The Flash : I'm slowly being convinced that this Barry

could actually be Future Barry and build tech like Gideon one day.




"I could've sworn there was one more peanut butter left." Morgan, The Walking Dead

Shut up troll.

How is he being a troll? 2024 isn't too far away.He may be correct.

I actually had an idea of how they could make it seem plausible that Barry creates Gideon.

Have the Thinker be a main villain, an AI that decides to take control over the city because the Flash doesn't seem to be doing a good enough job of keeping it safe. Iris starts investigating on her own but ends up getting arrested because the Thinker frames her and connects her to a crime. The Thinker would offer meta-humans money to do certain tasks like murdering other meta-humans. The first half is like a meta-human killing spree where Barry and team tries to figure out who is killing these meta-humans and why. At mid-season finale they finally trace it back to the Thinker who actually let them find it so that it could Trojan Horse STAR Labs' systems. It then exposes STAR Labs as the Flash's base of operations. Team can't go back there because the place gets trashed by evil meta-humans looking for the Flash.

The Flash cannot combat this villain in a physical struggle because the villain is not a physical being but still manages to be everywhere. By the end of the season either Barry reprograms the Thinker to become Gideon or he creates the Gideon AI to stop the Thinker from continuing to expand onto other cities as well.

I thought you were going to suggest the Thinker might use some type of device to boost his intelligence, that Barry (or his team) get their hands on, so Barry can juice his intellect and outsmart the Thinker.


"You can lead a hearse to water, but you can't make it sink." The Cat

That could also work but unless you made the boost a temporary thing or requiring an immense amount of power then he'd become so smart that no other villain could ever pose a threat.

Not necessarily, in spite of what Cisco and Caitlyn might suggest, not all intelligence is equal; being smart enough to program an AI doesn't necessarily equate to critical thinking in a crisis situation. Conventionally, Barry Allen is supposed to be a genius, and does come up with inventive ways to stop his rogues, but that doesn't mean the ideas come to him immediately. He doesn't have to be so stupid or emotionally stunted that he needs a pep talk at every turn, in order to face a serious challenge that takes time and consideration to overcome.


Goodbye, Farewell, Amen

Maybe not but then try to explain to the general viewer why the intelligence booster makes Barry smart enough to create a futuristic-like AI but then be unable to outsmart almost any villain he comes across.

I think it would be more interesting to have the Thinker be an AI. The Thinker has been an AI in the comics so it's not deviating from the source material. The villain would not rely on the performance of a person (perhaps a hologram similar to Gideon could be used at times) so you have to deliver the performance in the actions of what the AI does. Like sending out meta-humans to assassinate other meta-humans or dangerous people clearly tells that this is an entity that wants to protect the city and considers no measures beyond limit. It takes no responsibility for its actions and doesn't have to feel guilty for what it does and that's why it's so dangerous and needs to be stopped.

Of course there could be a person behind the AI, a person who created it and then named it the Thinker but this person would not necessarily have created it with ill intentions. More likely it could be a person who thought he/she was doing the city a favour by creating a more sophisticated security system. Here I could throw in my idea of how I wanted the Mirror Master to be motivated by the death of his wife who died during the season 1 finale when the singularity destroyed those buildings. I'm kind of disappointed they never chose to use that event that caused a lot of harm to the city and make a story out of it. Instead they chose the multiverse story and all of the things that happened in season 2 which I did not hate but I was expecting more out of that singularity event other than the introduction to the multiverse. But perhaps they did think of it and then deemed it to be too similar to the destruction of the Glades in Arrow season 1 and the story that came out of that.

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Maybe not but then try to explain to the general viewer why the intelligence booster makes Barry smart enough to create a futuristic-like AI but then be unable to outsmart almost any villain he comes across.

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To what end? I mean, after any given encounter with a villain, Barry will invariably defeat him; it's the entire premise of the show and the genre in general, it's just a matter of time. And like I said, being smart enough to build an AI, doesn't mean you have the answers to every conflict immediately. Even building the AI wouldn't be an instantaneous thing, even for a speedster; it could easily be a project he works on that takes weeks or even months or years to figure out, even with the aid of super speed and heightened intelligence. To turn that around and say it still takes him a day or two stop a formidable opponent, in the span of a single episode - or months in the course of a season, if it's a particularly persistent and cunning big bad - shouldn't require that much explanation, or elicit incredulity. Those are comparatively simpler problems that he still solves.

As it stands now, sometimes it's wonder that Barry knows how to tie his own shoes.
That is, until you realize his boots don't have laces.


Goodbye, Farewell, Amen

Okay, but would you rather the Thinker be a human who uses a device to become smart than an artificial intelligence, basically if Gideon was turned evil? We've had a lot of human villains on these shows and it usually ends with a fist fight by the end of the season, actually it always ends with a fist fight. I'd be glad if we got something different for a change. Perhaps not as exciting when there's no physical fight but who knows what resources the AI Thinker could use to protect itself.

I can't really say, since I'm not real familiar with the character.
In a very general sense the premise makes me think of a storyline from the Sarah Jane Chronicles, where the AI on that series - "Mr. Smith" - who had been helping the main characters from the start, is revealed to have been a malevolent AI Sarah Jane had reprogramed (or was possibly a sleeper bad guy, I forget the specifics); either way the computer turned on the main characters and they had to stop it, which they ultimately did by resetting the computer's core personality and altering it to become a legitimate protagonist.


Goodbye, Farewell, Amen

Honestly, that's the most imaginative thing I've heard involving Star Labs in one and a half seasons.




"I could've sworn there was one more peanut butter left." Morgan, The Walking Dead

There's no guarantee that Barry creates Gideon by 2024. For all we know, Barry creates Gideon much later in life.



Formerly sn939