Speed provides the one true genuinely modern pleasure – Aldous Huxley
Speedsters are a lot like buses. You wait an eternity for one, and three come along at once.
Actually, that’s probably not true, but after subsisting on a relatively speedster free four-color diet for a while, it’s always nice to add another faster than the speed of light superhero to the mix, even if they don’t last the distance, stay the course and follow the bright and shining example of the Flash.
Godspeed was a speedster who had the potential to eventually join the plethora of immortals, but a rash of poor decisions albeit made with the best of intentions eventually led to his downfall, and despite a last-minute redemptive arc in which he returned to the side of the righteous, Godspeed’s fate was sealed the minute he put his faith in and began to trust Eobard Thawne.
Destiny is a funny old thing though, and the course that Godpseed’s followed, and continues to follow in the comics and on the CW’s The Flash is wildly divergent, with the character sharing nothing but his name and a proclivity for criminal endeavor in both mediums.
The one thing that no one can take away from Godspeed though, no matter how much they rewrite and reimagine him, is how fast he was, and is.
But before we reveal how fast Godspeed is, it’s important to understand who he was, and who he is, and how this speedster changed and will continue to change Barry Allen’s life.
The comic book version of Godspeed is August Heart, afriend of Barry Allen’s who works with him in the Central City Police Department.
He first appeared in The Flash: Rebirth #1, when he was struck by a lightning bolt from the Speed Force, which saved him from the bullet being fired at him by the criminal gang that he was attempting to arrest.
Like Barry, August is driven by tragedy and spends most of his career as a speedster trying to find, and bring to justice the man who murdered his brother.
Unlike Barry though, the power that August is gifted by the Speed Force ultimately ends up corrupting his soul, as he misuses it to dispense his own form of brutal, and barbaric justice.
It’s his inability to deviate from the course that he finds himself on that ultimately leads to him being incarcerated in Iron Heights.
All speedsters have something that makes them unique, and Godspeed, while sharing the ability to run at superspeed and generate lightning that he can use as a projectile weapon, can also create clones of himself by dividing the Speed Force that is always inside him.
The snag is if he does it for too long it can, and does become incredibly painful which is why August is sometimes reluctant to use this ability.
He also discovers that he can increase his own speed by leaching the Speed Force from other speedsters, which is one of the reasons, as well as being a murderer, that he ends up on a collision course with his former friend, Barry Allen.
As we’ve already mentioned, Godspeed’s relatively brief tenure in the books ends in tragedy, when after teaming up with Barry and Eobard Thawne to defeat Paradox, the Reverse Flash finally tells August that he was the “criminal” who killed his brother, before snapping his neck and bringing Godpeeds life as a speedster to an untimely end.
The Small Screen Godspeed
In The CW’s The Flash, Godspeed first appears in season five.
August Heart (sharing the same name as his comic book counterpart), is a laboratory technician whose attempts to replicate Zoom’s formula led him to experiment with tachyons and time travel, which in turn led to him becoming a criminal, by stealing the equipment and supplies that he needs to make his powers, that were transitory and dependent on his experimentation, permanent.
At the end of season seven, August Heart returns and is revealed as the villain responsible for the murder of Jay Garrick and the first speedster that Nora-West Allen defeats and manages to imprison.
He’s also, despite claiming to suffer from “amnesia” directly responsible for unleashing the Godspeed duplicates, who are waging a conflict that has become known as “The Godspeed War”, which will undoubtedly form the central arc around which season eight of the show will be built.
If the rumors swirling around fandom are to be believed, and the CW has neither confirmed nor denied them, season eight looks likely to be the final season of the long-running show, which can only serve to heighten Godspeed’s position in The Flash’s already impressive rogues gallery.
And believe us, we’re just as excited as you are to find out what Godspeed has in store for Barry when the show airs in 2022.
So How Fast Can Godspeed Run?
Again, that depends on the medium that the character is featured in. In the comic books, he shared the same abilities as every other speedster, which means that when he entered the speed force, he could run at ten times the speed of light, and travel backward and forwards through time.
However, he’s also referred to as the fastest speedster who ever lived, which means that he’s faster than the original Flash, Barry Allen.
On the small screen, Godspeed’s theoretical velocity is calculated and is said to be 670, 616, 629 miles per hour, or the speed of light. While he isn’t as fast in the show as he is in the comics, he’s still faster than Barry Allen.
In The End…
While he carves a tragic path through his small sliver of history in comics, which ultimately ends in sorrow and proves that ultimate power corrupts absolutely and that not all heads can bear the weight of a superheroes crown, in the CW’s The Flash Godspeed is gearing up to be an intriguing and interesting nemesis for Barry and might just turn out to be his most challenging adversary.
