The Flash: Is This Season Three's Biggest Threat?

10/04/2016 09:07 pm EDT

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the season three premiere of The Flash.

Time for a theory.

In tonight's episode of The Flash, titled "Flashpoint," Barry spends much of the episode in a seemingly-ideal world of his own creation, only to realize as that world starts to "harden" like concrete that the cost of having created it was too great and if he loses his old life altogether, he will miss it.

That motivates him to start trying to figure out what he can do to make the world he's created a better place, and when that fails, he decides it's time to head back home.

He successfully changes time so that the world of "Flashpoint" is just a vague memory in his head, but when he gets back, he realizes that the world isn't just as he left it. Ripples through space and time have apparently distorted some aspects of the world, including some of the relationships with and between those closest to Barry.

Meanwhile, the entire episode passed and we didn't see hide nor hair of the season's two "big bads," Dr. Alchemy (although he was teased) and Savitar (although there was a speedster).

And we've got a little bit of an idea about why.

During the first season of The Flash, all of the show's villains seemed to come from the same source: the particle accelerator explosion that created The Flash himself.

In season two, it was Earth-2 that provided most of the non-recurring baddies, with Zoom bringing them over from that world.

What could it be in season three? We're thinking it's Mirror Master.

That last image in Edward Clariss's home tonight -- Alchemy's name carved into either a mirror or a window -- is telling, given that we know the classic Flash rogue Mirror Master will appear in upcoming episodes of The Flash's third season.

While the showrunners have said that Mirror Master won't be using his mirror gun, and "won't necessarily" be warping between dimensions, we have a theory that maybe his classic power set -- which involves using mirrors and other reflective surfaces to move from place to place through a "mirror dimension" -- could play into what we saw at the end of tonight's episode.

What if Mirror Master -- perhaps at the behest of Alchemy or Savitar -- is somehow finding individuals who had powers in the Flashpoint universe or were significant figures there, and "activating" them to become the villains of The Flash's third season.

That could be backed up by production photos for the show's second episode, which appear to show Barry about to square off with someone whose leg (the only part of the villain you can see) looks like it may belong to The Rival, the speedster who appeared in tonight's episode...and who was the Flashpoint Universe counterpart of Edward Clariss, the man with "Alchemy" carved on his mirror (or is it window? Either way, reflective glass).

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