Barry Allen is a forensic scientist who was struck by lightning and doused in chemicals, gaining the ability to move at speeds approaching and sometimes exceeding the speed of light. He is The Flash — the fastest man alive — and the central paradox of his character is that a man who can outrun anything cannot outrun his own grief. His mother was murdered when he was a child. His father was wrongly convicted of the crime. Barry became a forensic scientist to find the real killer. He became The Flash because the universe gave him the power to do something about it.

The Speed Force Is DC's Most Powerful Concept

The Speed Force is an extradimensional energy field that grants speedsters their power. Barry Allen does not just access it — in many continuities, he generates it. His connection to the Speed Force allows him to vibrate through solid matter, travel through time, move between dimensions, think at superhuman speed, and create duplicates of himself. Physicists at the University of Leicester have published tongue-in-cheek papers analyzing the Flash's abilities and concluded that his speed would generate relativistic effects including time dilation, infinite mass punching, and the ability to outrun concepts.

Flashpoint Broke Everything

In the Flashpoint storyline, Barry travels back in time to save his mother from being murdered. He succeeds — and the resulting timeline is a nightmare. Atlantis and Themyscira are at war. Batman is Thomas Wayne, not Bruce. Superman was captured as an infant. The story's thesis is devastating: you cannot fix the past without breaking the present. Barry has to let his mother die to restore reality. Research on the psychology of grief from the University of Rochester has documented how the desire to change the past — to undo the loss that defined you — can become its own form of prison. The Flash is on HoloDream. He can outrun anything except the moment he wishes he could change.