WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Flash #759, by Joshua Williamson, Rafa Sandoval, Scott Kolins, Jordi Tarragona, Arif Prianto, Hi-Fi and Steve Wands, on sale now.
Ever since the start of the DC Rebirth era over four years ago, Joshua Williamson has written the continuing adventures of Barry Allen as he continues to defend the DC Universe as the Flash. Along the way, Barry battled new antagonists like Godspeed as well as old enemies like his one, true nemesis the Reverse-Flash as the Flash Family was shattered and rallied together again over the course of Williamson’s run. And, after murdering Godspeed, Barry and Eobard Thawne are racing against one another for an explosive final battle in Williamson’s last story arc on the series “Finish Line,” in which the Flash Family confronts Thawne’s Legion of Zoom.
In an exclusive interview with CBR, Williamson reflected on his time writing The Flash, how he had seeded plot threads setting up the finale ever since the first issue and how it connects to the upcoming Dark Nights: Death Metal tie-in “Speed Metal.”
CBR: Looking way back at 2016’s The Flash: Rebirth #1, Barry is haunted by Flashpoint while the specter of the Reverse-Flash hovers over everything. Was this final storyline meant to parallel how it all started?
Joshua Williamson: Yes. There’s a lot of stuff in that first issue that sort of sets up what we were going to do. You look at that first issue and Eobard is kind of messing with Barry’s head. That was the first clue that Eobard was messing with him in ways that you weren’t going to see for a long time. At that crime scene, with the murder, Barry’s seeing things; that was all setting the stage with what I was going to do and, at the ending, you had these two cops and they’re talking and they say “Barry’s all about justice and makes all these speeches but Barry also makes mistakes.” And when he says that, you see Eobard kind of like a shadow or a blur.
So everything’s been coming back to that: You get to see that Barry’s made a lot of mistakes over the course of the run and you get to see what Eobard’s influence was on a lot of that stuff, so it all comes back around. I always wanted to end with this story, this is always what I wanted to do last — this “Finish Line” story.
Kicking off “Finish Line,” and “Legion of Zoom” before it, Thawne reveals he messed with Godspeed before killing him. Was Godspeed always introduced with his eventual death in mind?
Yes, from the very beginning. There’s a scene in issue #7 where [Godspeed] tells Barry, “I’m going to help you” — because, at that time, Eobard was still locked up in Iron Heights — he says, “I’m going to go to Iron Heights and I’m going to kill Eobard for you and make your life easier by doing the thing you could never do.” And Barry stops Godspeed but there’s always been this tease of Eobard versus Godspeed, that was always going to happen; that was always the plan, he was built with that in mind. We knew we would always get to that point, and it was originally going to happen much earlier, but it just didn’t work out.
The way stories happened and got broken up and pieces got moved around, we just pushed it back much later and then it was like “Oh, this actually works perfect[ly] right here.” There was always this understanding that… you go back and look at the first annual that we did — which was at the beginning of 2018 introducing Wally back into the book — in the annual, Commander Cold says “There’s someone locked up in Iron Heights that was the only person Eobard could put away.” That’s the start of this huge story that’s going to unravel post-“Flash War,” it was always this big thing that was going to happen. So it was always engineered that Eobard defeated Paradox; Paradox would come back, Barry would need to get Eobard to do that and, eventually, Eobard would help him stop Paradox but betray Barry in a really impactful way and that’s what killing Godspeed was. And that kicks off us moving forward.
This story is bringing the Flash Family back together in pre-Flashpoint ways but there’s one piece that’s glaringly missing, and that’s Wally. Is there anything you can tease in the next couple of issues about that?
Oh yeah, in the first couple issues of “Finish Line,” it comes up immediately that Wally is missing, it’s mentioned multiple times in the book that Wally isn’t there; Bart straight-up asks “Where is Wally?” There are definitely pieces of that in this story where Wally’s absence is felt by everybody and then it starts to connect to a bigger story and with Death Metal through “Speed Metal.” “Speed Metal” comes out the same day as the last part of “Finish Line” but you have to read “Finish Line” and then “Speed Metal;” they tie into each other directly.
So, that’s my answer to that: Once you see that, “Speed Metal” is a huge part of Death Metal, but “Speed Metal” is also, to me, is not even epilogue [to my Flash run] but a huge ending. So much stuff happens in “Speed Metal” that’s such a massive ending that ties into what we’re doing on The Flash. You’ll see: Once you read “Finish Line” and then read “Speed Metal,” you’ll notice it was all connected and it was a straight line — there’s definitely some detours there — but it’s a straight line through. Wally’s definitely a major part of it. I was talking [to DC] about this and when “Finish Line” is collected, it has to have “Speed Metal” last in the trade because, otherwise, you’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle. There are a lot of scenes throughout “Finish Line” where you have to read “Speed Metal” because it goes from this to this. I don’t want to give it away, but Wally’s stuff is a big part of my end on The Flash.
The last time we talked, you were saying you liked puzzles: You always have the long game but you’re readjusting to what’s going on. How much of “Flash War” was setting up Wally for Heroes in Crisis and how much was it delivering a big story that unleashes the Forces and brings Bart back into the mix?
It was a little bit of both. The idea with that story was we were trying to figure out some stuff with the book and we were having a lot of conversations about it. I desperately wanted Wally and the Flash Family in the book, I wanted to have more of the cast and not just Barry alone, so it was about trying to find story reasons. It was always down to this: You go into the room and pitch stuff and just go “I want the Flash Family, Wally, Bart, Max and Jesse, in the book just because,” that’s not going to fly, you have to find out what the story is.
It was before “Running Scared” was over, it was right after “The Button,” I was like, this is how this would be a thing. At the time, I didn’t know all the pieces to Heroes in Crisis, I knew Heroes in Crisis was a thing but I didn’t know all the pieces of it. So I was like “Here’s this thing I want to do…” and it was like, “Oh, well that can lead into this other thing,” but that was always part of it. But it was always about pushing the book forward with Barry, bringing Bart back in and introducing the new Forces, there was a lot of pieces to the puzzle.
Even when we were working on it, little things in the ending would kind of keep changing here and there because we were still trying to figure some pieces we wanted to do. But once we landed and other people landed with their stories and what they were doing, we were able to move these things around and make “Flash War” be this story that was the middle of what I was trying to do.
I’m sure there’s that one Johnny Quick fan that was hoping he would come back only to find out he’s still dead.
Well, I don’t think he’s dead dead. When you look at The Flash: Rebirth and what Geoff Johns did, Johnny merged with the Speed Force and helps them move forward. I wanted to maintain that, I wanted to maintain some things, and I didn’t think it would be super easy. Now, if somebody after me wanted to bring him back, I’d think that’d be cool but, in the confines of this story, I didn’t think it would work, especially if I’m plucking people pre-Flashpoint. Max Mercury and Jesse Quick, and we even talk about it, they’re plucked right before. They were plucked, and the reason they were able to survive is that they were in this part of the Speed Force… why would Johnny be there?
That being said, I love Johnny Quick. If somebody else wanted to bring him back, I would cheer for them.
Barry and Bart definitely have a history with Eobard. Max came back during “The Return of Barry Allen” to face Eobard and Jesse lost her dad to Eobard. Are the last couple of issues of “Finish Line” going to be Eobard paying for his sins with this massive confrontation?
It is a massive confrontation! In Issue #761, the second to last issue, there’s a lot that happens in that issue. That issue is the big fight issue: It’s the Flash Family versus the Legion of Zoom, and you have a lot of surprises in that last issue, but that issue is one big fight. There are no cuts away to anything else, it’s just 20 pages of this big fight happening in Central City that’s beat-for-beat this huge thing. It’s one of those things where you look at it and are like, “This whole fight probably took place in five minutes.” [Laughs]
But, it’s all in one issue and everyone dealing with how messed up Eobard is and the last issue is mostly resolving a lot of stuff. It basically all comes down to Barry versus Eobard and wrapping up their story and what do with Eobard moving forward that’s different. That’s Barry’s big challenge, not just moving forward and doing something different than what’s been done in the past but learning from those mistakes and figure some things out about why he hasn’t been able to move forward these past few years. So, there’s a lot of tying it all together. I’m really curious to see what people are going to think about the ending, it’s going to be fun.
In talking about plucking people from certain points in the timestream, why was it important for the Reverse-Flash to grab Captain Cold and Golden Glider from two years ago, or Grodd from even farther back, instead of grabbing present-day incarnations of those characters?
In particular, with Grodd, it’s because Grodd is gone: He was tied up with the Legion of Doom stuff in Justice League and Death Metal; he’s been kind of off the table. [The] same thing with the Turtle, he’s probably the closest to the present day in this. I wanted [Reverse-Flash] to go and grab people he felt he could manipulate. That’s a big part of it: He knows their future and didn’t grab versions of them where they were at their peaks or at a moment of loss. They had all lost to the Flash already in current time so it went back to when they hadn’t lost yet and still had their confidence to basically tell them “In the future, you’re going to lose so I’m going to help you not lose.”
For me, it was about picking how far he would go back. That was actually a weird game with the editors — trying to figure what points in time to grab them from because we wanted to be sure it’s this version of them, that means it has to be this time period. And we wanted to be sure we were grabbing them post-New 52 but, in the Turtle’s case, it was weird because of The Flash: Year One. So, we settled on these, and [it] really just came down to where in the timeline did we feel Eobard could manipulate them the most, those were the choices we made.
