- NOTE: This page is only about the Flashpoint time-remnant incarnation of Eobard Thawne as his mainline incarnation was not voted Magnificent Baddie, and thus only the Flashpoint timeline version of Eobard Thawne's information should be put here. His mainline counterpart can found here: Eobard Thawne (Arrowverse)
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| “ | I’ve met some of history’s monsters, Raymond, and believe me, I’m not one of them. | „ |
| ~ Eobard Thawne to Ray Palmer. |
| “ | My name is Eobard Thawne. With the help of Damien Darhk, Malcolm Merlyn, Leonard Snart, and Mick Rory, I obtained the Spear of Destiny, an ancient artifact with the power to rewrite reality itself, and we have. It’s a brave new world! | „ |
| ~ Eobard’s intro after successfully remaking reality in his own image. |
| “ | Big twist, I know. Who would’ve thought me of all people would be here…protecting the timeline. | „ |
| ~ Eobard revealing he was still alive and a guardian of time. |
Eobard Thawne, also known as the Reverse-Flash, is a major antagonist turned supporting character in the Arrowverse, serving as a minor antagonist turned supporting character in The Flash and a major antagonist turned supporting character in Legends of Tomorrow.
He is an alternate version of the mainline Thawne, created when Barry Allen traveled back in time to save his mother. Upon being freed by Flash and resetting the timeline right, this Thawne became a time paradox and abandoned his feud with the Flash to pursue grander villainous goals, becoming an enemy of the Legends in the process. He would ultimately redeem himself and help the Legends and the Flash at the cost of his own life.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- He has an interesting and compelling backstory of being a genius inventor and scientist from the 22nd century who had a deep knowledge of speed and the flash. He achieved a groundbreaking discovery of replicating the speed force thus turning himself into one of the fastest men alive while also inventing anti-speedster weaponry and speed enhancement machinery. His fate of becoming the worst enemies with his longtime hero flash would break him because it implied that he would never be worthy of achieving his dream of becoming like him but instead become the main villain all which would nullify his years of work and what he he’d work for as the hero he desperately desired to be.
- He correctly deduced that Flashpoint would end badly and teamed up with Barry to set reality right by killing Nora Allen, restoring reality though unlike Barry, Thawne knew there were several changes.
- In contrast to the main timeline version, Flashpoint Thawne lacks the odious and obnoxious traits that made his counterpart PE like his pettiness, envy, childishness and even abandoning his vendetta against the Flash to pursue greater aims. Furthermore he is more calculating, mature, cold-headed, patient and sympathetic than his original counterpart but this is a minor point because he is still just as evil if not slightly less.
- He evaded the Speed Force’s guardians, the Time Wraiths, and their attack dog Black Flash throughout time using a watch to alert him when the Black Flash was nearby.
- He successfully destroyed the Legends in 1942 via orchestrating the Nazis nuking NYC to force the Legends to sacrifice themselves to stop it.
- While their ally and JSA leader Rex Tyler was able to prevent this by time-travelling to 2016 to warn them, Thawne rectified this by killing Rex Tyler before he could inform the Legends of Thawne’s true plan to obtain the mythical Spear of Destiny.
- He single-handedly wiped out an entire Nazi regiment to save his partner and fellow MB Damien Darhk.
- He used the Nazis to recover half of the Askaran Amulet, the map to the Spear of Destiny, and after they failed, he broke into JSA HQ and recovered the amulet himself and killed Rex, quickly escaping before anyone could discover him.
- He single-handedly massacred an entire DEA squadron to save Damien Darhk once more and recruit him to travel across time and change both their destinies.
- He traveled to 2016 with Darhk and successfully swayed Malcolm Merlyn into joining them, officially forming the Legion of Doom.
- He led the Legion of Doom to ally with Al Capone in 1927 to cause an aberration and draw out the Legends, stopping Martin and Jefferson from turning into Firestorm and successfully kidnapping the former and Sara before disappearing.
- He took on Martin’s appearance and infiltrated the Waverider, fooling the Legends until the time was right to sabotage the Waverider and launch a full-scale assault with Malcolm and Capone’s men to recover the other half of the amulet, ultimately forcing Sara to hand it over in exchange for Martin’s location, informing the Legion of Doom about the famed Spear of Destiny and beginning their quest to retrieve it.
- After the Legends took back the Askaran amulet and defeated them, kidnapping the amnesiac Rip Hunter to retrieve his memories of the various Spear of Destiny piece’s location.
- Once Damien removed a certain tooth from Rip Hunter, Thawne realized it contained a barcode and after Damien informed him that it was account info for a security deposit box, he and Damien deduced the info contained within it was the rest of the Spear of Destiny, with Thawne having Damien and Malcolm retrieve it from its last access point in 2025.
- After Damien and Malcolm opened the box and the Spear wasn’t contained inside, but rather a mysterious device, Thawne realized it was a mnemonic archive containing all of Rip Hunter’s memories.
- Once Damien and Malcolm trapped him and themselves in a bank vault to renegotiate their partnership, he revealed the truth to them about his backstory and devised a plan with them to overcame his fear of and outsmart Black Flash to trap him. Afterwards, Thawne showcased genuine gratitude towards Damien and Malcolm and honored his word to treat them as partners.
- He figured out a way to alter Rip Hunter’s mnemonic archive and brainwashed him into being a member of the Legion of Doom and sending him throughout time to successfully retrieve pieces of the Spear of Destiny.
- He figured out JSA member Hank Heywood had hidden the final piece of the Spear of Destiny on the Moon and disguised himself as an astronaut of the Apollo 13 mission to go recover it.
- After Atom defeated him and recover the piece of the Spear, Thawne correctly pointed out the Atom wouldn’t be able to fix the damaged LEM to return to the Legends without his help and convinced Ray to free him and work together in a temporary truce to get back home.
- He showcases an honorable, affable, and insecure side to Ray, admitting that he missed the friendship of fellow scientists Caitlin and Cisco and demonstrating some respect for Ray as a scientist while genuinely assuring him that he wasn’t one of history’s worst monsters, demonstrating some standards in the process and revealing that time travel has scarred him by revealing his deepest fear.
- He allowed the Legends to “detain” him on the Waverider so he could get back to Earth. He later gave the correct coordinates to Ray to allow the Legends and the Waverider to successfully renter Earth’s atmosphere and easily escaped the Waverider’s brig afterwards.
- Despite having a brief breakdown after the Legends infiltrate the Legion’s base at the Vanishing Point and recover all the Legion’s pieces of the Spear, he quickly recovers upon realizing that this meant the Spear was now all in one place for the taking and deduced the Legends would try to destroy via the only possible in 1917.
- He recruited the past 2014 version of Leonard Snart before he became a hero by revealing his future death in order to get Snart to retrieve the entire Spear.
- Once Snart had successfully manipulated Mick into turning against the Legends with the entire Spear in hand, Thawne quickly sped his teammates to escape and upon Malcolm returning from the mission Thawne sent him on to find the Kalibros Manuscript, the Legion of Doom succeeded in their goals.
- He successfully remade reality in his own image alongside the rest of the Legion of Doom, outsmarting the cosmic Speed Force itself, while convincing the other villains to hand him the Spear for “safekeeping” while in reality he secretly planned to destroy it and cement this reality as permanent to prevent the other villain’s appetites from getting out of control.
- Although he kept the Legends alive in “Doomworld”, he did so to honor a deal he made with Mick Rory to keep them alive in exchange for Mick having gotten the Spear for them.
- He defeated both the Legends and the rest of the Legion of Doom to destroy the Spear of Destiny, yet spared the Legion as a small act of grace despite their betrayal
- He figured out the Legends would break the main rule of time-travel of never going back to events you participated in to go back to get the Spear in 1917 and destroy it, using the blood of Christ like they originally planned, killing Ray and destroying the only vial of the blood of Christ, acknowledging his mistake of ever leaving the Legends alive.
- He took advantage of his past self’s absence to fill the past Legion of Doom on what had happened to have them launch an assault on both past and Doomworld Legends.
- He single-handedly took down nearly all Legends and recovered the Spear of Destiny, deducing Sara had depowered the Spear and nearly killing her before Black Flash arrived and killed him, ultimately having come so close to victory to the point the Legends were forced to break time itself to stop him.
- After the Time Wraiths stopped him from dying and stripped of his powers to guard the fixed point in time that was the start of WWI, Thawne reflected on his past and came to see the error of his ways, coming to see the Time Wraith’s point that time should never be changed and taking down countless attempts to change history for years, becoming far more affable and an extremist.
- Upon reuniting with Sara, he came up with a deal to help the Legends reclaim the Waverider from Knight Templar Evil Gideon by tricking her into thinking the fixed point had been changed by Sara and WWI prevented, but in reality buying Sara enough time to rally the Legends to reclaim the Waverider while orchestrating Franz Ferdinand’s assassination and the start of WWI 40 minutes later.
- Once being mortally wounded by one of Evil Gideon’s men, he accepted his death with grace and passed his fixed point bracelet to Sara to continue the mission.
- Despite losing nearly all his memories when the Time Wraiths decided to revive him to live a happy life as a reward for his actions, he retained his intellect and solved the Speed Force Equation Meena Dhawan had been working on for months, creating the Biometric Lightning Oscillation Chamber (B.L.O.C) to become a speedster to benefit the world in a variety of ways whilst falling in love with Meena.
- He gave up his dream of becoming a speedster to save Meena Dhawan after she collapsed due to her heart condition and he realized that only way to save her was through the B.L.O.C., helping Meena to become a trained speedster.
- When Barry revealed his past to him, he ultimately convinced Barry he was a different man and saved Flash from a corrupted Meena, getting Meena to snap out of the Negative Speed Force possession through his love for her.
- He ultimately helped the Flash confront the Negative Forces as a speedster thanks to Meena sharing her powers with him, tragically dying as part of mainline Thawne’s resurrection.
What Makes Him a Baddie?[]
- He murdered Nora Allen which despite now being necessary, he still showed some sadism over.
- Due to restoring the timeline, he shares the crimes of his mainline counterpart from Season 1 and neglected to tell Flash about the new threat of Savitar despite being aware of it.
- He hired Damien Darhk to help the Nazis nuke New York City as part of an elaborate ploy to successfully destroy the Legends though it was luckily reveresed by Rex Tyler.
- He brutally murdered Rex Tyler and stole the JSA’s half of the Askaran Amulet.
- He massacred a DEA squadron.
- He blackmailed the Legends into handing over their half of the Askaran Amulet in exchange for a captive Martin Stein.
- He kidnapped and facilitated the torture of Rip Hunter before brainwashing him.
- He remade reality in his own image with the rest of the Legion of Doom, ruling over the new “Doomworld”.
- He murdered the Doomworld Legends and nearly did the same to the past Legends.
- Despite being out of good intentions as the guardian of a fixed point, he was still an extremist who murdered countless well-intentioned people trying to prevent the start of WWI and alter history.
Trivia[]
- He is the first and so far only incarnation of the Reverse-Flash & Eobard Thawne to be MB.
- Thawne's transformation into a speedster and his subsequent descent into villainy can be seen as a tragic arc. Despite his initial intentions of becoming a hero and emulating his idol, the Flash, circumstances and the choices he makes lead him down a dark path. The realization that he can never truly be the hero he aspired to become, but instead becomes a major adversary to his idol, can be emotionally devastating for his character. This sense of disappointment, rejection, and the negation of his years of work and dreams can contribute to the complex and conflicted nature of his character. It adds depth and motivation to his actions as the Reverse-Flash, as he seeks to prove his worth and superiority over the Flash, often driven by a deep-seated resentment and desire for revenge. Eobard Thawne's story highlights the theme of the fall from grace, the consequences of unfulfilled aspirations, and the destructive power of obsession. It adds layers of complexity and an intriguing dynamic to his character, making him a compelling and formidable antagonist to the Flash.
External Links[]
- Eobard's original and Flashpoint version at the Villains wiki
- Eobard Thawne at the Inconsistently Heinous wiki
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 Magnificent Baddies
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