'The Flash' Showrunner Reveals the Story Reason Behind Abandoning Speedster Villains

After three seasons of battling Reverse Flash, Zoom, and Savitar, it wasn't just fans of The Flash getting tired of watching Barry take on speedster villains. It turns out that Todd Helbing was ready for a change, too.

In an interview with ComicBook.com's Russ Burlingame, Helbing revealed that there was a lot of effort in trying to come up with new powers for speedster villains so it wasn't just always a race.

"I think having Zoom and then followed up by Savitar, you know, I can understand that feeling," he explained. "It's because trying to reinvent, you know, like a new power for an evil speedster or what they can do ... Like we can't have it just who's faster for the entirety of a series."

Speedster villains is a major part of The Flash's comic book canon and it's also something that the show has done well regarding making each subsequent evil speedster a challenge for Barry. Reverse Flash had major Speed Force powers, not to mention the psychological element of being the man who murdered Barry's mother. Season two's Zoom upped the ante by literally stripping Barry of his speed while last season's Savitar was the hardest of all to stop who wasn't just any speedster but an evil time remnant version of Barry himself who knew Team Flash's every move.

And while the show is moving away from speedster villains, something brought into focus with the reveal of The Thinker in the final moments of last night's fourth season premiere, Helbing hasn't ruled out utilizing speedsters in the future -- or even bringing back an old foe. Helbing says there's specific villain he wouldn't mind seeing come back.

"But I mean there's certainly speedsters in the cannon of Flash that we want to explore and we want on the show and everybody..." Helbing said. "Like Reverse Flash to me personally is one of my favorite villains, one of my favorite speedsters, so I'd love that guy to pop up now and then, you know what I mean? But I think it was refreshing, and it's just been a lot of fun this year not having to constantly come up with new ideas of how a speedster could pose a threat to Barry. So, it's fun, and it's new, and it's a new challenge, but I think having speedsters in the mythology of the show is never going to change."

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

An earlier version of this story misidentified Todd Helbing as Greg Berlanti. We apologize for the error.