WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Flash #768, by Jeremy Adams, Brandon Peterson, Marco Santucci, David Lafuente, Mike Atiyeh, Arif Prianto, Luis Guerrero and Steve Wands, on sale now.
Wally West has been trying to leave behind his heroic life now that he has his family back after years apart from them. But not only has he been cast across the time-stream in the process, but it also appears that Wally just had a monumental effect on the entire history of the Earth.
In The Flash #768, Wally West has been thrown across the time-stream, and in the process, might have secretly been the reason that the dinosaurs were wiped out.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view.
After being struck by a mysterious bolt of energy while within the Speed Force, Wally West has been lost across the time-stream — with all the other speedsters from Earth-0 otherwise depowered by the event. The first place Wally ends up in is in the prehistoric era of Earth when dinosaurs still roamed the world. It isn’t long before Wally is forced to adjust to his new body — seemingly possessing an ancient speedster — to survive the wild creatures that roam the jungles around him. Notably, this includes a raptor — which ends up accidentally enhanced by Wally’s connection to the Speed-Force. This gives the beast a burst of super speed that allows it to keep up with Wally as he tries to flee it.
Wally does his best to stay ahead of the dinosaur, but eventually, the creature absorbs too much energy from Wally and begins to vibrate at an intense speed. It isn’t long before the raptor overflows with energy, causing the power of the Speed Force to expel outwards. As Wally tries to outrace the explosion, every other creature nearby is caught in the explosion and reduced to nothing more than atoms. This eliminates many of the dinosaurs that Wally had encountered, eventually spilling out into one massive explosion that further expels outward.
The size of the explosion, as well as the timing of it, suggests that by imbuing a dinosaur with a connection to the Speed Force, Wally West may inadvertently responsible for the burst of energy that actually killed off the dinosaurs. The prevailing theory about the death of the dinosaurs is that a large asteroid collided with the Earth during the height of that species domination of the planet. This resulted not just in the deaths of the dinosaurs at the site in question but created a large blanket of ash across the planet — resulting in an ice age that wiped out many other species across the world. Without that event, humans never would have gotten a chance to evolve. Now, it appears that the present-DC Universe can lay that directly at the feet of a future Flash.
Although the future of the Flash legacy has been explored extensively, this could open up the door to past incarnations of the speedster heroes. It also lays the deaths of countless creatures directly at the feet of Wally West — a hero with a legacy still tainted by his accidental killing of other heroes like Roy Harper during Heroes in Crisis. This is another indicator that Wally might not be the most stable person to have such impressive power levels, and needs to figure out how to get his powers fully under control. Otherwise, he risks accidentally causing another extinction-level event down the line.