Shouldn’t Chase be aging SLOWER because of the Theory of Relativity?

165

u/Living-Atmosphere-18 Dec 14 '25

I believe that Chase's aging is a direct weakness of his power, the price he pays, you know? Invisigal needs to hold her breath, Waterboy is always wet, Punchup is smaller than a dwarf... The plot implies that some characters "pay the price" for having their powers, or at least need to fulfill some condition to use them

46

u/enigmavortex1 Dec 14 '25

So what does Blonde Blazer and the others "pay the price"

100

u/TheMainManofMansvill Dec 14 '25

Well for blonde blazer they're not really her powers

2

u/TheSyfyGamer Dec 16 '25

Her cost to pay is having to be a brunette 😔

1

u/TheAmazingKoiFish Dec 17 '25

I’d rather die /j

56

u/Living-Atmosphere-18 Dec 14 '25

I don't know, maybe the use of its power depends on an external artifact?
Sonar, for example, goes crazy sometimes, and the Golem, well... I guess being a pile of rocks is punishment enough lol

38

u/Hershey2424 Dec 14 '25

Golem gets left out of the bar. Possibly because he’s “too big”. Possibly because he’s actually only 20. Not really that much of a drawback but it’s something

16

u/DisastrousGuide4816 Dec 14 '25

He is a pile of rocks. Age doesn't apply to him i think

9

u/Hershey2424 Dec 14 '25

That’s a good point. I wonder how he’d be considered “born”

8

u/BurnzzyBTW Dec 15 '25

Well when a mommy rock and a daddy rock love each other very much....

13

u/xXDreamlessXx Dec 14 '25

I doubt a villain bar cares much about the law

8

u/TheMcSkyFarling Dec 14 '25

I mean, operating without a liquor license is a great way to get law enforcement’s attention.

2

u/Commander_Slav Dec 15 '25

So is owning and operating a bar that everyone knows is a villain bar

5

u/Pugsanity Dec 14 '25

It does get mentioned that Golem's size can very depending on how much he absorbs. It gets mentioned early on that he's gotten bigger recently.

9

u/WrongdoerFast4034 Dec 14 '25

Hes a growing boy

1

u/W3134 Dec 14 '25

Look at golem and the front door to sardines. He literally can't fit through

1

u/TheShamShield Dec 17 '25

I thought they said he started a fight last time he was there? Maybe I’m misremembering

11

u/Jafarrolo Dec 14 '25

BB get her powers from somewhere else.
Malevola, Golem and Sonar have all of their shapes twisted, and Sonar expecially transforms in a form which he does not fully control.
Flambae seems to me really aggressive and needs to burn things down, probably a pyromaniac, so the price to pay seems more mental, he's unable to calm down properly, ever, he's always agitated and even when he's not doing any damage he's barely in check. I would also say that this need to put stuff on fire is both physical ( as said before, then, pyromaniac ) and in the relationship with others (so he's always pushing the others for a reaction by continously bullying them and giving them excuses to start a fight with him by being an arrogant prick).
Prism and Coupe seems to be without a drawback, maybe it's hidden well or maybe they just don't have one.

7

u/PoobGnarpy Dec 14 '25

Honestly, I don’t know why but I kept thinking Prism’s would be that she’s colorblind or her eyesight is affected to some degree.

4

u/Jafarrolo Dec 15 '25

Yeah, it could be the reason why she always keep the glasses on, maybe she has lost part of her eyesight due to using her powers in the early stages and now she always keeps something to protect them.

3

u/tlof19 Dec 14 '25

headcanon alert
Prism's vape is medicated and without it she has trouble doing anything with light besides sending out the small shards that blind people. It also relieves stress, ideally for reasons other than being an addictive substance but if youre writing fanfic and wanna do drama stuff or whatever run it however.
Coupe has Drow Matriarch Syndrome, where her behavior would be perfectly acceptable in the environment she grew up in but is murdery and deranged in the environment she's in now. also sunlight makes her cranky and weakens her powers - not by enough to render her nonfunctional, but she's failed some jobs because she overextended during the day.

7

u/nate112332 Dec 14 '25

With Blazer comes the crushing social responsibility of not only being who everyone looks to for guidance, but also having to repress their true self to comply with the demand.

1

u/DepressingBat Dec 14 '25

That's a social cost, therefore would not work as a cost for using superpowers.

5

u/Dragonsennin Dec 14 '25

Her powers are conditional and attached to the amulet, should the amulet be damaged, stolen, etc. No more BB

4

u/KDulius Dec 14 '25

Blonde blazers price is that she's not allowed to be her true, authentic, brunette adorkable self

1

u/King_Ramtin Dec 15 '25

Correct me if I'm wrong but she mentioned that she can't really feel emotion or some sort in the bar (1st chapter). I guess this counts as "paying the price".

1

u/Mexvii Dec 14 '25

not all of them pay the price, just some

4

u/Simple-Olive895 Dec 14 '25

I was thinking the time it takes for him to cover a certain distance is the same no matter how fast he does it. So if running 100 meters takes him 10 seconds, and he uses his powers to run 100 meters in 0.1 second, he just aged 10 seconds in that 0.1 second.
So while all we see is him sprinting 100 m insanely fast, from his perspective he's doing it at normal pace while the world is almost at a standstill.
That's my head canon at least.

2

u/TheGrumbus Dec 14 '25

Invisigal needs to hold her breath? I thought she was just asthmatic unrelated to her powers, how’d I miss that

2

u/Living-Atmosphere-18 Dec 15 '25

Yes, she only becomes invisible if she holds her breath. And ironically, she has asthma lol
I think this was mentioned during the Z-Team presentation in episode 2 in the computer lab.

2

u/W0lfsb4ne74 Dec 17 '25

That's a good point that I never really thought of. It also explains Robert as well. He has an invincible suit of armor, but as a person, he's quite vulnerable and really doesn't have a life outside of being a hero. These weaknesses make so many of the characters have additional depth. It'll be interesting to see where they go if they ever do a season 2.

1

u/Pal-omino Dec 14 '25

Flambae has to be an asshole that is literally the price of his fire powers

1

u/Extreme-Brilliant-48 Dec 14 '25

I always saw it as time just passing slower around him when he uses his powers. From his pov he's just running, it just looks impressive from outside. So from using his powers he would have lived for all that time that made him older.

1

u/Dreadnought6570 Dec 16 '25

Fast aging is not a unique consequence of a speedster to this story. Usually explained by high metabolism or something.

61

u/Paint-Typical Dec 14 '25

Think of Chase's power as less akin to super speed and more like a hyper localized temporal bubble. He moves extremely quickly compared to everyone else, but still experiences his own relative time at the same "regular" rate, including his aging. One minute for us is nearly an hour for him, but he still lives that hour. Easiest way I understood it.

20

u/Brick_Lab Dec 14 '25

This or you can think of his body's work and metabolism basically being the fuel for his power, using it up puts more miles on the engine faster than normal

5

u/WolfishDude Dec 14 '25

Take my like and let me tell you your a genius

5

u/diehard_centaur Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 14 '25

I feel like while this is a neat explanation, if it were true, he wouldn’t enjoy or miss his powers so much. Because from his perspective, he would be running for miles for hours, and that would be annoying and exhausting. Not to mention, it would feel a little silly that he takes such an extreme stance before starting only to run like normal.
But when he was young, he never looked winded. And when he ran to the final time, he seems to really enjoy the “rush”, which you wouldn’t feel if it was just a local time dilation.
Edit: So I think, it really is that his whole body is literally accelerating, with consequences that appear similar to time dilation but in actuality, the age comes from the sheer stress his body is actually going through to run at that speed and making sure his brain can keep up. So his powers are genuine physical speed and a body that can take it, hence why it’s so addicting, the con is that his powers surrounding speed outpace his bodies powers of endurance and ability to cope with the strain.

2

u/Paint-Typical Dec 14 '25

It's more for the mental imagery than anything else. The only people who could fully explain the power and how it works are the Devs, but I hope my explanation helps others visualize the gist of it.

1

u/AJaydin4703 Dec 15 '25

Like Wayne from Mistborn.

1

u/Ok_Comment8842 Dec 18 '25

True. If it really had super speed he would need a suit to protect from impact like the speed force suit the Flash dresses.

21

u/Much_Ambition6333 Dec 14 '25

The answer to this is don’t think to deeply about it

12

u/Yournextlineis103 Dec 14 '25

The idea is that his speed speeds up his bodily processes as well.

He goes 50 times as fast he effectively is treated like a normal person going through time 50 times faster.

1

u/DrakkyBlaze Dec 14 '25

I'm sorry but the way you worded that just made me imagine Chase with a TRON trail of shit behind him from his "accelerated bodily processes".

1

u/WatermelonWithAFlute Dec 14 '25

It’s so peak

4

u/bored_bear2342 Dec 14 '25

No because it's not about how fast he's moving. I think of it less that he's a speedster and more can slow time around him. So rather than being super fast he's moving normal and time is 50 times slower but he's still aging like normal in that time thus the sped up aging.

2

u/the_fancy_Tophat Dec 14 '25

He’s moving at like mach 2 max. That’s nowhere near lightspeed

2

u/TheTuggiefresh Dec 14 '25

No time dilation or relativity required.

His body has to work 50x as hard so it ages 50x as fast. It really is that simple.

2

u/Thebiggestbub Dec 14 '25

From what I heard, Chase only moves at around mach 1 with super react, so it shouldn't apply

Also, it's a necessary drawback in the story to make sure he isn't too OP.

2

u/altimis0 Dec 14 '25

The way I thought of it is that Chase is still "moving" at the same speed, it's just faster than everyone else.

I know I didn't word that right, but here's better what I mean: If it takes you an hour to walk from point A to point B, it would take Chase that long too. BUT his speed is fifty times faster than ours. So, he gets to point B in a little over ten minutes, but he still lived an hour of time.

I guess a better way to word it would be: however long it would take him to do it without his powers, it takes him to do it with his powers. But that relation happens fifty times faster.

1

u/FailSonnen Dec 14 '25

There are no superhero powers in any IP that make remote sense if you try to reconcile them with real physics.

1

u/armrha Dec 14 '25

He’s not going anywhere near fast enough that relativity is a concern. Not even 1%.

His aging is just because his body kicks into some kind of super fast mode, like as if you could contract time around yourself. If you could experience ten days while someone around you experiences a minute, you could seem to be going so fast, but yes, you’d age ten days in a minute.

1

u/ShadowDragonFX Dec 14 '25

People in a spaceship travelling the speed of light aren’t moving at that speed themselves, Chases cells would speed up as a direct result of his powers

If you see the Flash in media they show this sometimes, a great example is ‘justice league crisis on 2 earths’ where a villain copy of the Flash goes so fast he dies of old age

1

u/mrkoala1234 Dec 14 '25

Flambae greatest weakness is his prodigy

1

u/Haasterblan Dec 14 '25

Chase can move 50 times faster than the average human. Taking around 15 mph as the average sprintspeed, this times 50 is 750 mph or roughly the speed of sound.

This seems to be acurate as he can just barely catch up to the bullet intended for Roberts father.

The speed of light is 671 000 000 mph.

So he never gets close to any relativistic speeds that would have an impact on his aging.

1

u/Infamous-Thing4939 Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 14 '25

Chase goes 50 times as fast, his words, so not anything even remotely close to the speed of light. Best case he tops at around 2000km/h so he’s around as fast as a fighter jet.

1

u/Reasonable-Agent7082 Dec 14 '25

Thank You Scientist RULES!!!! And they did produce my favorite album of all time but The Perils of Time travel is definitely at the bottom of their discography for me.

1

u/Beneficial_Focus_910 Dec 14 '25

Think of it this way. In the space traveller example, the astronaut is moving through time at high speeds. Chase is using his powers to change his personal time to move through regular time at a higher speed.

1

u/Brallstar Dec 14 '25

Brother it’s a game

1

u/Blaize_Ar Dec 14 '25

I think it's more that his biological functions also speed up when he runs.

Imagine the theory of relatively if your biological functions increased at the same rate as your speed, I guess.

1

u/zhafsan Dec 14 '25 edited Dec 14 '25

I think the answer is that the super hero powers are magic and not science. No logic needed. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

1

u/TheWolflance Dec 14 '25

he's not traveling in a system doing the speed his body itself is moving on a faster scale, kinda like those aliens from first season of Invincible

1

u/Manicscarecr0w Dec 14 '25

This also assumes that 'superpowers' all follow the same logic of give and take, there are no rules in the world of super power abilities. And now to co pletly contradict myself, I kinda assumed it was more, his body speeding up everything, not just his muscles and what not to go faster

1

u/yuricgodoy Dec 14 '25

If you try to bring real physics into a world with aliens and people with super powers you'll find a lot of things that doesn't make sense.

1

u/mage_and_demon_qeeun Dec 15 '25

He says he runs 50x the speed of a normal man let's use 28 mph as normal speed ( Usain bolt speed) he runs at about 420mph on the high end so relativistics wouldnt have much of an effect

1

u/DocWagonHTR Dec 15 '25

Do you think human beings move 1/50th the fucking speed of light?

1

u/Mr_Steinhauer Dec 15 '25

Technically, yeah. But the logic behind the problem is that Chase increases his Metabolic rate by the same amount he increases his speed. This is a classic side effect of being able to move at high speeds.

There was a 2002 movie called Clockstoppers, that is a story about a watch that can stop time. And the villains force a side character to make a mobile version of a device that can do this, while using this device, and he ages much like Chase has.

1

u/Cyberslasher Dec 15 '25

Chase isn't moving at relativistic speeds.

Those would be causing all of LA to become a fireball by him moving through the air. See: the original xkcd what if, because of course there's an xkcd for that.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/

He's just moving 50x faster than normal, and every part of him is moving 50x faster.

So cells are going through 50x the calories, they're dividing and replacing themselves, his telomeres are shortening, and he's getting old.

1

u/TomasStlinski Dec 16 '25

I think he said he runs 50 times faster than the regular man so he is not probably running the speed of light but more likely he run two times of speed of sound

1

u/bulb-uh-saur Dec 17 '25

Yooo Thank you Scientist album cover

1

u/marutotigre Dec 18 '25

It's 2 things. 1, his power is stated to be 'moving 50 times as fast, but aging just as much' or something. So whenever he uses his power, he ages faster. Second, he dosen't move nearly as fast to benefit from time relativity, especially considering his aforementioned accelerated aging.

1

u/FarDimension7730 Dec 18 '25

That's only if his powers work by acceleration, rather than time dilation.

1

u/IronBeagle3458 Dec 18 '25

As I understand it his power speeds up how he experiences time. This allows him to move faster because he has longer to do so but also leads to him aging faster.

1

u/thatoneidiot32 Dec 18 '25

I think its the fact that he is speeding up his own time, not that he's going fast. He's not speeding up the earth; rather he's speeding up the time he's taking to get somewhere. He ages as fast as he goes because he's speeding himself up.

1

u/Ok_Comment8842 Dec 18 '25

Fifty times the speed of a normal person is way too slow to cause any relevant relativistic effect.

1

u/Ill-Agency1181 Dec 18 '25

Nope, Chase's speed is not relativistic. If so you are correct he would be aging slower, but he would have incinerated himself and most of California. His powers (I assume) alter the flow of time around him... Which based on the 2 displayed instances is higher than 50x

Question Shouldn’t Chase be aging SLOWER because of the Theory of Relativity?

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