He works alongside Marlize DeVoe, his wife, and partner-in-crime, whom he met at the University of Oxford. Clifford eventually transferred his consciousness into Dominic Lanse and assumed his identity, leaving his original body for the dead to frame Barry Allen. He later transferred his mind into Becky Sharpe, then Izzy Bowin shortly afterwards, and continued looking for three more meta-humans with powers and bodies to steal. Clifford DeVoe was born on May 8, 1975. He was raised in South Africa. When he grew up, he studied history and econometrics at the University of Johannesburg, Clifford first took a teaching position at the University of Oxford, specializing in the history of warfare and military strategy, focusing largely on the early Middle Ages.
Publication Information
- Flash : Clifford DeVoe
- Multiverse : Earth One
- Version : The Flash Series
- Known As : The Thinker
- Type :
- Criminal
- Professor at Central City University
- Formerly Member of Oxford's Debating Society
- Formerly Professor at the University of Oxford
- Relative : Marlize DeVoe : Wife
- Affiliation :
- Gender : Male
- Origin : Earth One
- Season : The Flash
- First Appeareance : The Flash Season 3 Episod 18 : Abra Kadabra (Mentioned)
- Last Appeareance :
- Number of Appeareance :
- Potrayer :
- Main View : Full Episod
Birth of the Thinker
DeVoe and his wife, now living in Central City, worked on adapting to their new lives and saw progress for human development through the acceleration of mind, with DeVoe thinking that his own genius was not enough to achieve their plan of "distributing knowledge" throughout society. Coincidentally, the couple followed the progresses of S.T.A.R. Labs under Dr. Harrison Wells, specifically his S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator project. Thawne, well aware of Clifford DeVoe and his future from his own timeline and it's results, wished him luck. Upon realizing that the particle accelerator would explode.
Evolution of the Thinker
Some time after Barry and Iris's wedding, DeVoe attacks Barry using his hoverchair, he is able to capture Barry and takes him to his lair, where he put Barry in a speedster trap. He confronted Barry and told him that he is here to teach him and that the lesson was there are no such things as Happy Endings. When Joe West and Harrison Wells arrived to DeVoe's house, DeVoe met them, but showed no real hostility to them and allowed them to look through his house. He returned back to Barry, but found him gone, shocked that Barry could have escaped, he put down the trap, only to discover that Barry had not moved at all, but had stood still so very fast that the eye couldn't see.
Legacy
According to Abra Kadabra's future, DeVoe is regarded as one of the Flash's greatest enemies alongside the Reverse-Flash and Zoom; however, none were as bad as Savitar.[9] At some point in the future, both Kadabra and Thawne, while studying Barry's past, became aware of DeVoe's role as one of the Flash's enemies, the latter claiming to be a fan of his "work". Savitar remembered working on the Cerebral Inhibitor when he came back to 2017 and toured STAR Labs.
As the Thinker
- As the Thinker
- Since becoming "the Thinker", Clifford's personality has changed; though still craving knowledge, he is now more ruthless and brutal in his willingness to hurt innocents to get what he wants. Clifford is a calculating and patient man, very much focused on his current objective all the time, not having much emotional reaction while doing so. He is very confident in his abilities and does not hesitate to emphasize just how thoroughly he has accounted for every possibility, and every outcome, even to his own wife.
- Clifford's also possessed an ambitious nature even before his transformation, wishing to advance the human consciousness to instill change in humanity. Whether as a façade or not, he can be a nice person towards people, especially to his students, but he also takes advantage of this trait when he lied to David Singh about Barry harassing him and his wife in which the latter was actually investigating him
- However, even at his worst, Clifford is not without a romantic side; he feels the need to be the great man his wife needs despite his condition and noted that he would be nothing without her. He also allows Barry Allen and Iris West their wedding out of understanding of their love.
- Clifford's superhuman intelligence has made him quite arrogant to the point of having a massive ego, this is evidenced by the fact that after Barry confronted him, as he wanted to know who he really is, he not only revealed to the latter that he knows he is the Flash, but Clifford also boasted that he has nothing to fear from Barry, this new-found intellect of his, also causes him to sometimes underestimate his opponents, like Barry. He is also not above killing and can even take pleasure in it, as he did to Gregory Wolfe, without any real reason.
- It appears DeVoe's constant body change may be affecting his mind as theorized by Marlize. This is evident by the fact DeVoe seems to be cruel towards his wife especially when she points out potential flaws in him, something DeVoe in the past never did. His amoral and selfish nature has even reached the point of viewing his wife as nothing more than a tool for his needs, going so far as to repeatedly alter her memories to keep her docile. However he was shown to be even more cruel to his wife after she find out about him drugging her and erasing her memories and he comes out of nowhere to telling everything he’s done to her and when she was about to turn against him he use chair to shoot out one of claws to stab her in the side of the neck drugging her and leaving his wife unconscious on the floor and later on she wakes up having her on his side as his partner.
As Becky Sharpe
As Dominic Lanse
Abilities
Meta-human physiology : After being struck by the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator while wearing his "Thinking Cap", DeVoe's already high mental capacities were enhanced to superhuman levels. The Thinking Cap also shielded from being directly exposed to the gene-altering energy, which allowed Clifford to retain his normal human DNA despite his superhuman physiology.
- Superhuman intelligence : With his enhanced intelligence, DeVoe feels that he can calculate and deduce the answer to almost any question and anticipate any potential outcome. DeVoe's powers greatly accelerate his brain activity, allowing him to absorb and process information far faster and more efficiently than normal human levels, even faster than Barry Allen. He is even able to condition his thought patterns and general brain activity to mimic others, enabling him to perform feats like completing Schubert's unfinished eighth symphony by extrapolating the remaining movements after he familiarized himself with the body of his other 600 works in a single morning. With his vastly augmented mental processing and cognitive capabilities, Clifford's intelligence is easily ranked as the greatest in the multiverse, as his intellect is so great, in comparison to the intellects of those likes Barry, Harry Wells, Cisco Ramon and even Eobard Thawne seems pathetic. To his point he solved many mysteries with his intelligence including Riemann's hypothesis, one of Hilbert's problems, and Jack the Ripper's true identity.
- Absorbed powers : Between transferring his consciousness and current powers into other bodies or syphoning other people's powers into his current body, DeVoe has gradually expanded the number of meta-abilities he possesses.
- Effigy animation : DeVoe was able to absorb Mina Chaytan's ability to temporarily animate effigies
- Jinxing : DeVoe was able to gain the ability to spread bad luck on people whilst giving himself good luck after he took over Becky Sharpe's body.
- Psycho-active tears : DeVoe is implied to have the powers of the Weeper, as he is shown in Becky's body holding a bottle full of psychoactive tears, some of which he uses on Marlize as a love drug.
- Size alteration : DeVoe was able to absorb Sylbert Rundine's ability to alter the size of both animate and inanimate objects by manipulating the space between their atomic bonds.
- Sound Projection : After taking over Izzy Bowin’s body, DeVoe was able to absorb the ability to project sound waves.
- Technopathy : DeVoe was able to absorb Ramsey Deacon's ability to control any form of technology
- Telepathy : DeVoe gained the power to read minds after he stole Dominic Lanse's body. He was able to retain this ability after his mind was transferred into Becky's body, and with Becky's body, he was shown to have taken these powers to a whole new level by being able to psychically attack the minds of others instead of just reading them without any difficulties as he was able to do this to Barry Allen while running towards him.
- Vibe Awareness : DeVoe is shown to know when Cisco is vibing the location he is at, and can inflict incredible damage.
- Expert historian : Even before gaining his augmented intellect, DeVoe was an accomplished and well-known professor of history in all its forms, the feudal era of Japan being a particular favorite of his
- Master tactician : DeVoe's intelligence makes him a near-flawless planner, able to assess and account for the numerous variables, both natural events and people's instinctual reaction, and from this effectively manipulate the situation to unfold as he sees fit. DeVoe's frightening calculations allowed him to predict various scenarios of potential future problems borders on clairvoyance, as shown from anticipating when Team Flash would discover his identity, an argument with his wife, and more. Clifford is also a masterful chess player, as he regularly plays on his hover chair.
- Master of deception : DeVoe can be very deceptive, effectively convincing David Singh that Barry was harassing him; resulting in the latter being suspended from the CCPD. His ability to fabricate evidence led to Barry being convicted for his murder.
- Multilingual : DeVoe is capable of fluently speaking English, Japanese, French, Italian, Mandarin and several other languages.
- Musical ability : By conditioning his brain activity to replicate Schubert's, DeVoe is a skilled pianist and after transferring his mind to Izzy Bowin, a skilled violist as well.
- Polymath : In addition to history, DeVoe has demonstrated to be expert in various other subjects such as mathematics and engineering; this has become even notable since attaining his superhuman intellect. As an engineer, DeVoe was able to create the schematics of the designs of the samurai robots and the "Thinking Cap".
- Body degeneration : While DeVoe's intellect was boosted to levels surpassing a group of geniuses, his body began to deteriorate due to all the energy in it being directed to his brain, leaving his body without enough to properly function. This illness is an advanced form of ALS, causing his nerves and muscles to start deteriorating, which resulted in Clifford's paralysis and can eventually be fatal. His hovering chair is designed to stall this fatal deterioration, though it too will eventually fail to keep Clifford from dying. This weakness has since grown more deadly as the dark matter in his cells has grown more intense since absorbing the powers of other meta-humans, which forces him to regularly take over new bodies. It can be accelerated with sonic blasts. As noted by Marlize, DeVoe's sanity is shown to deteriorate as well towards the end of a host body's life span.
- Mental Instability : As a consequence of so many body transfers, DeVoe has become increasingly erratic, cruel, and unstable, to the point of repeatedly drugging his wife and erasing her memories to keep her docile, loyal, and continually supportive of her husband's plans. Even his love for his wife, once his defining redeeming quality, has devolved into a possessive and controlling attitude where he tells his wife outright that she is nothing without him. In addition to this, he has also become more arrogant and impatient, his sense of caution and scruples both not almost completely gone.
- Cerebral inhibitor : Harry built the Cerebral inhibitor. Savitar had mentioned that Team Flash would use a version of the device against DeVoe at some point in the future. However, Savitar never said the device would be successful in taking him down. When Izzy Bowin attached it to DeVoe’s forehead, it appeared to have affected him, but DeVoe used Kilg%re’s abilities to neutralize the cerebral inhibitor
- Limited Mental Transference : DeVoe seems only able to transfer his conciseness and absorb the powers of “Bus-Metas”. This was indicated when he/she was at Iron Heights, because DeVoe could have stolen the powers of all the metahumans in Iron Heights, but he did not. As Barry noted after witnessing the attack at the prison, DeVoe only appears to be interested in the powers of the "Bus Metas", prompting Barry to suspect that DeVoe needs their powers for some reason.
- Power-dampening tech : Like all meta-humans, if DeVoe is wearing power-dampening cuffs, he'll be unable to use his powers.
- B.O.O.T. : Designed by Cisco Ramon, this meta-human capture device may potentially be capable of incapacitating DeVoe.
- Human Body : While DeVoe's brain is on another level, his body is very much human. This means he can only process sensory input such as sight at normal human levels. Barry Allen took advantage of this to trick DeVoe into turning off the force field containing him by vibrating faster then the eye can process to make himself invisible to DeVoe.
- Weaknesses of absorbed powers : After absorbing the powers of an individual, DeVoe presumably also acquired their weaknesses.
- Dominic Lanse's Weaknesses :
- Field of vision : With Dominic's telepathy, DeVoe can only read the minds of people he can see.
- Ramsey Deacon's Weaknesses :
- Power-outage : Like Deacon, DeVoe cannot manipulate technology that has no energy source or is too damaged.
- Limited Range : Like Deacon, DeVoe's powers can only work on technology that is within a close enough proximity of him.
- Virus : Like Deacon, because DeVoe's powers work similar to a computer program, if injected with a biological computer virus, he will be immediately incapacitated.
- Mina Chayton's Weaknesses :
- Particular shape: With Mina's powers, DeVoe is limited to only targets that are shaped with features that would allow self-mobility, such having limbs and similar appendages.
- Becky Sharpe's Weaknesses :
- Hydrogen-electron charge: After a hydrogen and electron collision, a charge is given off that is enough to temporarily negate Becky's luck-manipulating powers.
- Exposed brain : For his cybernetics to work, DeVoe's brain has to be exposed, with the upper half of his skull removed. This is no longer a weakness after transferring his consciousness into a new body
- Hovering chair: DeVoe uses a mechanical chair, connected with wires to his hideout's computer system. The chair is also able to hover in mid-air and has offensive capabilities in form of blasters. The chair also has teleportation capabilities, which explains how DeVoe captured the Weeper without attracting a lot of attention. It also has extendable robotic tentacles capable of grabbing and stunning any victim without any difficulties as implied when Barry Allen tried to attack DeVoe before getting grabbed and stunned by them. In addition, the chair has the ability to transfer the essence of DeVoe into that of another body. This is how he transferred his essence into Dominic Lanse, and later Becky Sharpe; and then later on into Izzy Bowen and it is still unknown what happened to their own essences. It has been revealed to also have the ability to steal powers from other meta-humans
- Thinking Cap : In 2013, just before the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator explosion DeVoe designed the thinking cap to boost his own intelligence. He had his wife build it and he put it on his head during the explosion and it was struck by lightning, it is unknown what happened to the cap after that.
- Wheelchair : Due to his severe ALS, DeVoe used a wheelchair when he was required to appear as a civilian in public. After taking control of other meta-humans' bodies and faking his own murder, he no longer has a need for the wheelchair, as none of his new host bodies suffer from the same condition.
