Barry Allen (The Flash)

Barry travels to Starling City to investigate a strange case and uncovers Oliver Queen's secret. Back in Central City, on the night the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator explodes, he's struck by lightning. He wakes from a nine-month coma with super speed.

With Cisco Ramon, Caitlin Snow and Dr. Harrison Wells, Barry starts fighting metahumans created by the same blast. Oliver encourages him to be a hero, and Barry gets the red suit and the name the Flash. He keeps the secret from Iris, whom he loves and who is dating Eddie Thawne, one of Joe's colleagues.

Barry learns his mother's killer is also a speedster and starts hunting him. The man in yellow is Harrison Wells, or rather Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, who came from the future, killed the real Wells and took his place to help Barry get fast enough to send him home.

Thawne offers Barry the chance to go back in time and save his mother. Barry reaches the scene, but a future version of himself signals him not to interfere, and he only says goodbye to her. Eddie Thawne shoots himself to erase his descendant. A singularity opens over the city, and Barry runs in to close it.

Barry meets Jay Garrick, a Flash from another Earth, and discovers a multiverse. Through a breach comes Zoom, who wants all of Barry's speed. Barry even loses his powers and gets them back by recreating the accelerator accident. On Earth-2, Zoom imprisons him and he meets versions of himself and his friends.

His father is exonerated and released, but Zoom, who had been posing as Jay, kills Henry in front of Barry. In the final race, a time remnant of Barry dies to save the multiverse, and the Time Wraiths take Zoom. With both parents gone, Barry goes back in time and saves his mother.

Saving his mother creates Flashpoint, a reality where his parents are alive, but Barry starts forgetting who he is. He lets Thawne kill Nora again, but the world comes back different, and his friends pay the price: Cisco has lost his brother and Caitlin has ice powers.

Barry sees a future where Savitar, the god of speed, kills Iris, and he tries to change it. Savitar is a time copy of Barry himself. H.R. Wells dies in Iris's place, and Iris kills Savitar. To contain the Speed Force, which threatens the city, Barry walks into it and vanishes.

Six months later, Barry emerges from the Speed Force and marries Iris in the middle of an Earth-X invasion, in an impromptu ceremony. The Thinker, Clifford DeVoe, gets him jailed for a murder he didn't commit. Barry beats the villain with help from Ralph Dibny. A speedster from the future shows up: Nora, his daughter with Iris.

Nora wants to meet the father who disappeared in her time. Barry finds out she was being coached by Eobard Thawne and pushes her away, but they reconcile. When the timeline changes, Nora fades away in her parents' arms.

Barry learns he has to die in the Crisis. The Flash of Earth-90 sacrifices himself in his place, and Barry helps remake the world as Earth-Prime. Later, losing his speed, he rescues Iris from the mirror world, recreates the Speed Force and deals with other cosmic forces. His kids from the future, Nora and Bart, show up to help.

Despero accuses him of destroying the world, Thawne tries to take his place and Iris nearly dies. In the final season, Barry faces Red Death and a gathering of the worst speedsters, led by a resurrected Eddie Thawne. He saves Eddie instead of destroying him, watches Nora be born and passes his speed on to new heroes.

In the comics, Barry Allen debuted in 1956, created by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino: a police chemist hit by lightning amid a shelf of chemicals. The show swapped that accident for a particle accelerator explosion and built the S.T.A.R. Labs team around him. Joe West was created for TV, and Wally West, Iris's nephew in the comics, became her brother. Grant Gustin debuted in the role on Arrow, in episodes meant as a backdoor pilot.