According to the build-up to the big Arrowverse crossover, two heroes are going to give their lives to save the multiverse in “Crisis on Infinite Earths“: Oliver Queen and Barry Allen. The Emerald Archer’s death makes sense given Arrow‘s imminent end, but it’s hard to swallow the idea that the Scarlet Speedster is going to die, too. The third episode of The Flash season 6, though, may just have opened up a loophole for his survival.
In the second episode, Barry traveled to Earth-3 and, with the help of Jay Garrick, foresaw the terrible things to come in the Crisis. In the following installment, he explains to the STAR Labs gang what exactly he saw.
“When I projected my mind forwards,” he told them, “I saw billions of possible futures. And the only timeline where everyone survives was the one where I died.”
In other words, we’ve got ourselves an Avengers: Endgame situation here, with the Flash in the Iron Man position. Or do we? It’s important to notice Barry’s specific wording. To create a timeline where “everyone survives,” he has to die. But what if the one we end up with in “Crisis” is one where not everyone survives. What if another of Team Flash sacrifices themselves instead to save Barry?
This would be one of the timelines he’d seen, but being a hero, he’d dismiss this one as something to aim for. To Barry, the right one is the version where he dies. But one of his friends may feel differently and decide to swap their own life for his. But who could it be?
ScreenRant has made the case that it might be Killer Frost, thereby completing her redemptive arc. And while it remains to be seen if that’s the case, it would be particularly tragic and emotional after Frost is just discovering herself as a person on this season of The Flash.