Originally Posted by
KNIGHT OF THE LAKE
That’s because Barry kind of is. Jay came back because they revived the concept with Barry, if he didn’t Jay would have been a Sandman or even Alan Scott type who is lucky to get page time. Pretty much the entire mythology of Flash comes from the story Barry started. Wally? Can’t tell his story without Barry. He was Barry’s sidekick, he had the exact same origin, he is the nephew of Barry’s girlfriend, he became Flash because Wally died, and major parts of his run were specifically about living up to Barry and reflecting on Barry. Bart also is Barry’s grandson. Barry was put on a pedestal long before Rebirth and by that point it was kind of merited. He was important inside the stories and the meta history comparatively.
Jason Todd, Bucky, Hal, etc had came back before Barry. Barry was implied to be alive several times. In Return of Barry Allen the lighting bolt that saved Wally from Zoom is heavily implied to be Barry, Barry comes out of the speedforce to make an assist in Infinite Crisis. Barry is when returned briefly via time displacement in Rogue Wars. Once the Flash books started fumbling it was only a matter of time. In the 90’s I might have agreed when bold things were happening like Hal going bad, the GLC being gone, Jean Paul Valley as Bats, etc. But by the early to mid 2000’s things were retracting again and you could see that a lot of the experimentations were receding back. Even in Flash an effort to reimagine the old Rogues happened and giving Wally a Reverse Flash. It was very clear they were going back to older pastures and by that point Barry was inevitable.
Hal’s dad wasn’t dead until Emerald Dawn so after Crisis. I would argue the big difference is that Flash Rebirth treated it like a recent thing that was a result of Zoom screwing with the timeline and that Nora only “died” canonically very recently and until Flashpoint there was the possibility to change that. Then CW’s show ran with it and Manapaul kept it in his run and now it’s a thing.