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| As a result of the New 52 in 2011, the entire line of DC characters was relaunched, incorporating properties belonging to the company's imprints: Wildstorm, Milestone, and Vertigo. As such, elements of this character's history have been altered in some way from the previous incarnation. For a complete list of all versions of this character, see our disambiguation page. |
Lilly, also known as Gold Beetle, is a mysterious time traveling hero and ally of the Flash Family. She has worked with various Flashes throughout history, particularly Wally and Jai West.
History
Origins
Gold Beetle is a descendant of Booster Gold and one of the heroes to use the Blue Beetle identity.[1] She somehow found the ancient and powerful Worlogog, but did not recognise it for what it was and named it the "Timeglass". She used the Timeglass to power her ship, the Gold Bug. It allowed her to travel through time but also warped the ship's internal dimensions so that it became smaller on the inside than it appeared on the outside.[2]
Meeting Wally West
Gold Beetle first encountered Wally when she responded to a temporal distortion at Terrifictech in 2023. She stopped the distortion but was immediately blasted with stun-discs which had been set up to contain any threats that may emerge through the experimental time machine. Although from her perspective this was their first meeting, Wally had encountered her before in his subjective past and her subjective future. He had deliberately triggered the temporal catastrophe to summon her, as he needed the Worlogog to rescue his kidnapped newborn son Wade West. Gold Beetle immediately agreed, deciding that she would trust him if her future self did.
She and a host of heroes used the Worlogog and a starship built by Mister Terrific to follow Wade to the Palace of Eternity. As Wally sat in the ship's centre chair, she nicknamed him "The Captain".[3] They followed Wade to the Palace of Eternity where, much to Gold Beetle's excitement, she got a chance to fight giant monsters and even the infamous Anti-Monitor. They successfully rescued Wade but the Worlogog was damaged, and they were unable to navigate their way back to the 21st Century. After months of adventures across time and space, they managed to find their way back home.[4]
Wally gave Gold Beetle a series of rules to follow in order to avoid drawing attention from the Linear Men, including not sharing details of the future with his younger self when she encountered him. The two would go on to have many adventures together including being lost in the Darkloch of Rannistan, Galaxia Five and the Galactic Space Race. She would also team up with Impulse in the 30th Century multiple times.[2]
Meeting Jai West
Approximately twenty years in the future, Gold Beetle met and had an adventure with Jai West at the "Nexus Fair". She didn't learn his last name at the time and didn't realise he was part of the Flash Family. The two were intensely attracted to each other, but Lilly departed with both their feelings left unsaid. Lilly promised herself that if she ever met Jai again, the first thing she would do is kiss him. Some time later, Impulse called on her to help his relative Surge fight off a Fraction army. When she got there, Surge turned out to be Jai, who recognised her from that day and remembered her. She kissed him as soon as she realised who he was, and promised she would never let him out of her sight again. They teamed up to once again rescue Wade, who had been kidnapped by the Fraction,[5] and subsequently started dating.[6]
Adventure with Impulse
During an adventure with Impulse in the 30th Century, Bart somehow damaged the timeline while confronting the Dominator who he believed killed his father. The Dominator put a power damper on Bart but as it did so a surge of Speed Force energy shot out of him and infected the Dominator, causing it to grow to an immense size. At the same time Bart's body was possessed by the disembodied consciousness of Wally West, which was being sent through time by the Force to heal itself. Gold Beetle was able to tap into Wally's communication link to the past and learn that Wally's essence had been transferred to Bart's body. She was also excited to find out that this was her mentor's first meeting with her.
Wally needed to drain the energy from the Dominator or it would explode, destroying the entire northern hemisphere of Earth. Back in the 21st Century, Barry Allen hid a device which would allow Wally to shut off the Speed Force leak in a bust of Jay Garrick in the Flash Museum so Wally could retrieve it in the future, a technique the two had used before to send items to each other when one was displaced in time. Much to Gold Beetle's delight, they would need to break into the Museum to retrieve the device, which she did by crashing her ship through the roof of the building.
Wally stole the device from the Museum and used it to restore the Dominator to normal size. He asked Gold Beetle to retrieve and dispose of the device which she unconvincingly promised to do. She hugged Wally as he felt himself being pulled back into the timestream and promised to help him whenever he needed her. Wally whispered to her to save the victims of the the Sanctuary disaster, which she agreed to do. When Wally's consciousness was sent into the past, she continued to hug a confused Bart, who had no memory of the preceding events.[2][7]
The Sanctuary
Gold Beetle was able to pull the Sanctuary residents from the timeline just before the moment of their deaths and replaced them with clones created in the 35th Century. She wasn't able to save Roy Harper, who was right next to the surge, but he came back to life by himself anyway. After Wally's fight with Savitar, any speedster who was lost in the Speed Force was deposited at Timepoint, and so she took it over as a base and renamed it "Planet Flash". She took the Santuary survivors to Timepoint, along with a prehistoric speedster named Ugh and his pet dinosaur Swoosh.[8][7]
Gold Beetle had foreknowledge of the Fraction's invasion of Earth in 2023, and so held the Sanctuary survivors back at Timepoint to help save the world when they would be needed. She also knew that, during the fight, Wally would dematerialise again as he absorbed a huge amount of Speed Force energy. When he emerged at Timepoint, she took him and the survivors to help in the fight, equipping them with stolen Fraction conduit harnesses that allowed them to artificially tap into the Speed Force and move fast enough to fight the Fraction. The harnesses wore off after a minute of sped-up time, but they were able to provide the distraction the Flash Family needed to stop the Fraction and undo the damage they had caused. Afterwards, Wally invited her to stay for a celebration but she declined, as her and Jai's first meeting in his subjective future had been special and she didn't want to ruin their memories of it.[7]
Dark Tomorrow
Gold Beetle began experiencing mysterious episodes where she would momentarily "fritz". This was incredibly painful for her, as she felt like she was dying each time it happened. She also felt like she had forgotten someone, but every time she tried to think about it her mind wandered away from the thought; unbeknownst to her, Lilly's memory of the Booster Gold side of her legacy had been erased. Gold Beetle travelled to Justice League Unlimited's Watchtower in 2025 to seek out the League's help. Mister Terrific diagnosed her as phasing in and out of existence, but was unable to determine why or cure her. He told her that he suspected it was related to the disruptions in the timestream that had recently been occurring.
A mysterious armoured time traveller known only as Legend crashed into the Watchtower and warned the League that something was targeting time travellers across history and causing disruptions along the timeline. Gold Beetle joined a ragtag group of time-displaced heroes known as the Legends to save time travellers across history from creatures known as Omega Demons, travelling via a timeship known as the Waverider. Their time-hopping search eventually lead them to the source of the Omega Demons at Vanishing Point, the former headquarters of the Linear Men. Gold Beetle was able to destroy the Quantum Flux Regulator which was granting the Omega Demons temporal powers; while the Legends held off the Demons and their leader, a corrupted Shadow Lass from an alternate universe. Shadow Lass fled after the tower was destroyed, but when the Legends tried to return to the present to warn the Justice League, they found their path through the Timestream blocked by a "temporal firewall".[1]
Powers and Abilities
Powers
- Superhuman Strength: Gold Beetle was able to rip Mister Atom apart with her bare hands.[4]
Abilities
Paraphernalia
Equipment
- Headnet
- Justice League ID Card
- Worlogog
Transportation
- Gold Bug: An advanced craft capable of travelling through time and space, it resembles a cross between Blue Beetle's Bug and the Time Sphere.
Weapons
- Sonic Gun
Notes
- Gold Beetle was created by Jeremy Adams and Fernando Pasarin, first appearing in Future State: Suicide Squad #1. However, Gold Beetle first appeared as part of Prime Earth continuity in The Flash #768 by Jeremy Adams, Brandon Peterson, and Marco Santucci.
Related
- 12 Appearances of Gold Beetle (Prime Earth)
- 6 Images featuring Gold Beetle (Prime Earth)
- 1 Quotations by or about Gold Beetle (Prime Earth)
- Character Gallery: Gold Beetle (Prime Earth)
Footnotes
  This character has been a member of the Justice League of America, or simply the Justice League in any of its various incarnations, sworn by a duty to act as guardians of America and the world by using their skills and/or superpowers to protect Earth from the clutches of both interstellar and domestic threats. |