‘The Flash’ References a Major Batman Villain in “Memorabilia”

The Flash might be deep in its conflict against Cicada, but it may have taken the time to plant the seeds for a notable DC Comics foe.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of The Flash, “Memorabilia”, below!

The episode saw Sherloque Wells (Tom Cavanagh) setting up a machine to help Team Flash access the memories of Grace Gibbons, Cicada’s niece. But as Sherloque explained, the machine had one wrinkle to it, in that it would cause people who went into the machine together to accidentally access each other’s memories. This had apparently led to Sherloque seeing a memory of his fourth wife sleeping with his partner (conveniently named Watson), which put a wrinkle in Sherloque and Watson solving the case of Jervis Tetch/Mad Hatter.

For DC fans, a mention of Mad Hatter was sure to raise some eyebrows, as there’s a Batman foe of the same name.

Jervis Tetch is a scientist with various mind-controlling abilities, whose aesthetic and persona draws inspiration from Alice in Wonderland’s “Mad Hatter”. While his M.O. and technology have varied throughout the years, his conflict with Batman and the rest of the “bat family” remained the same. The character previously made an appearance on Gotham, as portrayed by Benedict Samuel.

As we speculated last year, we wouldn’t be surprised if Mad Hatter could make some sort of appearance in Batwoman, seeing as the show is set to further explore the Arrowverse’s version of Gotham. And now that it’s been confirmed that a version of the Mad Hatter exists in the Arrowverse – albeit on Earth-212 – it will be interesting to see whether or not that happens.

Even if Mad Hatter isn’t headed to the Arrowverse anytime soon, the notion that The Flash got to reference yet another part of the Gotham world will surely please fans.

“That whole world, as writers, I worked on Smallville too and [The Flash showrunner] Todd [Helbing] worked on Smallville as well.” Caroline Dries, who is executive producing Batwoman, told reporters at a press screening of the “Elseworlds” crossover. “DC doesn’t let you say Batman [or] have anything about Gotham.”

“We tried so many times. Now all of the sudden, we can do stuff. And for a bunch of geeks like us, you’re in heaven and it’s trying to figure out what you want to use. But, that was really fun, I think, for everyone.”

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