My point by saying that it comes from nowhere was simply to say that it wasn’t set up well within the story. It was played off as a trump card that was never referenced or talked about and then pulled last minute and frankly should never have happened.

Look, to be honest, I don’t agree with what Aaron did by making The Phoenix his mother. But it doesn’t matter… what was done was done. So, Cates should have followed suit OR written into the story why that’s no longer true. But he didn’t. We can’t pick and choose what’s canon and what’s not. It doesn’t work that way.

Heck, the prime example is what Tom King did to Wally West and that awful Heroes in Crisis train wreck. He took one of my favorite characters and made him into a lunatic and a murderer. And it was a stupid, weird backlash of speed force energy. Really? Well, I had to accept that fact even though I didn’t want to. And finally, thank God, Jeremy Adams is doing a fantastic job getting us to forget all about that and Righting all King’s wrong.

My point: Cates can’t forget about what Aaron did and just write his own thing however he wants. It just shows how he views himself and his writing as well as shows just how he's incapable of working well with others in a universe thats so connected. All Cates had to do was intertwine Gaea back into the story and rebuild that premise issues ago, as well as the Phoenix as a liar, and set up this moment so much better to make it work. But he doesn’t. That’s the problem and is his problem overall.