Superheroes have a tendency to be very overpowered. That’s especially true for long-running heroes, and the Flash is a prime example. He debuted as a man who could run very quickly, but has evolved into the conduit for a fundamental force of the universe who can race between dimensions and turn back the clock without effort. Every Flash is absurdly powerful, but Wally West is easily the fastest Flash of them all. He understands the Speed Force better than anyone, tapping into it on a spiritual level, and he’s outrun everyone, from Superman to Death itself. He can generate infinite mass with a punch and steal speed from everyone and everything around him.
As if all of Wally’s absurd powers weren’t already enough, he just developed a new power that trumps them all. In Ryan North’s ongoing run on The Flash (2023), Wally started receiving random visions of the future. He’d see people in danger, or himself resolving a situation, and these visions always came to pass, but there was no rhyme or reason to them. That was until issue #33, where Wally learned to completely control his Flashes of Insight. Now, Wally can look into the future whenever he wants, and that has huge implications for what he’s capable of.
The Flash spent the better part of this issue scouring the city for a nuclear bomb that was hidden somewhere. He raced through every business and public building in minutes and was forced to start checking people’s homes, but he still had no luck. Worse, his Flashes of Insight refused to prock, leaving him in the dark. After a talk with Linda, Wally realized that the only place he hadn’t checked was the Central City bank, and after recruiting Captain Cold to disarm the bomb, Wally broke into the bank. They found the nuke, which the pair was thankfully able to stop before it went off, and Wally raced off to find the man responsible.
The Flash tracked down George Stebbings, a businessman who planned to destabilize the economy by irradiating Central City’s gold and make a killing in the resulting chaos. Flash stopped him, and a well-timed Flash of Insight told him which server the man used to promote his deadly game to keep Flash distracted. The experience also taught Wally how his new power works. He realized that he had somehow developed the ability and was triggering it subconsciously, like twitching a muscle. He eventually figured out which invisible muscle to move, and now he can invoke a Flash of Insight whenever he wants, but is that a good thing?
Knowing the future is a very dangerous power on its own, but when you add it to the Flash’s already insane kit, it’s just an absurd boost. The Speed Force is heavily connected to time, and based on what we’ve seen, we can confirm that these visions are of the proper future that is going to occur. Everything Wally has seen has come true, and they’ve even Bootstrap Paradoxed him into new information. Based on this, Wally will probably begin using these powers to save people before they get hurt and stop crimes before they happen, but that could go very wrong.
I imagine that Wally will use his Flashes of Insight to turn Central City into a near-utopia, for a time. However, as more things happen and Wally gazes deeper into the future, he might start either getting overwhelmed at the thought of failing to stop something he saw coming, or lose himself to the potential futures and forget the present. It’d be easy for the Flash to only gaze at the future to resolve crimes, which would leave him blindsided by time-traveling enemies or events that happen outside the purview of his powers. These powers could easily become a crutch, and while I don’t think that Wally would let himself become a premonition-crime-stopping tyrant, it is a possibility.
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What do you think of the Flash’s new power? Is it a blessing, or an overpowered bomb waiting to blow up in his face? Leave a Comment below and join the conversation in the ComicBook Forum!
