseries, on which the 2023 film The flash is based.

Is Eobard Thawne in the Flash movie?

No. Thawne is in the original Flash point miniseries that The flash is based on, but he’s really just there to gloat about how spectacularly Barry screws up while trying to stop him. It seems likely that the team is behind it The flash felt like they had enough going on without introducing Eobard Thawne and the idea that time travel ruined Barry’s life – so in this film they leave the question of who actually killed Barry’s mother wide open, as if it didn’t really matter . And in many ways it doesn’t: The flash is about Barry making new arrangements with his mother’s death, which he will have to do whether or not he finds out who killed her.

It would also be pretty wild to bring in Michael Keaton’s 1989 Batman – which is famous for the same “I made my villain and my villain made me” kind of – and then do the same plot with the film’s main feature. guy too.

That seems unlikely The flash gets a direct sequel, with the DC Films slate about to take a very different direction. But the space is certainly there for a big old Reverse-Flash reveal. Who knows, maybe Barry Allen has danced with the devil in the pale moonlight.