Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) may have avoided fate in hour three of Crisis on Infinite Earths, but this doesn’t mean he won’t meet a different end in one of the remaining two episodes of the Arrowverse crossover. The whole first half of The Flash’s sixth season has been building up to his death, but Crisis on Infinite Earths gave him a way out. That relief, however, is likely temporary.
In the third chapter of Crisis, which aired as an episode of The Flash, Barry, Black Lightning (Cress Williams), Vibe (Carlos Valdez), and Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) discovered that they could take the fight directly to the Anti-Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and destroy the source of the antimatter wave. Alongside Pariah (Tom Cavanagh), they’re able to access the Anti-Monitor’s secret chamber where they find Earth-90’s Barry Allen (John Wesley Shipp) running on the cosmic treadmill. He explains that his speed is not only powering the antimatter cannon, but also stopping it from exploding. When it’s discovered that reaching the right speed while running on the treadmill backwards can destroy it, Barry realizes that now is the time for his ultimate sacrifice; however, Earth-90’s Flash had other plans.
After temporarily stealing Barry’s speed, Earth-90’s Flash gave his life to destroy the antimatter cannon. This culminates in a touching flashback scene to the original 1990s The Flash TV series. Prior to his death, he pointed out to Barry that the Monitor never specified which Flash had to die. In the aftermath of his death, Iris (Candice Patton) expressed relief that her Barry is still alive. While it may seem that Crisis has found a loophole to save Barry from the fate he was promised, with two episodes left of the cross-over, the Scarlet Speedster isn’t out of the woods just yet.
While it’s true that the Monitor didn’t necessarily confirm that it had to be Earth-1’s Barry Allen who dies to save the multiverse, it seems unlikely that he would only give this warning to him. If it truly didn’t matter which Flash died, why did he focus his attention on the Earth-1 version? A cosmic being as knowledgeable as the Monitor should have known if any such loophole existed. Furthermore, the Monitor’s prediction isn’t the only evidence that something could happen to Barry, as a future newspaper has been predicting that the Flash would disappear since season 1. Is it possible the Flash may live, but still vanish from Earth-1?
It could be revealed in the fourth or fifth chapter that Barry’s death is still required, even though the timing for his comic book death has now passed. Just as it did with Oliver’s early demise in the first hour, the Arrowverse’s Crisis on Infinite Earths could have a tragic twist in store for Barry Allen.
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