It looks like Team Flash is getting a little bit bigger. The Flash has promoted Brandon McKnight to series regular for The CW series’ upcoming seventh season. McKnight made his debut on the Arrowverse series during the sixth season premiere, “Into the Void” as Chester P. Runk, a science genius who ended up opening a black hole in Star City during one of his live-streamed experiments with Team Flash ultimately having to place Chester into the Mental Augmentation Chamber (MAC) at STAR Labs until he could re-stabilize from the experience.
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Since that debut, Chester has appeared in an additional two episodes, most recently being last week’s “Grodd Friended Me” in which Chester lends Team Flash a hand, coming up with a way to save both Grodd and Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) when the pair go up against Solovar in Grodd’s mindscape.
In comics, Chester has a similar transformation from “problem” to “ally”. In comics, Chester P. Runk was an overweight man with some psychological problems who ended up developing a matter transmitting machine. When he experimented with it, it ended up imploding and turned him into a human black hole. To prevent himself from imploding into a strange universe on the other side of the black hole, he had to feed himself 47 times his own mass. He initially sends people who annoy him into the strange universe and also ends up raiding art galleries, jewelry stores and other places for the dense materials he needed to consume. The Flash eventually catches up to him and also ends up showing him a productive use for his interesting condition — he can make unwanted things, like garbage, disappear. Chester eventually ends up a wealthy businessman who becomes an occasional ally to Wally West’s Flash.
While The Flash‘s take on Chester doesn’t appear to be taking on any of those super powered traits at this point, McKnight’s performance as the loveable and enthusiastic science geek has made him a major fan favorite and it sounds like he handily won over people off screen as well. Showrunner Eric Wallace previously told TV Line he wanted to get McKnight back on the series right away after seeing his premiere performance.
“The first thing I said was, ‘How quickly can we get this guy back?’” Wallace said previously. “We want to get to know him a little better and let him interact with Team Flash a second time, very soon.”
Are you excited that McKnight will be a series regular as Chester in Season 7 of The Flash? Let us know in the comments below.
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
