Warning: spoilers ahead for The Flash #771!
In the next issue of DC Comics’ The Flash, Wally West is faced with having to relive the darkest moment of his entire life. Recent issues have seen the Speed Force taking Wally on a ride against his will, grabbing him right before he was about to give up his powers and retire as a speedster. Wally’s consciousness has been hopping between the bodies of various speedsters across time, space, and reality, repairing points of damage within the Speed Force itself. However, The Flash #771 revealed Wally’s next port of call is his own past; specifically, the tragic events of the Heroes in Crisis event.
Coming from writer Jeremy Adams and a team of artists including Kevin Maguire, Howard Porter, Berat Pekmezki, Bryan Hitch, Max Raynor, Scott Kolins, Tom Derenick, Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, and Brandon Peterson, Flash #771 begins with Wally in the body of the Legion of Doom’s Reverse-Flash, having just turned Superman into a Speed Force bomb. While Wally manages to prevent the energy from exploding just as he has in previous stops on his trip, his next few visits are actually depicted as a montage, briefly featuring him in locales such as the Old West, the present-day Titans Academy, as well as the future in the body of his grown-up son, getting the chance to have lunch with his daughter Irey, who’s also grown up and become a hero in her own right.
While Wally had an enjoyable time with Irey, she warns him that his next jump will be his hardest one yet. Sure enough, Wally wakes up in his own body from the past, standing in a Nebraska field just outside Sanctuary, the superhero trauma clinic created by Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman before its residents were massacred in 2018’s Heroes in Crisis (from Tom King and Clay Mann). Sadly, Wally West was the one responsible for inadvertently killing the other healing heroes with an uncontrollable burst of Speed Force energy due to a mental breakdown.
Now, it seems as though the Speed Force wants him to relive and confront his past once more. It’s also possible that a very tempting and risky opportunity may present itself. Will Wally try to undo his darkest moment, risking damage to the timestream in a similar fashion to the cataclysmic Flashpoint event? Clearly, revisiting Sanctuary is going to cause some massive internal struggles within Wally, as it’s very likely that he hasn’t forgiven himself for what happened (indeed, it’s been suggested as one of the key events behind his intended retirement.)
Revisiting Heroes in Crisis is going to be huge, no doubt serving as a pivotal moment for the speedster, who discovered that in Irey’s future, the idea of him retiring at this point in his career is laughable. Having experienced the adventures of countless other speedster heroes, Wally has unique insight into what being the Flash truly means, but before he can reach home and begin a new era as DC’s new Flash, he’ll have to undergo a much more personal reckoning. With his return to Heroes in Crisis, Flash‘s trial by fire is almost over, but the Speed Force has seemingly kept the most harrowing trial for last.
