The reason Savitar knows so much about Barry and Team Flash is because he lived it. As Killer Frost said, “This is history.” The Flash Season 3 episode 20, “I Know Who You Are,” spoilers ahead.
READ: How ‘The Flash’ Combined Future Flash & Savitar From The Comics
Savitar is Future Flash, aka future Barry Allen. Through a series of flashbacks, The Flash realized a past version of Savitar had been present every moment of the way. That’s how Savitar was always one step ahead. Barry recalled Savitar saying in an earlier episode, “I am what I created,” which is a villain. Every time Barry has messed with the timeline, the biggest incident being Flashpoint, he’s come closer and closer to becoming Savitar. For once, Reverse-Flash may have been on the right track for wanting to nip this in the butt from the beginning.
Message To Rip Hunter From 2056
Some version of Barry (even after he ‘vanishes in crisis’ as the newspaper says) sends a message to Rip Hunter from 2056. In it, Barry says, “whenever you alter the past, those changes affect the present and get compounded in the future.” He warns the team that they cannot trust him, now or ever, suggesting he will no longer be an ally. The war Barry is describing would be against himself, against time. Present day Barry clearly hasn’t learned his lesson. He is his own worst enemy---Savitar.
A war is coming Captain Hunter. And at some point you are going to be called back to Central City to fight it. So you need to know that while you and your team have been in the temperate zone, I made a choice that affected the timeline. As you know, whenever you alter the past those changes affect the present and get compounded in the future. When you return, you will be in the new timeline I created where everyone's past and everyones future has been effected, even yours. When you come back, don't trust anything or anyone, not even me.
‘The Flash Vanished, Missing In Crisis’
Is Savitar from when The Flash vanishes in crisis? The present day Flash is nowhere to be found. That's because another version of The Flash trapped the other in the speed force and Savitar is born, but stuck in the speed force. After all, this newspaper now suggests Iris dies, so the connection to Savitar is there. Aside from the author change, there’s nothing different about the article that we first saw in Eobard Thawne’s (Harrison Wells at the time) secret room in STAR Labs in Season 1. The text still describes a battle with Reverse-Flash where Green Arrow, The Atom and Hawkgirl came to help. The headline is the same: ‘The Flash Missing, Vanishes In Crisis.’
Flashpoint Barry
In Flashpoint, after going back in time to save his mother from getting murdered, Barry got to live the life he could have had if Reverse-Flash never killed his mother and trained him to be Flash. It was a good life, with both parents alive and Iris by his side. However, Barry watched Kid Flash getting his ass kicked as The Flash of Central City. Cisco’s brother was dead. Joe is depressed as hell, and nearly every member of Team Flash negatively affected. He chose to go back to the original timeline and have Reverse-Flash kill Nora Allen all over again. He promised Jay he’d do his best to “fix it” even though Jay Garrick warned him it would never go back to normal.
READ: What Did Flashpoint Really Do To The Timeline?
Eobard Thawne also said something suspicious during the Flashpoint episodes, and he was right. “Now who's the villain, Flash.” He was basically saying that Barry is taking them both to hell by staying in Flashpoint and creating so many ripples. Maybe Barry becoming Savitar and Reverse-Flash getting killed by Black Flash is the hell he was talking about.
It's also possible Flashpoint, which changed and erased the future of the original (pre-flashpoint) timeline, allowed Savitar to get ahold of the philosophers stone and become visible to other speedsters. It became his mission to get out of the speed force not only to continue being a god, but to become a god sooner in this new timeline. Savitar is now attempting to recreate the sequence of events that allowed him to become Savitar (in another timeline), which would explain why he wants to kill Iris.
There’s Still Some Questions
For whatever reason, this future version of Barry is really really weak. Maybe the consequences of that 2024 battle? Savitar travels so fast, he needs the suit to neutralize the charge around him. But how is the skin on Future Barry’s face damaged? He’s supposed to be able to regenerate cells instantly.
Jay Garrick also said Savitar was the first human the speed force ever granted power and knew of Savitar only as a speed force myth who goes after speedsters he considers a threat. This suggests Savitar has been around for a long while. Has Future Barry Allen really gotten around that much or is there an element to this we don’t know about? Why does Savitar have a cult following?
And last but not least, why does future Barry want to kill Iris? What will that fix? Is he just trying to keep punching present day Barry in the gut so he’ll retire as Flash and stop messing with the timeline altogether? It's also possible that if Iris doesn't die, Savitar never exists in the first place because that's the event that ultimatley brings Barry to the dark side.
What are your theories? Let us know in the comments.
