Here’s How The Flash Has Changed Post-Crisis

“Crisis on Infinite Earths” brought major changes to the Arrowverse. The biggest change, that Supergirl and Black Lightning were both made part of the same Earth — the newly created Earth-Prime — when Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) sacrificed himself to “reboot” the Multiverse is one that fans saw come to fruition in the final hour of “Crisis”. Since then, though, as each of the Arrowverse shows have returned from their midseason breaks, we’ve seen more specific details about how each of Earth-Prime’s heroes have been impacted by the epic event. On Tuesday, it was The Flash’s turn. Here’s how things shook out for Central City’s heroes.

Spoilers for The Flash‘s midseason premiere, “Marathon”, below.

Generally speaking, not a lot has changed for The Flash day-to-day. Central City is thriving. The Flash survived “Crisis” to continue to protect its citizens. Team Flash is still headquartered at STAR Labs. Iris (Candice Patton) still running the Citizen. Jitters has finally reopened, but that’s not so much a consequence of “Crisis”. Everything seems normal.

What’s not normal, though, is something that Cisco (Carlos Valdes) figures out. It turns out that the villain situation is changed thanks to “Crisis”, with a whole new batch of threats part of the Arrowverse, old villains being somewhat changed, and there are even new villains that are like remixes of some of the Flash’s old foes. There’s also the matter of the freshly streamlined timeline that offers an alternative explanation for some of the Multiverse-dependent adventures and villains seen in previous seasons.

The only real difference on The Flash then is really the villain situation and it’s one we got a look at tonight as well with a new, more vicious Doctor Light – Kimiyo Hoshi. The episode saw Iris West-Allen (Candice Patton) continuing to investigate the conspiracy of Black Hole, an organization that seems to have ties to terrorism and metahuman smuggling. Throughout the investigation, Iris began to be targeted by a masked assassin, who was armed with a light gun from McCulloch Technologies.

After being seriously injured by the assassin, Iris began to investigate who the assassin could be, and quickly found her answer — Kimiyo Hoshi, a metahuman astronomer with the power to harness light, who had gone missing half a decade prior. As Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) began to suggest, there was a chance that Kimiyo’s powers were being harnessed and amplified through McCulloch’s gun. Allegra Garcia (Kayla Compton) suggested that Kimiyo was a doctor with the ability to control light, leading Cisco to proclaim that she’s the new “Doctor Light”.

The villain differences is something fans will see more of this season on The Flash.

“The past villains that we saw in previous seasons, they’re not the same villains anymore. They are different people. They might even have different abilities, which Team Flash is going to get caught unprepared,” showrunner Eric Wallace said in a previous interview. “It gives a freshness to it and even more danger to what would be a meta-of-the-week kind of story line. It becomes even more treacherous if you don’t know what the meta is, because that meta is a little bit more unpredictable.” Without revealing who we’ll see in addition to Amunet, he adds: “We’re going to dig deep. You’re definitely going to get villains we have not seen in a long time popping up.”

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