The Flash Season 7 Wasted Godspeed, Its Best Villain - Screen Rant

Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for The Flash season 7, episode 15, "Enemy At The Gates."

The Flash television series has completely wasted the character of Godspeed, dragging out the mystery behind a once interesting concept. Godspeed is a fairly new introduction to the mythology of The Flash comics, first appearing in the 2016 The Flash Rebirth series. Godspeed was originally August Heart, a CCPD police officer who was Barry Allen's only real friend on the force and one of several people who acquired superspeed after being struck by the lightning of a freak Speed Force storm. Sadly, Heart went mad with power and began killing other speedsters in a bid to boost his newfound abilities, resulting in quite the conflict as Barry was forced to fight his friend.

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Godspeed was originally adapted for the Arrowverse in The Flash season 5 episode "Godspeed," which introduced August Heart as a biochemical engineer who had begun experimenting with tachyons and the Velocity-9 drug in a bid to give himself super speed. In The Flash, Godspeed was the first supervillain that Nora West-Allen faced in her career as the superhero XS. A new version of Godspeed was introduced in the opening scene of The Flash season 6 premiere "Into The Void." This Godspeed was the fourth of several speedsters captured by The Flash during the summer of 2019, who was unable to speak in anything but mechanical squawking noises. These Godspeeds were later killed by a fifth Godspeed in The Flash season 6 episode "Pay The Piper." This Godspeed spoke of himself as being part of a larger group and having been sent by one "who wants infinite velocity."

The mystery of the multiple Godspeeds, the group behind them, and the one seeking infinite velocity were not picked up again until The Flash season 7 episode "Enemy At The Gates." The action of the episode focused on a siege at STAR Labs, as multiple Godspeeds sought to drain Barry Allen's speed. In the end, the six Godspeeds chasing after Barry were defeated by the sudden arrival of a group of another six Godspeed clones. While this deepened the mystery, it also lessened the emotional impact of Godspeed's return. There is some irony that the Godspeed storyline was reportedly put on the back burner for the better part of a season because The Flash's showrunners wanted to move away from the main villain of each season being a speedster out to steal Barry Allen's power, only for Godspeed to be transformed into one of nearly a score of speedsters that were literally indistinguishable from one another.

Presumably, the final episodes of The Flash season 7 will see the ranks of Godspeeds whittled down until the one true Godspeed emerges. Yet that will not solve the larger problem of the Arrowverse Godspeed, who lacks the rich character of his comic book counterpart and an emotional connection to Barry Allen or Nora West-Allen. One way the character might be redeemed is for him to be revealed as a time remnant, struggling to stay alive by pushing his speed towards infinity, after having had his existence erased thanks to The Flash's actions causing his future to never come to pass.

Another interesting possibility is that Godspeed could be turned into a villain for the crew of the Waverider to face. The same thing was done to great effect with Eobard Thawne in Legends of Tomorrow season 2, where a Reverse Flash remnant led a group of time-traveling villains working to avert their defeats. Taking Godspeed away from The Flash and setting him up on a series more focused on personalities than over-the-top speedster battle scenes might be an effective way to introduce a more conflicted and comics-accurate Godspeed, for whom his powers are an addiction he struggles to overcome.

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Matt Morrison (1553 Articles Published)

Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word "blogging" was coined. He got his start writing for the legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing, before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on to write for over a dozen websites, including 411 Mania, Comics Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog – My Geeky Geeky Ways – which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series making up The Arrowverse as well as his comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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The Flash Season 7 Wasted Godspeed, Its Best Villain - Screen Rant

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