I suppose it would be a combination of Flashpoint and Spear of Destiny. I referenced Spear of Destiny because, as you also point out, Savitar would be risking his own existence by bringing his parents back using normal time travel rules. The Spear of Destiny was a plotline used to allow Thawne to rewrite time in such a way that also solidified his existence. Savitar would need some way to really mess with the force of time to get living parents and also stay alive.
The flaw there is that if Savitar simply wanted to change history, he could've done so already at any time and the show's current timeline wouldn't even exist. As Cisco explained with his drawing, after Savitar was created, he went back into history and created the myth of himself as the first speedster, and the cult of acolytes that follow him. He's already been manipulating the past for centuries, objective time, and he
hasn't brought back Barry's parents. So we can definitively rule that out as his objective.
What Savitar wants is to
preserve the history that led to his creation. His existence is a closed loop where he brings himself into being, and he's making sure it plays out as (from his perspective) it did before. He's not motivated by love, purely by narcissism. That's why he wants to destroy the person Bary loves most. He's the spawn of a Barry Allen who's deadened himself to love.
Can someone write a concise version of Savitar's creation because I'm still really confused. Was this the remnant that helped Barry defeat Zoom?
No, that was just an example to remind the audience what time remnants are.
Savitar's creation is a causality loop -- what's popularly called a "predestination paradox," even though it isn't really a paradox because it's consistent within itself. Basically:
Savitar kills Iris.
Flash is so driven to defeat Savitar that he creates a bunch of time remnants to fight him (i.e. loops back on his own recent past to duplicate himself).
Savitar kills all time remnants except one.
Flash traps Savitar in the speed force.
Remnant Barry is rejected by Barry's friends, grows bitter and isolated on top of the grief he already feels about Iris.
Remnant Barry goes insane in his isolation, decides to declare himself a god named Savitar (after Savitr, the Hindu god of motion).
Savitar goes back in time and creates his cult.
Cult endures over centuries.
Come 2016, the cult and the possessed Julian work to bring Savitar to Earth.
Savitar is freed onto Earth.
Savitar kills Iris. Cycle repeats.
Okay, it's confusing in that Savitar was already imprisoned in the Speed Force before he was put there, but it's a timeless realm so causality is screwed up.
Has anyone in the show ever explained why Caitlin is just automatically evil when she gets her powers? If they have I must have missed it. Anyone help me out? Heck, I'd take a convincing fan-excuse at this point.
They haven't addressed it, but I figure it's supposed to be something to do with her powers making her "cold" inside, shutting down her capacity to care about others. Like Mr. Freeze's line in
Batman: TAS's "Heart of Ice": "I'm beyond emotions. They've been frozen dead in me." Although that's a metaphor that doesn't make much physiological or psychological sense, but hey, it's fantasy.
By the way, the treatment of Tracy and her role in building the trap has been inconsistent. When 2024 Barry gave 2017 Barry the hologram disk, he said it contained Tracy's research, which the younger Tracy might be able to decipher. But last week, it didn't seem to have anything more on it that a file and some photographs, and Tracy seemed to come up with the trap idea entirely on her own.
Moreover, this week, she was shown to be able to build the Speed Force Bazooka in a matter of a day or two after having the idea, which is nonsense. Not only is she a theoretical physicist rather than an engineer, so she should have no idea how to turn her equations into a working instrument, but it would take months or years of experimentation and testing to confirm her theories and devise a practical application.
