Iris West II (Prime Earth)

Irey West, also known as Thunderheart^[1], is the daughter of the third Flash Wally West and Linda Park. She was erased from history and lost for years in the Dark Multiverse before finally coming home. She also served as the second Impulse, sharing the title with her cousin Bart Allen.

History

Lost

An instant before the Flashpoint altered reality, Irey and her twin brother Jai were sucked into the Dark Multiverse by a tide of dark matter. Wally attempted to save them but was too late. Ten years were removed from history, which included Jai and Irey's birth, and all memory of them was erased. Wally himself was lost in the Speed Force immediately after and Linda forgot both him and her children.^[2]

Rebirth

Dark Multiverse

Irey and Jai were trapped on a planet in the Dark Multiverse created from their father's fear that he would never see his family again. Wally eventually found his children, only to learn that he couldn't destroy the planet on his own. He agreed to join with the Mobius Chair to save the Multiverse in exchange for Tempus Fuginaut to take Irey and Jai to Earth 0. He integrated them into Earth 0's history and they were reunited with Linda, who had her memories of her family restored.^[3]

Legion of Zoom

She and her brother later answered Max Mercury's call from the Speed Force to help him and the Flash Family battle the Legion of Zoom. Irey had a brief exchange with Bart Allen, who accused the other of stealing the Impulse identity. The younger members of the Flash Family figured out that if they disrupt the time-displaced villains' frequencies, they would return to their proper times without any memories of their time among the Legion.^[4]

Death Metal

Linda, Jai and Irey took refuge in the Speed Force alongside the rest of the Flash Family when The Batman Who Laughs remade the world in his image. They briefly reunited with Wally when he took the Mobius Chair into the Speed Force to keep it out of The Batman Who Laughs' clutches.^[5]

Infinite Frontier

After the events of Dark Nights: Death Metal, the Park-West family began to rebuild their lives. Jai and Irey were traumatised by their experiences and had recurring nightmares, but these subsided as the family gradually returned to normal.^[6] Wally began to teach Jai and Irey about being a superhero, although he was reluctant to let them in the field, even confiscating Irey's Impulse costume.

Wally took Irey to Terrifictech's Daddy-Daughter Dance, but they arrived to find all the other attendees unconscious. A disgruntled former employee called "Doctor Nightmare" had attacked the dance with sleeping gas and a helmet which allowed him to make nightmares real. He used the attendee's nightmares to rob the vault where Mister Terrific kept the research he considered too dangerous to release. Due to their super-accelerated metabolism, Wally and Irey were not put to sleep by the gas but were unable to use their powers. Wally told Irey to stay in the car while he stopped Doctor Nightmare but she convinced him to let her help and stole the helmet while Wally was still deciding what to do. Nightmare noticed what she was doing and they were forced to flee and hide in a storage closet from the nightmares. Irey suggested she could use the helmet to bring her dreams to life and fight them. Wally sang her a lullaby and she fell asleep, bringing her dreams to life: a human-sized soldier girl action figure, a two-headed bunny, a robot lion, a panda with a mirror in its torso and a gummy dog. They fought off the nightmares and Wally knocked out Doctor Nightmare. Wally took her home as it was late but with their powers restored they stopped off in Paris to dance in front of the Eiffel Tower.^[7]

At school Irey befriended another redheaded girl named Maxine Baker, unaware that Maxine was also the daughter of a superhero and had powers of her own. Maxine invited Irey to come to her house on a school night, and when Linda refused Irey snuck out.^[8] She and Maxine were kidnapped by Mammoth and Shimmer, who were working for a metahuman child trafficking ring. They gave Irey a powerful sedative to prevent her using her speed. Jai followed them to the kidnapper's hideout and freed them, but they were caught by Mammoth. As Irey could not use her powers, she reluctantly shared the Speed Force with Jai, giving him superhuman strength and toughness to fight off the kidnappers but also causing him incredible pain. Jai defeated the villains but then collapsed, and told Irey he had a vision of their father in danger.^[9]

The drugs had worn off, so Jai and Irey combined their powers to take the three of them to Gemworld and they rescued Wally. Maxine also revealed that her father was Animal Man. The kids helped Wally defeat Eclipso but by the end of the fight Jai was in agony and Irey did not have enough power to cut him off from the Force. Wally transferred some of his energy to Jai, giving him a full connection to the Force.^[10] With Eclipso defeated, the Wests and Maxine safely returned home.^[11]

Dark Crisis

The twins' "uncle" Barry Allen disappeared on a mission. Mister Terrific was able to track him through the Speed Force and found three alternate realities where he might be. The Flash Family gathered at the Flash Museum to go into the Force and hopefully find Barry and bring him home. Irey wanted to help but the grownups told her it was too dangerous. While they were talking Irey jumped into the portal, dragging Jai behind her, before anybody could stop her.^[12] The twins landed in a dark city and were confronted by Night-Flash, an alternate version of Barry who believed they were working for his enemy Knives Maroney. They managed to escape him, but in the process Irey lost the beacon they would need to get home.^[13]

A kid in a purple suit found them and took them to hide in an abandoned warehouse. They told him that they were from another universe and he told them that Night-Flash was a brutal vigilante who ruled the city as a dictator. Irey volunteered to stop Night-Flash, believing that would prove to the grown-ups that they could be superheroes, and Jai reluctantly agreed. The kid led them to Night-Flash and they attacked him, and even managed to temporarily get the upper hand, but they were shocked when the kid told them to kill Night-Flash. Jay Garrick, who had followed them through the portal, arrived and broke up the fight, but the twins told him that they believed that the kid, not Night-Flash was the bad guy. Night-Flash revealed that the kid was actually his arch-enemy Knives, who aged in reverse. Knives fled and Garrick and the twins returned to Earth 0.^[14]

One-Minute War

While the West family was having a barbecue, an alien empire known as The Fraction invaded Earth, crashing their ship into Keystone and Central City.^[15] Irey and all other speedsters on Earth were accelerated to top speed as the aliens drew massive amounts of Speed Force energy with them. From their perspective it appeared that everyone else was frozen in place, including Jai, much to Irey's distress. The ship landing levelled much of the city and killed thousands of people, but the West house was protected by Jai pulling a tree in front of them just before the blast wave hit. The Flash Family gathered at the West house, but Barry revealed that Irey's great-aunt Iris was killed when the aliens landed.^[16]

Needing a more secure base, the Flash Family relocated to Terrifictech, bringing the frozen Jai and their party guests with them. Meanwhile Irey's cousins Wallace and Bart snuck out and stole one of the Fraction's tanks, which contained multiple frozen metahumans, including Superman.^[17] While the adults were working out a plan, Irey sat with Jai and read his favourite comic out loud to him, worried about what would happen. Jesse Quick comforted Irey and told her that her parents would do anything to save her and Jai, and that her heart was full of thunder. Jesse took Irey out to fight and play pranks on the Fraction to take her mind off the situation.

The adults came up with a plan to destroy the Fraction's spire and take away their speed powers, which would return them to normal time. Irey wanted to go with them but they made her stay behind to "stand guard" over the frozen heroes.^[18] A hunter working for the Fraction known as Miss Murder tracked Irey to Terrifictech and attacked her, but Superman was able to move fast enough to cause a distraction, giving Irey the breathing space she needed to fight Miss Murder off by using Jai as a weapon.

Miss Murder had told Irey that the Flashes had already lost and her father was dead, so she ran over to the spire to save them. She rescued Wallace, Bart and Max Mercury from their guards and told them that she had chosen "Thunderheart" as her new codename. However, Barry confirmed to Irey that Wally had been killed, leaving her devastated. They retreated to the Speed Lab, where Irey and Linda mourned Wally.^[1]

Barry came up with a plan to gather as much Speed Force energy around themselves as they could and dump it into the Fraction ship's engine, accelerating it past the speed of light and sending them back in time, undoing everything they had done. However, as Speed Force conduits existed outside the normal flow of time and were unaffected by changes to the timeline, this would not bring Wally back. Barry and Linda chose to keep this from her until after the Fraction were defeated.

The Flash Family made it through the Fraction's defenses. The Fraction's elite warriors were waiting for them and Irey fought Miss Murder again.^[19] The Fraction fought them to a standstill, but Wally returned with an army of presumed-dead heroes, providing the distraction they needed to get past them. Irey and the others ran to the Fraction's engine room, where they began running around the engine to summon the energy they needed. The Fraction Admiral tried to stop them, but Wally fought him off and they were able to reverse the invasion. Irey and Linda reunited with Wally, then returned home to celebrate with the rest of the Flash Family and the resurrected heroes from Sanctuary.^[20]

Superkids

Irey, Jai and Maxine were abducted by Knives Maroney, Irey's old enemy Doctor Nightmare, and a crew of villains they did not recognise, and taken to the Palace of Eternity outside the normal flow of time. The villains revealed that they were from the kid's future, where they formed the core of a team known as the Superkids. As they had each been defeated by them in the future, they planned to kill them and prevent the team ever coming to pass. However the object Knives had used to kidnap them, known as the Eternity Mind, had also brought their future teammates: alternate versions of Robin and Superboy from another universe; to the Palace. They fought the villains and during the fight Irey was knocked into Superboy, whereupon the two immediately began crushing on each other.

Irey was able to snatch the Eternity Mind from Knives and the group fled deeper into the Palace when Doctor Nightmare summoned a giant dream creature to attack them. After they explored for a while, looking for a way out, Knives spoke to them over some kind of intercom and told them that Wallace had followed them to the Palace and the villains had captured him. He ordered them to hand over the Eternity Mind or he would kill Wallace. The Eternity Mind had the power to summon anything from time and space, which made it too dangerous to let Knives have it, but Jai realised how they could use the Mind against him. They returned and gave the Mind back to Knives, but then immediately began calling on it to summon as much random stuff as they could think of, and attacked the villains again in the ensuing chaos. Irey freed Wallace and he punched Knives out. Robin used the Eternity Mind to send all the villains to jail and wish them home, promising that they would team up again soon.^[21]

Linda later gave birth to Jai and Irey's little brother Wade West. On the day he was born he was kidnapped by Granny Goodness and Wally went after them with a team of heroes. Wally returned the next day, but due to time travel months had passed for him and Wade.^[22][23]

Dawn of DC

Beast World

At some point in the month following Wade's disappearance and rescue, Maxine confided in Irey that she had a crush on Jai, much to Irey's disgust.

When the Beast World event began, Irey ran to Barry Allen's house and told him that alien spores were falling from the sky and turning people into hybrid were-creatures. Barry seemed oddly distracted and told her that Wally would fix it, but she told him that her dad was off with the Titans and Godspeed was on a rampage. They ran to Iron Heights where Godspeed had become a hornet-man was was building some kind of hive and trapping civilians in a comb.

After his attempt to attack Godspeed directly failed due to his ability to create temporal clones of himself, Barry took Irey to the Flash Museum where he used the Cosmic Treadmill to send a message through the Speed Force to the rest of the Flash Family and tell them to converge at Iron Heights. Irey said they should also bring in Maxine to help and ran to her house where Maxine was supposedly sick with a stomach bug, but saw that she was not there. She realised that Maxine was with Jai and used her ability to sense other conduits to determine his location. As she was doing that, she sensed that her great-aunt Iris was in danger and Barry ran off to save her.

Irey tried to send a message to Jai through the Force, but due to his unusual connection to it he couldn't make out her words and so she ran to where he and Maxine were. She found them standing around awkwardly after defeating some Godspeed clones and told them they needed to get to Barry and Iris' house. At the Allen house, they found Iris transformed into a cuttlefish creature attacking Barry. The spore leapt out of Iris and tried to infect Barry, but Jai caught it. Maxine scanned it with her powers and when she had determined how it worked Jai crushed it, grossing Irey out.

The entire Flash Family rendezvoused at Iron Heights. Irey suggested that they counter Godspeed's "swarm" of insectoid clones by transforming the Flashes into wolves with Barry as the alpha, but Maxine and Iris both told her that the concept of wolfpacks as a hierarchy lead by an alpha male was actually a myth. Jai suggested also turning the Flashes into insects and Maxine had all the adults voluntarily get infected by a spore; she then used her powers to manipulate their transformation and turn them into bee-people who regarded Iris as their "queen". The "Swarm" defeated Godspeed by vibrating at high speed to create heat, like real bees did when a hornet invaded their nest. This killed the spore inside Godspeed and he reverted to normal. Maxine then set the bees to cure the rest of Central City's transformed citizens, before then changing them back to normal.^[24]

The Arc Angles

In the days following the beast plague, Irey noticed that her father was acting strangely. One night she sensed him going downstairs in the middle of the night and followed him. She watched him sit unmoving at the table for an hour, but when she went to talk to him he vanished in a burst of energy and she could no longer sense him anywhere in the world. She went to see what he had been doing and found a stack of newspaper clippings, including one about a young man named "Chad". Thunderheart ran to the abandoned building where Chad had been living and found Jesse Quick already on the scene, following a tip from Barry. Jesse let Irey investigate with her rather than tell her dad what she was doing, and they found Chad's girlfriend squatting in the building. She injected herself with a syringe of Velocity 9 and ran off, and Jesse and Irey chased her to try and stop her before she hurt herself or someone else.

The woman tried to attack them when the gained on her, leaping at them with a knife, but Irey was able to turn intangible and pickpocket the syringe from the woman as she passed through her. The girl ran off again, but Irey could sense the drug's energy signature and track it to the place it had been manufactured. Jesse was amazed at Irey's casual display of prowess with the Speed Force, as these were feats which most adult speedsters would not be capable of. Irey tracked the drug lab to a shack in the farmlands outside of town. Jesse said they should hang back and call for help but Irey rushed in.

As soon as she stepped inside, mirrors dropped down and surrounded her. The Mirror Master emerged from one of the mirrors and threw a grenade at her. Wally appeared out of nowhere and pulled her to safety before the grenade went off. He yelled at Irey for putting herself in danger, but Jesse said it was her fault for bringing her along. Wally calmed down, apologised and hugged Irey, but she noticed his focus drifting again immediately afterwards.^[25]

Later, there was a temporal anomaly which caused everyone in the twin's school to freeze up, including Irey. This was an intensely frightening and traumatic experience for her.^[26] The anomaly eventually resolved, but Barry and Wally both disappeared without a trace. Barry eventually returned after three days but Wally was nowhere to be found and none of his family, including Irey, were worried about him or cared that he was gone. They simply chalked it up to him being busy with the Titans.^[27]

Irey secretly held on to the syringe and a shard of the mirrors, hoping to refine the drug to make it stable and remove any ill effects. She believed that if she could make superpowers accessible to everyone, that could help solve problems of inequality and poverty and prevent crime at the roots. Unbeknownst to her, her thought processes were being influenced by the Rogues, who were themselves working for cosmic beings known as the Arc Angles. She eventually succeeded in stabilising the drug, but this created a ripple in the Speed Force which pushed Wallace and Avery Ho out of sync with reality.^[28] In her experiments, Irey discovered that the drug did not, as she had assumed, some from the Speed Force. Instead, it was concentrated from the normal world.

Barry called a meeting of the Flash Family to discuss what was happening and how to rescue Wally. He said that the Speed Force was in spasm but Jesse pointed out that Circuit Breaker's powers were affected as well, meaning that whatever was going on must be impacting the Still Force too. Circuit Breaker said that he believed the Speed Force and Still Force were not separate but were rather both part of the same spectrum. Jai went further, revealing he had been experimenting with the Speed Force and believed that the Speed Force, Still Force, Sage Force and Strength Force were all part of something bigger like an ocean. Irey also revealed what she had discovered about the drug.

Inspector Pilgrim, who Irey had never met before, told them that the Cosmic Forces were an expression of a universal constant; the fundamental dynamic of change, and Barry realised that the Forces were made of time. Max Mercury also revealed that he had had a vision recently and believed that whatever the source of all the Cosmic Forces was, it was alive and in pain. Irey and the other younger Flashes quickly grew frustrated as the grownups continued to discuss exactly what the nature of the Speed Force was rather than do anything. When Barry said their top priority was to to find out who was behind Wally's disappearance they all ran off to find and bring in the Rogues. However, they discovered that the Rogues had been destroyed by whoever had been controlling them. Irey found the Folded Man, now a mentally broken homeless man, in an alley; endlessly folding origami swans and muttering the word "fold" over and over.^[29]

Jai and Irey were suddenly able to sense Wally again, as the Arc Angle's weapon known as the Crown of Thawnes left his body and was no longer blocking him from their senses. The Flash Family followed Wally to the Source Wall, where they battled the Arc Angles. Irey also shot the Rogues up with the speed drug, giving them temporary super-speed that allowed them to follow and join the fight. The Rogues eagerly agreed, as they were spoiling for a chance to take revenge on the Arc Angles. The Crown managed to penetrate The Source and began to poison the Deep Change, causing time to slow to a standstill throughout the Multiverse. Irey and the others each transferred their energy to Wally, allowing him to chase the Crown into The Source and try to stop it.^[30]

Legacy

In a possible future glimpsed by Doctor Manhattan, Irey joined the Flash Family and became a full fledged superhero as the new Kid Flash.^[31] Following an adventure where he became a disembodied consciousness within the Force and began jumping into the bodies of other speedsters across time and alternate realities, Wally West informed his children that he would one day hop into Jai's body. Twenty years after the adventure, Wally fulfilled his prophecy and became Jai, where Irey was waiting for him. She told Wally that his family were safe and happy in the future and that she was happily married. Iris also revealed that she and Jai had grown up to be superheroes themselves.^[32]

Powers and Abilities

Powers

• Speed Force Conduit: Iris possesses a connection to the Speed Force, a mysterious cosmic force that pushes time and space itself forward. As a conduit of the Speed Force, all aspects of Iris's physiology are accelerated and enhanced.
  • Superhuman Speed: Iris is capable of moving at incredible superhuman speeds.^[8] She was able to cover a distance of several miles in only ten seconds.^[10]
  • Superhuman Reflexes: Iris's reflexes are heightened immeasurably, allowing her to dodge or react faster than normal.
  • Superhuman Stamina: The Speed Force grants Iris a great increase of stamina, allowing her to fight or run much longer than the average person. Iris was able to run from the United States to France without suffering fatigue.^[7]
  • Superhuman Agility: Iris's agility, balance, and bodily coordination are enhanced to superhuman levels. This allows her to easily maneuver while moving at superhuman speed.
  • Speed Force Aura: Irey's body is surrounded by a Speed Force Aura, or "friction cushion" - a bubble of space-time accelerated to the same velocity as her. This aura allows Irey to breathe and hear sounds while moving at immense speeds, as well as protects her and anyone who she is running with from the rigorous effects of using her speed, including friction, airborne particulate matter, kinetic impacts, G-Force and the like.
    • Superhuman Durability: The Speed Force Aura also protects Iris from kinetic impacts, which in turn, makes her much more durable and resistant to injury than any normal human.
    • Telekinesis: Irey is able to sync her Speed Force Aura with Jai's. In this state she is able to pull him towards her or push him away through force of will, cause him to levitate in place or telekinetically "carry" him while running at super-speed.^[1]
  • Accelerated Healing: Like all conduits of the Speed Force, Irey is capable of regenerating from injuries much faster than any normal human. This is due to her Speed Force Aura accelerating space-time around her, closing her wounds almost instantly.
    • Toxic Immunity: Due to her accelerated physiology, Iris has a superhuman metabolism which grants her significant resistance to drugs and other toxins,^[7] although an overwhelmingly high dose can still effect her.^[9]
  • Dimensional Travel: Iris can use her speed to travel to parallel universes, and was able to take herself, Jai and Maxine from Earth 0 to Gemworld in the Sphere of the Gods.^[10]
  • Electrokinesis: As a conduit of the Speed Force, Iris' body generates large amounts of the electrical energy that she draws from the Speed Force. This Speed Force lightning emanates off of her, especially when moving at superhuman speed.^[8]
  • Enhanced Senses: Irey is able to sense the fluctuations of the Speed Force far more sensitively than other speedsters. She can sense other conduits and determine their exact location, and even get an impression of what condition they are in. She can also taste the "flavour" of their energy signatures and sometimes hear what they are doing from miles away. She was able to trace where a vial of Velocity 9 was manufactured from its residual energy signature.^[24][25]
    • Enhanced Hearing^[33]
  • Molecular Acceleration: Irey can vibrate her own molecular structure at varying degrees for a number of purposes, by adjusting to different frequencies.^[33]
    • Intangibility: Irey can vibrate her molecular structure to an intangible state, allowing objects to pass through her.^[33] She has great control over this ability, to the point that she can pickpocket another speedster who is passing through her in the opposite direction while regaining solidity, a feat which most adult speedsters would struggle to achieve.^[25]
    • Molecular Reconstruction: Irey was able to use the Speed Force to reshape her Impulse costume into her Thunderheart costume.^[19]
  • Sharing the Force: Iris is able to use the Force to temporarily grant superhuman speed to others.^[34] She was also able share her connection to the Force with her brother Jai to allow him to access his powers.^[9]
  • Vortex Creations: Iris is able to create vortices of air by running in circles or rotating her extremities at super-speed. These vortices can be used for a number of effects.^[10]

Abilities

• Hand-to-Hand Combat (Basic)^[10]
• Pickpocketing^[25]
• Science: Iris possesses a level of scientific knowledge and understanding beyond most children her age.^[7][28]
• Survival^[34]

Notes

• Iris West II was created by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, first appearing in Kingdom Come #3. However, in the Prime Earth continuity, Iris West II first appeared as part of the New 52 DC Universe in Flash Forward #2 by Scott Lobdell and Brett Booth.
  

Trivia

• Irey West is thirteen and a half years old as of the events of Beast World.^[25]
• When she grows up, Irey will be the most powerful speedster ever.^[32]
• Irey's best friend is Maxine Baker.^[8]
• She has a crush on Superboy.^[21]
• Irey stated that she loved Jesse Quick's jacket^[35], later wearing a jacket over her uniform herself^[25], which Jesse loved.

Related

• 62 Appearances of Iris West II (Prime Earth)
• 26 Images featuring Iris West II (Prime Earth)
• 5 Quotations by or about Iris West II (Prime Earth)
• Character Gallery: Iris West II (Prime Earth)

Footnotes

Flash Family member This character is or was an incarnation of or an ally of The Flash, and a member of the Flash Family of speedsters. This template will automatically categorize articles that include it into the "Flash Family members" category.