how did flash time travel

The Flash: How Is Barry Allen Able To Travel Back In Time?

Time travel is a crucial part of The Flash's character and storylines. But each version of The Speedster handles the process differently.

The Flash is one of the only superheroes whose powers are rather singular. Better known as his real name, Barry Allen, The Flash doesn’t have super-human strength or telekinesis. All of Barry’s powers lie within his unmatched speed. Across comics, television series, and films, The Flash has outrun danger and even stopped a tornado from spinning with his quick nature. But there’s one aspect of The Flash’s speed some fans hold near and dear to his character — his ability to use his powers to literally run throughout time.

Time travel is crucial to The Flash. It’s used as an important plot device for one of his greatest enemies, Reverse-Flash , and is included countless times in his adventures and arcs — like the acclaimed Flashpoint series. But how exactly does Barry Allen travel back and forth through time? Well, it depends on what version of the Speedster fans are asking about.

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The Flash was first exposed to time travel in the original DC comics. In a 1961 issue, Barry is introduced to the Cosmic Treadmill, a treadmill that can be used to travel through time. The catch? Only those who can run the treadmill up to super-speed can use it. The Cosmic Treadmill requires an immense amount of power and the process is often damaging to its user. The Flash , the long-running television series on the CW, also includes the Cosmic Treadmill, but only the most recent seventh season. Before that, Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin in the series) was exposed to time travel through the use of time vehicles like the Time-Sphere or Time-Ship. These vessels are used mostly by members of the Time Masters, who are in charge of overseeing the correct timelines (think TVA agents in the MCU’s Loki series .)

The DCEU, separate from the CW’s Arrowverse, also recognizes the Cosmic Treadmill as a time-travel device. But the DCEU is where time-travel devices become more difficult to pin down. 2017’s Justice League has the Cosmic Treadmill, ordered to be built by Cyborg and Batman. Barry Allen (now played by Ezra Miller in the DCEU) uses the device to warn Bruce Wayne in Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice about the dark events to follow in Justice League.

The highly debated Snyder Cut of Justice League premiered in early 2021 and added another dimension to time travel in the DCEU. In an effort to help the other members of the Justice League defeat Steppenwolf, Barry uses his powers to enter the Speed Force. The Speed Force is how all Speedsters (Barry included) get their powers. In multiple comic stories and The Flash television show, the Speed Force is dark particle energy that can connect to Speedsters like Allen. In some iterations of The Flash, The Speed Force has also turned itself into people using physical manifestation and even has its own personality. But Synder’s Justice League uses it as a pocket of the universe that contains all the energy Speedsters need. In the film, Barry Allen has to run so fast that he turns back time enough to give Cyborg enough power to separate the Mother Boxes, objects that have the potential of reshaping the entire Earth.

So how will the DCEU’s upcoming solo Flash film deal with time travel? The answer isn’t as concrete as fans would think. While Synder’s version of Justice League had Barry Allen using the Speed Force, those events aren’t recognized as canon in the DCEU — Joss Whedon’s Justice League is. Going into The Flash , all Allen will have is the Cosmic Treadmill. But with a plot focused on changing the events of the past, time travel is guaranteed. The real question is how far director Andy Muschietti will take the time travel lore. Officially introducing the Speed Force into the DCEU would make explaining the appearances of other Batmans — like Michael Keaton, who will be reprising his Bruce Wayne from Tim Burton’s Batman films — much easier.

The Flash’s plot is also rumored to be heavily inspired by Flashpoint , a 2011 comic book storyline that relies on its use of alternate realities and time travel. If Muschietti and screenwriter Christina Hodson wanted, the Speed Force could be used as the perfect catchall for explaining how other characters are traveling between their respective worlds. Still, fans can’t be sure until that lucrative first teaser appears. Until then, it’s always good to get a refresher on Barry Allen and his story by revisiting his important role in Justice League or diving into the respective CW series . If only we could speed up time to get us to November 2022 so we could see exactly how Barry Allen will travel through time in the DCEU’s future.

MORE: Behind-The-Scenes Photos Reveal Affleck's Batsuit (And New Ride) In The Flash

How The Flash's Time Travel Works

This is why Superman works alone.

The Time Travel in The Flash

• How Time Travel Happens
• Can History Be Changed?
• The Consequences
• What's Next?

Warning: spoilers for The Flash are in play. If you haven’t caught this DCEU inevitable intersection just yet, you’ve been warned. 

Oh my, oh my, where do I begin? Welcome back once again to the CinemaBlend Time Travel Labs! Yes, it’s been a while since we've discussed the topic. However, thanks to the Sacred Timeline being broken not too long after we went over how The Tomorrow War’s time travel works , things kind of got weird. One could even say, they’ve gone multiversal; which means it’s time to talk about how The Flash’s time travel works! 

Yes friends, mark down one more Mike variant to keep track of, thanks to another rip in the timeline being created by Ezra Miller ’s DC hero. If only I had the power to go back and correct my own timeline, where previous cliffhanger endings didn’t exist. Maybe that opportunity will be presented in the future, but for now fuel up on those all important calories, and let’s dash into how The Flash travels through time. 

After traveling back in time during the ending of Zack Snyder’s Justice League , Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), also known as The Flash , wants to change his personal history for the better. Hijinks, and a lot of continuity breaking, ensues. 

Who's Time Traveling?

Barry Allen, Barry Allen, and… Barry Allen? Three different variants of the Scarlet Speedster are in play here: one from Present Day, one from an alternate 2013, and one that’s endured an undefined amount of time traveling back through the Speed Force. 

From When To When?

Get your notepads ready, as The Flash has quite a bit of time travel to pin down. From 2023, Barry Allen zooms back to 2004, to prevent his mom’s death. That action causes us to zoom forward to a newly rewritten 2013, and eventually back to a new variation of 2023. I’ll explain that later.

The Purpose Of Their Trip

Barry Allen just wants to save his mother Nora (Maribel Verdú), which opens a can of worms throughout time. As a result, two different Barrys try and correct the timeline through several different trips, as the new spin on Man of Steel’s Kryptonian invasion leads to the deaths of Batman ( Michael Keaton ) and Supergirl (Sasha Calle). 

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How Time Travel Happens In The Flash

If you’re a fan of The Flash in pretty much any medium, you know that the Speed Force is key to Barry Allen’s ability to travel through time. Provided that poor Barry has fueled up on enough calories to keep his status as a snack hole in check, traveling faster than the speed of light, or even time, isn’t a problem. 

By running fast enough to outpace the passage of time, Barry creates what’s called a “Chronoball.” Think of it this way: if the timeline was controlled by a mouse, The Flash is the trackball that scrolls to the point in time you want to change. The visual representation of this process actually works in that very way, as time is like a film that can be rewound through this process. 

Once Barry Allen sees the moment he wants to change, he stops and allows himself to sink into that moment through a portal. Strangely enough, this takes into account something that Back to the Future's time travel gets right, as the exact physical location of the moment in question is also taken into account when our hero travels. Of course, there are still plenty of ways he can be thrown off course, especially if a mysterious presence that couldn’t possibly be an aged and bitter version of himself tries to stop him. 

Can History Be Changed As A Result Of Time Travel In The Flash?

Oh, boy howdy, it can… but to a point! Thanks to one can of tomatoes, Nora Allen lives! Which sets off a cascade effect in The Flash’s story that wildly alters the story we thought we knew. In his world, Kal-El never made it to Earth, and his cousin Kara Zor-El/Supergirl is imprisoned by the Russian government.

So this universe has no Superman to call its own, and General Zod ( Michael Shannon ) and his Man of Steel invasion force are about to succeed. And to cap it all off, Eric Stoltz actually finished filming Back to the Future , rather than being cut from all but one frame of Robert Zemeckis’ influential sci-fi classic .

However, history is only so flexible, as the DCEU has its own version of “Fixed Points in Time,” dubbed “Inevitable Intersections.” Events titled as such cannot be changed, and in the new “Nora Lives!” timeline, Supergirl and Batman are destined to die by General Zod’s hand.  

What Are The Consequences Of Time Travel In The Flash?

The DCEU was always going to be changed after The Flash’s events. But this story actually invokes a rather interesting concept that throws everything out of whack: “Retrocausality.” As Bruce Wayne explained with some dry spaghetti, if you alter one point on a timeline, the entire thing snaps.

This causes a ripple effect that basically changes the past and the future, thanks to that action. Once Barry saved Nora from her mysterious, and still unsolved, murder, it threw events off on either side of that inflection point. Which, once again, creates the ultimate no-win scenario for Barry Allen, in which he has to choose the life of his mother or the fate of planet Earth. 

Also, if you’re a fan of how Star Trek: First Contact’s time travel works , you’ll notice that Barry Allen is protected by a temporal wake. As his mind doesn’t adjust to the new timeline, he’s as clueless as we are when Bruce Wayne all of a sudden looks like George Clooney in The Flash’s surprise ending . 

In DC’s world, if you’re a time traveler, you apparently can never go home, as apparently each change breaks that spaghetti anew. So maybe in the sequel, we can see Val Kilmer 's Batman reappear to give Barry Allen a thumb up for whatever his next adventure may be. 

More Time Travel To Come

You know something? It actually felt good to be back at it in the CinemaBlend Time Travel Labs. Which means that, conditions permitting, I think this might be the start of keeping this little corner of the universe back on the rails. 

Though since we’re in a multiverse, there’s still those versions of myself that are waiting to teach everyone how time works in Timecop and Loki Season 1. Come to think of it, I think I need to take a long, hard look at cataloging my multiversal selves and the assignments they’re awaiting.

But not before diving into another upcoming time travel assignment! Next time, prepare to dust off your fedoras and crack out your bullwhips, as we’ll hopefully be looking at how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’s time travel works. In the meantime, I’m about to try and answer yet another outstanding question about this strange new world: can we blame the awkward Max rebranding on Barry Allen? 

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

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The Flash's Time Travel Stories on The CW, Explained

Since the first season, The CW's The Flash has messed around with time travel, but all timelines converge as the show races towards its series finale.

The following contains spoilers for The Flash Season 9, Episode 11, "A New World, Part Two," which debuted Wednesday, May 10 on The CW.

The reveal that Eddie Thawne is back on The Flash , albeit in 2049, continues to help close the time-travel loops the series started nine seasons ago. Still, with all the dashing back and forth through the past Barry and the other speedsters do, it can get confusing. The storytellers seem committed to wrapping up character arcs and answering lingering questions for The Flash fans.

At the end of Season 1, Barry raced back to the night his mother was killed to save her. Before he could, a version of himself from the future stopped him. Viewers got to see that play out from the other side, suggesting that rather than some lost "original timeline," Flash's story has always played out exactly like this. Thanks to the show's adaptation of the Flashpoint comic series, timelines have been undone and changed back. The assault on the multiverse by the Anti-Monitor, and Oliver Queen's sacrifice to save it also changed things. Yet, there are two kinds of time travel: one, changes to the past affect the future by creating new and alternate timelines, and two, it's all one big cycle that keeps playing out the same way.

RELATED: Grant Gustin Promises The Flash Finale Leaves WestAllen in a 'Good Place'

How Many Timelines Have There Been on The Flash?

According to the Reverse Flash, a dubious source, the "original" Barry Allen became the Flash in 2018. Only after Eobard Thawne ended up trapped in the 21st Century, he orchestrated a plot to give Barry his powers four years earlier to return to the future. The first time the Barry viewers know traveled through time occurred when he erased a day when Central City was destroyed. He then tried to change his mom's fate but failed. In order to stop the Reverse Flash, Reverse Flash's ancestor, and Iris's fiancé, shot himself to death, erasing Reverse Flash from the timeline. However, Nora Allen still died.

At the end of Season 2, Barry does change the timeline, erasing the version of himself present during that night from Season 1. Barry lives in that Flashpoint future for a while before eventually setting things as they are. Despite Eddie's sacrifice, Thawne survived, continuing to menace the Flash until he died at the end of Season 8. Also, it's implied that something Barry did caused the Crisis on Infinite Earths events to happen sooner than they were supposed to. The resolution of that multiverse battle was a fourth rewritten timeline where Supergirl and Black Lightning both existed on Earth-Prime the entire time.

However, one question fans never had answered was what happened to the "future Flash" who saved young Barry from Thawne. In " A New World, Part One ," the storytellers showed them. How the Reverse Flash returned after his ancestor's death, Eddie is the last puzzle piece. Perhaps the timeline where Barry got his powers in 2018 was like Flashpoint? It existed only to inspire the creation of the cycle. The Jinn, as the series 12 Monkeys called it, is so strong it overrides the death of a person integral to its existence.

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Is The Flash a Causal Loop or an Ever-Changing Timeline?

For most of the show's run, The Flash has implied that speedsters' time travel has changed the timeline. With Flashpoint, the timeline change isn't even a question. However, it gets put right before long. When the Red Death showed up earlier in the season, Barry thought she came from an alternate timeline. Yet, when Oliver Queen returned to The Flash , he revealed she came from another Earth. Perhaps it was to inform the characters that the multiverse wasn't destroyed after Crisis . But it may also be a sign that The Flash is instead a causal loop.

Fans assumed the Flash who waved off Season 1 Barry was the one who got his powers in 2018. Yet, maybe it was always the Flash from 2024, with that supposed original Barry forever erased like the Flashpoint timeline. If the series ends up being a Jinn, it means that Barry didn't wreck the timeline. The timeline was always wrecked, and he's the heroic glue that keeps from completely spinning out of control.

The Flash debuts new episodes on Wednesdays at 8 PM EDT on The CW.

Here’s How Time Travel Works in The Flash - Ending & Post-Credits Scene Explained | DCEU Canon Fodder

The Flash is in theaters and zooming around the multiverse meeting a few surprising faces and ushering in a new reality for DC Comics movies. But viewer, Beware! There’s a whole time travel element to the film and it’s a little tricky to understand. IGN host Kim Horcher has the full breakdown along with The Flash ending explained and The Flash post-credits scene explained. 

Don’t forget the return of Batman, Michael Keaton returns to his iconic role, as does Michael Shannon, who reprises General Zod from 2013’s Man of Steel including George Clooney as Bruce Wayne and Nicolas Cage as Superman. How did all of these characters appear in the movie, join us for the ending explained and post-credits explained and we’ll give you the breakdown.

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Justice league: flash's time travel in the snyder cut explained.

The Justice League Snyder Cut would have included The Flash's time-travel ability, and here's how it was supposed to factor into the story.

The Flash's ability to time-travel played a major role in Justice League  Snyder Cut. Following Zack Snyder's departure from the movie due to a family tragedy, the version of  Justice League  that was released in theaters was the product of major reshoots that took the movie far off-course from his original vision. At this point, the famed Snyder Cut of the DC superhero ensemble has risen to a massive level of public prominence, with demand for its release only growing with every social media tease Snyder makes for it.

The reason the Justice League Snyder Cut has received such a widespread campaign is because there's clearly so much from the original version of the film that was either tossed aside or whittled down enough for it become forgotten in the theatrical version. Much of this has to do with Superman and Darkseid , but a key example of this is also Flash time traveling. In the theatrical version, Flash doesn't use his time travel abilities - it's possible he doesn't even know he's able to travel back in time - but it was something that was previously teased in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice , and it would've played a role in Snyder's version of Justice League .

RELATED: How The Flash Was Different In Zack Snyder's Cut Of Justice League

Snyder has recently offered a glimpse at Flash's time-travel abilities in the third act of the Justice League Snyder Cut. In Snyder's version of the film, Barry Allen travels back in time following the League's initial defeat to Steppenwolf to give them another chance to stop the Apokoliptian invasion. At that point, Cyborg was to enter the Mother Boxes to prevent them from forming The Unity, while being tempted to join forces with Apokolips with a vision of his fully restored human body and his deceased mother and father by his side (with his father, Silas Stone, having been killed earlier in Snyder's version .) Members of the cast and crew have also revealed further elements of movie's climactic battle, including Steppenwolf meeting a drastically different end .

Aside from the original ending of Justice League , there's also at least one time-travel component that was ultimately excised from Snyder's original plan. Specifically, the Knightmare future seen in Batman v Superman  was to be revisited with Barry traveling back in time to stop Darkseid from murdering Lois Lane in the Batcave, which in turn would prevent Superman from succumbing to the Anti-Life Equation and siding with Apokolips. However, the polarized response to the dark tone of Batman v Superman lead to the Justice League  script undergoing a rewrite before principal photography, with this element ultimately being removed, though the Knightmare reality would still factor into the story, with Cyborg experiencing a vision of it while interfacing with the Kryptonian scout ship during Superman's resurrection.

With the demand for the Snyder Cut's release entering the mainstream, Snyder's tease of The Flash time-traveling to undo Steppenwolf's victory is just one of many factors that has fed the growing push for Warner Bros. to give it the greenlight. At the moment, the studio has not made any public plans for the Snyder Cut to be released . Nevertheless, with the campaign for Snyder's version of Justice League  growing louder practically every day, some type of public comment on it from Warner Bros. will very likely become a necessity sooner rather than later.

NEXT: Justice League: Why HBO Max Is Perfect For Releasing The Snyder Cut

Key Release Dates

Birds of prey, wonder woman 2, the suicide squad.