How Harrison Wells’ Time Travel Power Compares To Barry’s
The original Harrison Wells has been revived on The Flash, but this version has the power to time travel and it’s very different to how Barry does it.
The Flash has brought back the original Harrison Wells, but has also given him time travel powers that are different than Barry Allen’s. Tom Cavanagh has portrayed more characters than any other actor in The CW’s DC TV franchise, by appearing as multiple versions of Harrison Wells. While it seemed like Nash Wells was going to be the end of that story tool, the writers pulled the unlikeliest twist. Even though all the Multiverse-Wells had been absorbed into the Artificial Speed Force, the original Harrison Wells that Reverse-Flash murdered was resurrected.
When Harrison Wells comes to Barry Allen, he explains that all except 0.01% of all the Wells that were inside of Nash got sent into the sphere that powers the new Speed Force. Through the universe’s cosmic will, as he explained it, those 0.01% particles manifested into recreating the first Harrison Wells, making him the only surviving Wells in the entire Multiverse. But despite being based on The Flash‘s Earth-1 iteration, Harrison’s resurrection somehow gave him the power to time travel.
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As The Flash brought him back from the dead, there was a mysterious visual component to his return. Harrison Wells seems to be able to make his body dissolve into green-looking things which he also demonstrated to Barry when they first met. While he isn’t a regular metahuman, Harrison Wells has somehow gotten the power to see his past, present, and future all at the same time. He even knows that he’ll live until the age of 92, which emphasizes how deep this goes with his new ability. Additionally, Harrison Wells even alludes to the fact that he knows Cisco Ramon and Kamilla Hwang’s romance will work out. In a way, this makes him omniscient to a certain extent, which differs from Flash’s time travel powers.
While Harrison has chosen to go and relive the four years he had with his wife Tess before her death, how does his time-travel power differ from Flash’s? For starters, Harrison doesn’t seem to have gotten his ability from the Speed Force in any capacity. Barry always has to tap into the Speed Force whenever he goes back or forward in time. For Harrison, it’s a lot more specific as he can only place himself in any moment after his birth and his death. In Barry’s (as well as other speedsters) case, they are freer in where and when they can go in the past and future, but getting to those points require tapping into the cosmic power of the Speed Force and physically running through time.
Despite Harrison’s time-travel power being a bit limited in comparison, at least he doesn’t have to push himself as hard as Barry does when traveling in time. All Harrison has to do is dissolve his body into the green energy that has been visually seen thus far. This is a new take on time travel for The Flash as well as the larger Arrowverse, which has also used Waveriders and Legion Rings as alternative paths. While it hasn’t been explained what Harrison Wells’ green energy is meant to represent, it’d be related to the possible tease of DC’s Seven Forces concept coming to The Flash.
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