Originally Posted by
Doctor Bifrost
I completely disagree with its assessment of the Flash.
Yes, superheroes are not supposed to time-travel into the past the change some bad event in history to make it better. (Occasionally they do anyway, but it's usually superheroes from the future changing something that we consider to be in the present, so it feels different to the reader. It does raise the question of why those superheroes from the future don't continue to go back into further the past, killing Hitler, saving the Library at Alexandria, and so on. It's all the past to them.)
But there is one exception to this rule: if an evil time-traveling supervillain goes into the past and changes history to make it worse, the superheroes are supposed to follow him back there and change history back to what it was originally. And then apprehend the villain so he can't do it again. That's their job. This is the plot line of a large percentage of superhero time-travel stories.
When Eobard Thawne went into the past and changed history by killing Nora Allen, Barry Allen was right to go back and try to undo that malicious change to existing history. Even if the victim was somebody he didn't know. The fact that it was his own mother is just icing on the cake, from a heroic point of view.
But DC changed the rules, giving Thawne "Negative Speed Force" powers so that Barry could not, quite properly, undo the change to history committed by a supervillain. And so Barry gets blamed for "breaking history," by doing exactly what he was supposed to do (and had done in other circumstances before). But the blame belongs to Eobard Thawne - and even more, to the DC writers and editors, who created this no-win situation for one of their greatest heroes.
In the TV show it's even worse - there's not special "Negative Speed Force" that Thawne has that produces this result. There's just the coffee-mug rule: if somebody breaks the past, it's broken. Don't try to fix it; that will only break it more. This is a completely nihilistic view of superhero time travel - supervillains are free to change the past in horrible ways, and there's absolutely nothing a superhero can do to fix it. He'll only make it worse. Whoopie!
(The TV show has other problems with their time travel as well. Ever notice that, when Barry goes back one day in time - to stop a tidal wave or prevent Vandal Savage from destroying a city - he doesn't run into Barry-from-one-day-ago when he gets there. That day-previous Barry does not seem to exist. But when he goes back about 20 years and visits the scene of his mother's murder, little Barry of 20 years ago exists, and is sitting right there. But that's a whole different essay....)
Right now, in The Flash comics, Barry is infused with "Negative Speed Force." I hope he will take the opportunity to go into the past and save his mother, fixing the evil change to history that Thawne made. This is his chance! And we can do away with nihilistic, no-win-for-the-good-guys time travel rules.