If the dead Titans haven't been resurrected, Wally West is not redeemed
In this CBR report on Flash #761, they assume Wally West's been "redeemed" about 2 years after so many resources were wasted on Heroes in Crisis. Unfortunately, there's still very telling signs redemption is not the result:
On top of that, his return brought pressure on him to act as the DC Universe's beacon of hope -- and he carried that torch for a while, until it all became too much. In order to recuperate, Wally checked into Sanctuary in 2019's Heroes in Crisis, which became the focal point of a terrible murder mystery.I'm afraid it's not so simple to make that claim, as the following should make clear:
Unfortunately for fans of Wally West, it turns out he was the one responsible for the death of multiple heroes. Since then, Wally has been trying to make up for what happened in Heroes in Crisis. And now, with the release of The Flash #761, DC has essentially fully redeemed the former Kid Flash.
In The Flash #761, Barry Allen goes up against his worst enemy, the Reverse-Flash. While the two fight, Eobard Thawne reveals that he has a secret superpower granted to him by the Negative Speed Force: by speaking at hyper-speed, he is able to plant ideas in the minds of others, Inception-style. With this power, he created a rift between Barry, Wally, and Wallace, and he even instigated the events of the "Flash War." But perhaps the most surprising of Thawne's heinous acts was convincing Wally West, moments after he accidentally killed his friends in Heroes in Crisis, to cover up his crime.Oh dear. Did the writer just say the Titans and other individuals struck dead by the energy blast coming out of Wally's body are still buried 6 feet under? Well I'm sorry to say, but accident or not...that's not redeeming Wally. It reminds me of the late 2000s, when DC supposedly exonerated the Toyman of killing Cat Grant's son in 1993 during the Death & Return of Superman storyline, merely using the claim a robot had actually committed the crime, but not actually restoring Adam Morgan's life. I'm sorry, but, there's just no excuse for these cheap shock value deaths that have come to replace character focus, and if the dead victims weren't resurrected, then the error wasn't repaired, period.
Therefore, the worst part of Wally's fall from grace didn't come from himself -- it was actually an idea implanted by the Reverse-Flash. The staging of the crime scene, and the entire mess that followed, was all because of the villain -- not Wally West.
This completely changes Heroes in Crisis, and it puts Wally's actions into perspective. Sure, he still killed multiple people, but that was clearly an accident. The real crime was when he tried to cover it up, and we now know that this was the result of the Reverse-Flash's manipulations. This, coupled with the events of Flash Forward and Death Metal, is surely more than enough for Wally to finally earn his redemption.
Unless DC proves they're willing to reverse the fate of the dead Titans like Roy Harper seen in Heroes in Crisis (and rid themselves of Tom King), this is even worse in some ways than the sloppy effort with the Toyman, because if the deadly energies came out of Wally's body, then he was still more directly responsible than Winslow Schott for putting innocents to death for shock's sake. And it makes no difference if it was all an "accident". Because it still leaves Wally with a most embarrassing burden, a bad storyline that wasn't cleared away.
Labels: bad editors, dc comics, Flash, golden calf of death, moonbat writers, msm propaganda, Superman, Titans, violence
