A difficult encounter was made with a vicious foe, the first Reverse-Flash (Eobard Thawne). Thawne had been killed by Barry Allen shortly before Allen's death, but this version of Thawne was from a time period before he originally became Allen's enemy - also served to increase the speed of the character, forcing him to push past a psychological block he had placed on his powers. To prevent himself from truly "replacing" Barry, Wally had subconsciously limited his speed so that he could never become his mentor's equal, but when Thawne arrived in the present and briefly posed as Barry Allen, his bragging that he would become the true Flash forced Wally past this block, as he feared Thawne replacing Barry more than he feared himself doing so. After this encounter, he was again Barry Allen's equal in speed, and eventually became even faster. Though he still had not been able to recover Barry's vibrational/phasing abilities for a time (he could vibrate through objects but this would cause the object to explode), he gained several new powers that Barry never had. He was able to share/steal speed, use his speed to kinetically upgrade his attacks, and super heal others.