The Flash: A Fan-Favorite Villain Returns in "Grodd Friended Me"
The events of 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' made some major changes to the Arrowverse and while each [...]
The events of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" made some major changes to the Arrowverse and while each of The CW's shows are illustrating them, they are perhaps most clear on The Flash. Since returning for the back half of its sixth season, The Flash has seen a variety of differences between the old Earth-1 and Earth-Prime, particularly when it comes to villains. It's something that sent Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) out into the world to catalog them all, but tonight's episode of The Flash, "Grodd Friended Me" revealed another shift when it comes to characters, one that marks the third incarnation of a fan-favorite.
Spoilers for Tuesday night's episode of The Flash, "Grodd Friended Me", below.
As the episode opens up, Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) is found wandering around Central City holding a bouquet of flowers while looking confused. He gets a metahuman alert, however, and races off to answer it, a break in at a business downtown. The Flash quickly discovers that he's dealing with Hartley Rathaway/Pied Piper (Andy Mientus), something that confuses The Flash and for good reason. The last time Barry saw Hartley, he was an ally of Team Flash instead of a villain. This was due to an alteration of the timeline when Barry traveled back in time looking for ways to stop Zoom. Before that, in the "original" timeline, Hartley became a villain bent on revenge against Harrison Wells for having fired him from STAR Labs when Hartley tried to stop the activation of the particle accelerator.
With the "good" version of Hartley is the one that The Flash might have expected -- complete with his familiar set of powers -- it's not what he got. Thanks to "Crisis" Hartley is back to being the villain version of Pied Piper and this time around has sonic-style powers similar to what one might expect with Black Canary. It's a jarring moment, one that drives home just how different reality really is now.
Those differences are going to continue to have an impact on The Flash as the season continues. When Cisco left Team Flash to go catalog the changes in reality at the end of the midseason premiere, many fans thought that it was the departure of Valdes from the series, but that turned out to be not the case.
"Oh no. No. [Cisco and Carlos] are not going anywhere," showrunner Eric Wallace said at the time. "Cisco's off on his journey to catalog the world, but he'll be back very quickly And the information he learns out there in the world is going to help us solve one of the biggest things Team Flash has ever dealt with, and that involves the return of an old villain, which I won't spoil."
What did you think of Pied Piper's return? Let us know in the comments below.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
