One Major Problem With The Flash's New Speed Force | Screen Rant
Despite getting the Artificial Speed Force up and running, The Flash presented a big consequence for Barry Allen's new power source. The Flash season 6 came with a game-changer for Barry as well as other speedsters. Crisis on Infinite Earths may have rebooted the Multiverse, but it came with some significant costs. Not only did Oliver Queen have to give up his life to save the Multiverse as Spectre, but the Speed Force was compromised too. When Barry was given the key from Spectre to re-enter the Speed Force, it became its undoing when the energy balance was thrown off. This caused the complex source of Barry's speed to, essentially, get sick and by the second half of The Flash season 6, the Speed Force was officially dead.
As Barry's speed was running out, the team began developing the idea to create an Artificial Speed Force. With the help of Iris West and Barry's daughter, Nora, they used her journal that had information on how to create a new Speed Force as she had learned it from Eobard Thawne. The only snag that they had hit was that they needed an energy source powerful enough to run the Artificial Speed Force. Nash Wells gave up his life and was able to power it up with the help of every other Harrison Wells from other Earths that now lived inside of him.
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This allowed Barry to get his speed back, but it wasn't as simple as the team had hoped for. While Flash was able to access his powers again, it also granted him a new ability: speed-thinking. What this did for Barry was that it got him to investigate, analyze, process, simulate, calculate, and execute solutions and ideas at a much faster pace. It didn't necessarily make Barry smarter, but it did allow the Scarlet Speedster's intellectual to be highlighted, something the Arrowverse doesn't always reflect on. But it didn't take long before it became clear that this new power came with a severe negative side-effect: a lack of emotion.
The more Barry used his speed-thinking gift, the less emotional he became, even if it meant that he could produce solutions to problems. The faster that his mind gets, the more it kills Barry's ability to feel anything. The Artificial Speed Force was created with the safety of not having a speedster get an emotional fallout. If Barry ever began to fuel the source with anger, hatred, fear, sadness, or other negative feelings, it would consume him and corrupt the new Speed Force. But by doing it this way, it backfired because even if The Flash can process things faster, Barry's humanity would be lost as a result. It wouldn't even make him a metahuman anymore and more of a meta-robot, for lack of a better term.
The Artificial Speed Force was obviously always meant to be a temporary solution because creating an energy source is easier said than done. But at some point in The Flash season 7, Barry will have to have his speed back in some way. Since he has now destroyed the Artificial Speed Force, it's unclear how he gets access to his powers going forward. While the idea of speed-thinking did seem like a blessing at first, it's clear now that The Flash will never try to create their own Speed Force again, at least now in this way.
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