Warning: This post contains spoilers for The Flash’s season 8 episode, “Armageddon, Part 4.”
The Flash kicked off season 8 with a five-episode special event called “Armageddon” and the fourth episode finally delivered on a major season 1 villain promise. Eobard Thawne (aka, Reverse-Flash) has been Barry Allen’s primary and most hated nemesis since the start of The Flash. In the season 7 finale, the Scarlet Speedster finally became faster than his enemy, beating him after defeating Godspeed. When Thawne alters the timeline, he executes a storyline that’s long been simmering but never done.
The Flash season 8’s “Armageddon, Part 4” saw Barry time traveling to the future to figure out what really caused the end of the world and the changes in the timeline that caused him to forget Joe West died. Reverse-Flash quickly revealed to his rival that he’d gone back in time to create a Reverse-Flashpoint, with Thawne ensuring that he was the one who was struck by lightning on the night of the particle accelerator explosion instead of Barry. Reverse-Flash takes his plan one step further, killing Barry as a child. The plan was something Thawne admitted to attempting the night he murdered Barry’s mother in The Flash season 1 before being stuck in time and assuming Harrison Wells’ identity.
Killing The Flash in season 1 wouldn’t have worked before because Reverse-Flash needed the Scarlet Speedster to get back to his original timeline after being left stranded and killing the wrong person. However, The Flash season 8 gives Thawne a second chance to right his mistake and he takes it. It’s a bold move considering Reverse-Flash never kills Barry in the comics — he’s killed Iris, his own family, and others — but The Flash’s “Armageddon, Part 4” turns the tables on the speedsters’ rivalry. Thawne has always been petty and hateful towards Barry, so killing his nemesis as a child and stealing his life (including Iris) serves as the ultimate revenge for The Flash becoming faster than him in season 7.
The Flash’s “Armageddon, Part 4” also showcases what a future without Barry in it would look like with Reverse-Flash pulling the strings. Killing Barry in the past not only created an alternate timeline, but it put the Scarlet Speedster in a situation similar to Marty McFly’s in Back to the Future, with his entire existence threatened unless righting the anachronism created in the timeline. This storyline could have happened all the way back during The Flash season 1, but to have it occur several seasons later — with so much of Barry’s life now being well-established — makes it all the more impactful. Thawne achieved a longtime goal by killing Barry in the past, succeeding in doing what he’d always planned to from the beginning, bringing The Flash’s story full circle in a major way (even if it only lasts for one episode).
Reverse-Flash could never stand the idea of being inferior to Barry; murdering him as a child wasn’t enough this time around, however, so Thawne took everything Barry had built and the relationships he’d forged, proving how diabolical he could be when pushed far enough. The Flash isn’t yet done with the Reverse-Flash’s arc in “Armageddon” and it’s possible he will wreak even more havoc by the end of the five-episode event. It’s rare that villains succeed in their plans and so thoroughly, which makes Thawne’s actions in The Flash season 8 stand out more than ever before.