The Biggest Plot Holes In The Flash

While some of DC's other offerings have struggled, The Flash has earned widespread acclaim since it debuted on the CW in 2014. It's also surprisingly tightly plotted for a show that features a mutant shark-man leaping through a wormhole from a parallel dimension. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few story holes that the show hasn't managed to clear up. (Warning: this article contains spoilers for seasons one and two.)

While stuck in the past, Eobard Thawne meets his distant relative, hunky police detective Eddie Thawne. Although he holds his ancestor in contempt, Eobard has to keep him safe, since he'll never be born if Eddie dies without having children. So it doesn't make sense that Eobard lets Eddie move to Central City and become a key member of Team Flash, putting him in terrible danger on a weekly basis. (He almost gets sucked into a tornado in the very first episode.) Even the Clock King, a completely powerless old guy, shoots him in the stomach and leaves him to die.

In disguise as Harrison Wells, Eobard is a wealthy and influential scientist with access to future technology. He should be able to hook Eddie up with a high-paying security job somewhere safe—or do anything other than let him move to the town where Eobard is creating a bunch of homicidal supervillains.

One of Barry's closest allies in the series is tech genius Cisco Ramon. As a last resort in case Barry ever turns evil, Cisco designs the perfect weapon to use against a speedster: a gun that fires a cold beam reaching absolute zero. Unfortunately, the gun is stolen and sold to bank robber Len Snart, who becomes the villain Captain Cold. Inexplicably, Cisco never builds a replacement cold gun for Team Flash. We know he's capable of building another one, as Captain Cold eventually kidnaps him and forces him to do exactly that. But when the Reverse-Flash starts causing mayhem, nobody suggests using the weapon specifically designed to stop speedsters. They even know that the Reverse-Flash is afraid of the gun, since they all watched his alter-ego Harrison Wells freak out when he learned Cisco built it in the first place.

There are two ways to time travel. Either your consciousness goes back and takes over your younger body (think X-Men: Days of Future Past) or your physical body goes back and you run the risk of bumping into your younger self (think Looper). The first time Barry time-travels, he jumps back three days to stop a tsunami. Since he doesn't meet himself, it seems like the first kind of time travel. But for the rest of the show, time travel clearly falls into the second category. Barry learns to bring past versions of himself into the future as "time remnants," and there are at least three versions of Barry lurking around on the night Nora Allen is murdered.

This creates an interesting plot hole. Where was the older version of Barry on that first trip back in time? There should have been two separate Barrys in Central City for those three days. Future-Barry went to most of the same places he originally did, so they couldn't have missed each other. Did something happen to the original timeline's Barry?

After Eddie shoots himself, his descendant Eobard immediately fades out of existence. This creates a paradox. Since Eobard was now never born, all his actions should be erased from history. Barry's mother and the real Harrison Wells should still be alive. And so should Eddie, since without Eobard, Eddie has no reason to kill himself. But if Eddie doesn't kill himself, then Eobard will be born and come back in time, giving Eddie a reason to kill himself. Time travel is confusing.

The show tries to solve the problem in the middle of season two by declaring Eobard a "timeline remnant." In other words, the timeline where Eobard was born no longer exists, but the Speed Force is preventing his past actions from being erased because a stable timeline can't exist otherwise. This just creates more plot holes. For starters, Eobard is middle-aged when Eddie shoots himself. Beyond that point, Eobard no longer exists in our universe. But Eobard's past self is still out there traveling through time. Why doesn't he notice that he vanishes from history sometime in his 40s? Or can his past self still interact with his now nonexistent future self? Time travel is confusing, but it doesn't need to be this confusing.

King Shark is a gigantic, grunting shark-man who somehow repeatedly sneaks up on the heroes. In a show centered around time travel, King Shark's pants are probably the greatest mystery. If you look closely, they appear to be a pair of ripped black dress pants. So are we supposed to assume they're the pants he was wearing when he was transformed into a shark? Because there's no way. The waist alone has to be five feet across. You could fit eight grown men in those pants with no problem. Let's not even get into the leather belt.

But what's the alternative here? Did the pants mutate with him? Or did King Shark—who is a cannibalistic feral fish monster—find a tailor and commission custom giant pants? And if that's the case, did they get torn during some shark-related activities, or are the ripped knees actually something of a fashion statement? At what point on the human-shark scale do you stop worrying about protecting your modesty? Season three needs to answer these questions.

No plot hole appears more consistently in The Flash than Barry's wildly fluctuating power level. In one episode, he spins around and catches a bullet fired at the back of his neck from close range. A few episodes later, a shapeshifter walks up behind him and clunks him around the head with a gun. This knocks him unconscious despite his incredibly tough body (a gorilla later throws him headfirst through a brick wall and he gets up right away).

Even after Barry can run fast enough to dodge lightning and phase through solid objects, he still struggles against guys with guns (and one with a bow). Captain Cold and Heat Wave remain two of his key villains even though he should be able to grab their guns before they even see him coming. This is one plot hole that's definitely intentional, but it's still weird to see Barry rupture the time barrier one week and get punched straight in the face the next.