‘The Flash’: Which Speedster Could SPOILER Be Training?

Spoilers ahead for tonight’s episodes of The Flash, titled “Enter Flashtime.”

In tonight’s episode of The Flash, Jay Garrick (John Wesley Shipp) made his return to the series, teaming up with Barry Allen and Jesse Quick to disarm an already-detonating nuclear bomb by manipulating speed and time.

Allen (the Flash of Earth-1) and Quick (the Flash of Earth-2) outlasted Garrick (The Flash of Earth-3), who is significantly older and has a harder time maintaining incredibly high velocities for long periods of time.

At the end of the episode, once the day was won and everyone was safe, he revealed to Barry that he had plans to retire and train his replacement as The Flash of Earth-3. He did not say who, but he did say that the replacement was female.

Since DC Comics have provided us with an army of speedsters from throughout time and the multiverse, we figured it couldn’t hurt to sit down and try to figure out just who might be coming to the small screen the next time we move to Earth-3.

The Mystery Girl

Whoever the mystery girl is — a young woman who made her first appearance at Barry and Iris’s wedding and has popped up periodically at Jitters since — it seems entirely likely she will have some kind of tie to the Flash family or the Speed Force.

We have already discussed, at length, some of the candidates to be the mystery girl, and certainly her appearance at the end of tonight’s episode puts her (whoever she is) near the top of the list of potential candidates.

We will be talking about some of the same characters below who are our likely candidates to be the mystery girl — so we’ll leave it at that for now…!

Dawn Allen

Dawn Allen, the daughter of Barry Allen and Iris West, is one of a pair of twin speedsters from the near future known as the Tornado Twins.

The storyline in which Barry and Iris retreated to the future, had kids, and settled down in anticipation of Crisis on Infinite Earths came on the heels of “The Trial of The Flash” in the comics, a storyline which was already adapted this season on The Flash.

Given the way the mystery girl has been acting — kind of like a blend of Barry and Iris — the most popular theory is that she is actually Dawn. If she isn’t, though, that does not necessarily mean she is not the one (or more accurately, a doppelganger of hers is not the one) that Jay is training on Earth-3.

Carrie Allen

In John Byrne’s Generations, a Batman/Superman team-up series that spanned generations that played out in real time in an alternate DC Universe, Carrie Allen was the daughter of Barry Allen who stepped into the role in the ’80s and ’90s.

Per the DC Wiki, “Carrie Allen became the Flash in the 1980s and 1990s, taking on a variation of Wally West’s Kid Flash costume. In 1986, she helped Stephanie Trevor (Wonder Woman) and Alan Scott (Green Lantern) rein in Bruce Wayne Jr. (Batman), who since the death of his wife Kara Kent (Supergirl) was starting to become unhinged with rage. In 1997, she helped Kyle Rayner (Green Lantern) and Black-Hawk track down Sinestro in the Colorado Rockies, who was seeking to destroy all Green Lanterns.”

XS

More family ties — The absence of a second, male figure (which could then be Dawn’s twin brother) may point to Ognats — the Legionnaire known as XS.

XS came along in 1994 and was apparently created as a result of the timeline damage from Zero Hour: A Crisis in Time.

The spends most of her time in the 30th Century, like the Tornado Twins, but unlike them she is primarily associated not with the Flash family but with the Legion, currently appearing on Supergirl.

Sela Allen

Introduced in an issue of The Flash written by Mark Waid (who got a name-drop in tonight’s episode of The Flash), Sela Allen is the daughter of an unnamed future Flash (presumably a descendant of Barry and Iris) who developed powers after a tragedy.

Here is her official bio, from a The Flash Secret Files and Origins issue published in 1999:

The powerless daughter of the early-23rd century Flash, Sela Allen fell victim to a brutal attack by her era’s Cobalt Blue, who used his speed-stealing sorcery to slow Sela’s nervous system a million-fold. With the electrical impulses from her brain to her muscles all but halted, Sela was locked in permanent — and torturous — slow motion.

Desperate to help her, Sela’s father placed her in medical stasis on the edge of the Speed Force, hoping that its extra-dimensional energy might somehow reaccelerate her system, even spark her own latent speed.

Instead, the process turned her human form into a focusing lens, allowing her to project her consciousness back to Earth in a n energy form while her corporeal body continues its healing process — she hopes.

Joanie Swift

In the comics, Johnny Quick got his powers by way of reciting a Speed Formula, which his daughter Jesse would later use.

(It’s “3×2(9YZ)4A,” if you want to try it for yourself.)

The Speed Formula turned up on one of his papers which, when read aloud by his secretary, imbued her with super speed. After that, she was his partner for a couple of stories in the early ’50s.

Obviously this is an unlikely character to revive — but it must be said that in a story so centered on Jesse Quick and her father…well, it’s plausible enough to include.

Iris West

No, not the Iris West you’re thinking of.

The daughter of Wally West is the successor to the Flash mantle in the world of Kingdom Come, a wildly popular “Elseworlds” story that has had numerous sequels and spinoffs.

In the story, Wally has essentially merged with the Speed Force and moves wordlessly around his city like a force of nature, righting wrongs before they can even happen. This leaves his daughter to be a more traditional superhero when it turns out the world could really use some.

Using the daughter of an alternate-Earth Wally West could be a way to put a degree of separation between Garrick’s trainee and Barry and Iris. Having her tied to the Flash family bloodline but not actually one of Barry and Iris’s kids could be a fun way to acknowledge the history without writing an assumed future for the heroes.

Teri Magnus

Teri Magnus is another import from the 31st Century, although this one has no ties to the Legion of Super-Heroes and only a supericial connection to the Allen family tree.

First appearing in Justice League 3001, she would eventually travel back in time to become a minor player in Blue Beetle for a time.

Per the DC Wiki again:

In the 31st Century Teri and her twin brother Terry comprised the Wonder Twins and worked under Ariel Masters on The Project – a series of research which aimed to resurrect the 21st Century Justice League. After Ariel left the project the Twins became the heads of Cadmus and The Project, continuing the research and cloning the heroes.

With the team resurrected the Twins took the role of team management and sent them on a series of missions against the Five, a criminal organisation controlling the universe. The first few confrontations with members of the Five left the League damaged with Locus killing The Flash – whom the Twins re-resurrected later – and splitting up the team.

All seemed dire for the heroes, especially when Teri’s twin, Terry, revealed himself to be the founder of the Five and he snaps Teri’s neck to prove his point.

Ariel – having found the team earlier – surrenders herself to Terry and secretly resurrects Teri using the Flash’s DNA and therefore imbuing Teri with his super speed which she uses to fight her brother[4] and ultimately the Leaguers take down the Five.

Although nervous, Teri finds herself settling in on the team and even begins to date Superman and befriends Wonder Woman – though Diana is reluctant to admit it.

For reasons unknown, Terri has traveled to the present day along with Tina Sung and works for former Blue Beetle, Ted Kord as his assistant. She is also the personal physician of Ted’s reluctant successor and apprentice, Jaime Reyes.

Avery Ho

Avery Ho, a Chinese superhero built by the same experiment that gave us the New Super-Man, has only recently appeared…but when has that ever been a real obstacle for the creators of The Flash on TV?

Avery, a super-speedster who has been helping Barry Allen with his recent Grodd troubles, is a character who could plausibly show up on Earth-3, provide a fully new look and feel to the show’s speedsters, and a little additional diversity to The CW’s DC superhero line.

Fun fact: she was recently featured in an article titled “Three Speedsters We’d Love To See on ‘The Flash’” — on the DC Comics official website.

Meena Dhawan

Another character who could bring some diversity to the old-school Earth-3, Meena Dhawan is another new, recent creation, introduced during Joshua Williamson’s “Rebirth” run on The Flash.

Per DC’s Ashley Robinson, “During the first arc of his run, she is struck by the same Speed Force lightning that bequeaths so many civilians with the power of the Flash—including the villain Godspeed. Luckily, Meena is not a villain. She’s a scientist working at S.T.A.R. Labs who develops a school-for-speedsters of sorts on her work campus in order to teach some of the civilians with these unexpected power sets. As you might be thinking, she’s pretty much the perfect woman for Barry Allen and the two characters enjoy a brief romance before something crazy happens!”

This could be an interesting direction because Jay Garrick seems to be a one-man Team Flash, lacking the technical and scientific expertise that not only Barry, but all other TV superheroes tend to rely on so heavily. Introducing a super-scientist who is also a super-speedster would be an interesting way to deal with that.