Spoilers if you haven't seen the Season 3 finale for The Flash. Watch it and then come back here!
When The Flash handled Flashpoint in Season 3, more than a few fans were disappointed. If you aren't familiar with the comic book storyline, suffice to say it was Flashpoint in name alone and featured several differences from the original. Now that we've seen the season finale, we have reason to believe the show may be handling another popular storyline, Crisis On Infinite Earths, the same way. Here's what we think.
Ever since the headline "Flash Missing, Vanishes In Crisis" appeared in that future newspaper on the show, fans of The Flash have been wondering when we'll see Crisis On Infinite Earths. That headline could be just a coincidence that has nothing to do with the famed storyline. But, it makes sense to me, considering that there were a couple of parallels between what happened in the season finale and in the comic storyline, that it's coming sooner rather than later.
In Crisis On Infinite Earths, Barry Allen makes a very similar sacrifice to the one he made in the Season 3 finale of The Flash, although the results are far worse. Allen creates the speed vortex in order to stop a villain who is threatening to destroy Earth with an anti-matter cannon. Unable to contain the power, Barry is destroyed in the process and inevitably becomes that same lightning bolt that gave him his powers. With Barry gone, Wally West then dons the mantle of The Flash and protects Central City.
The two main elements holding these two Flash events together reside in Barry entering the Speed Force to save the world, and Wally West taking over the mantle as Earth-1 Flash until further notice. Obviously, that's not every detail of Crisis On Infinite Earths, but it hits the major stuff the same way the Flashpoint storyline did in The Flash. Many of the details left out of Flashpoint simply wouldn't have made sense in the Arrow-verse, so they reworked it, and I think it's fair to speculate they could be taking the same approach here. While disappointing, I don't think The Flash is financially capable of pulling off such a tremendous event in a way that pleases audiences, and I'm sure none of us want to see Barry Allen actually killed off in the series, anyway!
Now, as mentioned, we don't truly know this is what's going to happen in Season 4 of The Flash, but past precedent points at this being a possibility. I'm sure the showrunners will address at least some speculation regarding Crisis On Infinite Earths as we head into the offseason. While we wait for what they have to say, find some new television debuting every day on our summer premiere guide. Also, be sure to keep tabs on all of your favorite show finales, as they could be coming sooner than you think.
