Flash is The Only Hero Who Can Actually Stop Darkseid’s Darkest Power

Warning: contains spoilers for Justice League Infinity #7!

DC’s Flash is the company’s best-known super-speed-enhanced hero and indeed perhaps the best-known speedster in comics as a whole. Using the mysterious but all-encompassing Speed Force, Barry Alan (and later Wally West and others who took up the Flash moniker) is able to travel at incomprehensibly-fast speeds, even going faster than light and time itself. It’s this power that allows Flash to defeat the villain Darkseid and his best-known device to attain power, the Anti-Life Equation.

The Flash initially was not powered by the Speed Force at all. Various explanations were given as to the reason why the Flash could run at extraordinary speeds. In his origin, Barry Allen was drenched with various, unspecified chemicals (the exact nature of which is still unexplained to this day) before being struck by a lightning bolt; the experiment was replicated in 2011’s Flashpoint. The original Flash Jay Garrick acquired his powers after an experiment with “hard water vapors” (later changed to heavy water vapors). The full explanation of the Speed Force didn’t come around until 1994 with The Flash #95 (with Wally West as the DC’s leading speedster)

In Justice League Infinity #7, the story begins with the Justice League – or rather, what’s left of them – in dire straights. Only Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and the Flash remain after a devastating attack from Amazo II unleashed the Anti-Life Equation across the multiverse. Everything outside of Green Lantern’s protective bubble is essentially non-existence, and Jon Stewart’s ring cannot sustain the shield forever. But Batman reminds Wally West about the true nature of the Speed Force: a “…primal energy that drives time and space forward.” Wally gets the point, and begins running around the inside of the bubble.

The Speed Force is so connected to the energies of the universe that it can successfully hold the Anti-Life Equation at bay, at least as long as Flash continues to run. In a sense, this is somewhat scientifically accurate (insofar as comic book psuedo-science goes): the friction provided by Wally’s speed creates heat, a byproduct of energy, and without heat there can be no movement. It’s worth noting that there exists a “Still Force” in DC Comics; the opposite of the Speed Force, it’s centered around entropy, better known as the eventual theoretical heat death of the universe.

The Anti-Life Equation is Darkseid’s best-known weapon, analogous to Thanos and his Infinity Stones in the Marvel Universe. Flash’s Speed Force has granted him and other speedsters more and more varied powers over the years. Defeating Darkseid simply through running may seem a branch too far, but for the Flash, pushing the limits of the laws of physics is what he does on a daily basis.