The Flash: More Evidence That Harrison Wells is a New God?

There has been quite a bit of discussion on social media about the possibility that Harrison Wells, the mysterious founder of S.T.A.R. Labs on The Flash, is a member of the ancient race known as the New Gods.

Last week, we wrote about the possibility, noting that the AI with which he was seen interfacing last week was named Gideon.

Because he's a(n apparenty) time traveler in a chair, there's been a small but inevitable group of fans who have suspected the time-traveling New God Metron since the series premiere. The character, who has the attachment to logic and emotional detachment of Star Trek's Spock, is able to traverse time and space in his Mobius Chair.

Jack Kirby's New Gods, with their outlandish designs and elaborate mythology, are one of the only things DC Entertainment and The CW could do to make The Flash even more utterly mad than riffing on Crisis on Infinite Earths to begin with. A somewhat more grounded, "undercover" approach to them isn't unprecedented, and has popped up in everything from Smallville and Final Crisis to Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory. It would be somewhat uncharacteristic of The Flash, though, which has gone out of its way to embrace many of the more over-the-top elements that shows like Arrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. typically do not.

Gideon, anyway, is a New God -- specifically, a really obscure one, and a general. He was one of the many who died in The Death of the New Gods by Jim Starlin. The idea that there's an all-knowing Gideon on the other line led some people to assume that the New Gods were involved tonight.

This week, as Amelia Cole writer Adam P. Knave noted, we get a digital comic that features what appears to be New Gods technology.

As seen at top, a comic book page from The Flash Season Zero, the digital-first series which takes place in the TV series' canon, between the first and second episode of the show, sees Wells go to his "future room" and open a closet to reveal a number of futuristic or alien weapons. Among them (at bottom) is what looks very much like the Astro-Force Chair, the harness that Darkseid's son Orion flies around in.

It doesn't appear to be 100% accurate to the drawing at left...but then, not only is there often art variance from penciller to penciller in terms of how they deal with the New Gods, but since The Flash is set in its own universe (with Arrow, of course) and not in the world of the comics, being slightly "off-model" doesn't mean much.

Of course, having access to technology from the New Gods doesn't inherently make you one. The Justice League trophy room would have such items -- and characters like Batman and Rip Hunter have been shown to horde weapons from throughout space and time so that they can be crazy prepared. Since Hunter is another of the fan-favorite possibilities to be the identity of Wells, it's difficult to gauge whether access to New Genesis and Apokolips tech means much.