Arrow has featured a great deal of time travelling storylines over the five seasons that it has been airing. Therefore, it is no surprise that occasionally it is easy to lose track of whether people that we have seen die are actually dead in the current timeline. One person that we do know is really supposed to be dead is Eobard Thawne. It came as a huge surprise to fans in episode 100 when he was revealed as Nora West-Allen’s mystery benefactor that she has frequently been travelling to the future to visit throughout season five. Even though it has been confirmed that he is alive, it has not been revealed how this has come to be.
There has been plenty of speculation from fans about how he has managed to cheat death somehow. When there is time travelling involved a lot of theories come to the fore but one of the most popular theories comes from a discussion that came on a post on Reddit.
The theory centers around the death of Eddie Thawne. When he realized that Eobard was an ancestor of his he sacrificed himself in order to prevent him being born. However, before this took place Eobard could have made a time remnant of Eddie that meant he was still able to be born in the future. In a different timeline Eddie would have lived and gone on to have children which would have eventually led to Eobard being born. His mother would have been Iris West which explains his connection to Nora in the present.
When this time remnant was created, then the most important thing would have been that the original Eddie and the new version did not meet. However, this was something that Eobard did not really have to worry about because the original Eddie still died. The problem that some people have with this theory is whether a time remnant can be made of someone who is not a speedster.
Another theory is that the Eobard from the original timeline did not believe everything that Barry from the future told him in Season Two. In order to find out whether it was true or not he travelled a few months into the future and saw the sacrifice that Eddie made that resulted in him ceasing to exist. He knew that he would not be able to prevent this from happening and so he made a time remnant of himself. He then sent this remnant to Earth X knowing that he would be undetected there until the point where he could rejoin the timeline.
There is also a possibility that the events involving Thawne in Legends Of Tomorrow also played a role in how he was able to keep come. In this show he created the Legion Of Doom with the aim of getting control of the Spear of Destiny. He believed that having the spear would mean that he was ultimately able to change his fate. When the Black Flash caught up with him and destroyed the spear it may have absorbed him into the Speed Force, meaning that he may have been unintentionally released when Barry himself was freed from the Speed Force.
The appearance of Thawne in Season Five of The Flash has also led people to believe that he may be having trouble holding on to his real identity. He still has the face of Harrison Wells but his hair color has gotten considerably lighter, much like the color it was when he was still Thawne. Even though it seems as if Thawne has never ceased to exist he has hardly ever been part of the timeline that he is supposed to be in and this may have started to have an effect on him physically.
Fans have seen Thawne die a number of times and the fact that he keeps coming back makes people wonder if there is actually any real way to kill him. However it is that Eobard Thawne is still alive, his return cannot be good news for Barry Allen and the rest of the gang. The storyline still needs to play out but fans are wondering if there is a way that Thawne can ever be defeated or whether he will continue to plague the heroes for the rest of time.
