So in the first season when Eobard went back in time and killed Barry’s mom he then couldn’t get back to the future. (Just making sure im clear on things.) So he then went and caused the accident that killed Harrison Wells’s wife. Before killing Harrison and taking his identity he told him that he creates a particle accelerator and that in order for him to get home he needs it to happen a lot sooner. (Paraphrasing) If all of that is true then isnt the timeline already changed? Here’s a link to the scene: https://youtu.be/VrWlvdETbkM
Yeah. In the original time line (comics) Barry’s parents lived to a ripe old age. When Barry came back during Final Crisis, Geoff Johns Batman’d Barry’s origin in Flash Rebirth by Having Reverse Flash go back in time and Kill Barry’s mother and get his father sent to prison for it. Flashpoint showed Barry couldn’t change the timeline back. This is because Thawne used negative Speed Force energy in his time travel and that blocks any attempt by Barry to repair the damage Thawne did (essentially Johns was making a retcon-proof lock so that no one could undo his retcon) Of course the TV series followed the new “canon” of Flash comics. Which meant that Thawne could change Barry’s life, but Barry couldn’t undo those changes.
That makes sense. But what about the newspaper headline? Was it always going to say that he went missing in the same year? Or because of Thawne was it now supposed to happen earlier? ( I guess most of this doesnt matter since its coming next year but i just wanted to know because its driving me crazy.
I actually forgot about that. The only thing I can guess is that the newspaper adjusted itself when Thawne made things happen sooner than they were originally supposed to. An interesting side note to that is that at the end of the pilot, Wells looks at the paper and it has a different writer in the byline. (I don’t think the byline actually becomes Iris West Allen until Barry Caitlyn and Cisco find the Time Vault