This week, The Flash wasted no time introducing a major threat to Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) and Team Flash. The ending of this week’s episode confirmed what fans had been anticipating for months — and indeed hoping for for several seasons — when it comes to a major threat that The Flash will be facing off with on this final run and in a recent interview with ComicBook.com, showrunner Eric Wallace said that fans won’t have to wait for the big tease at the end of the episode to pay off.
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Warning: Spoilers for the Season 9 premiere of The Flash, “Wednesday Ever After” beyond this point.
In the final moments of the episode, fans saw Owen Mercer/Captain Boomerang go to deliver the stolen battery from the Roemer Accelerator to his unknown partner. They supply him with fresh boomerangs and tell him that their next target is a who and not a thing before their red lightning culminates into a Bat symbol: Red Death. Fans had been speculating the arrival of Red Death since the announcement that Batwoman star Javicia Leslie would be joining the cast of The Flash in the final season. More than that, Red Death is a character that has been teased in the series in previous seasons, but unlike previous seasons where the revelation of Big Bads sometimes takes a while to pay off, Wallace said fans will find out right away exactly who we’re dealing with.
“Here’s the fun part. We have been teasing the Red Death since season six. You can go back, because I’ve always had a plan to bring the Red Death on the show. You can go back to episode 607, right? ‘The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part One’, and in the middle of Bloodwork’s tempting of Barry in a dream, there’s a moment where they go into this dream sequence all red, no coincidence, and Reverse Flash, Tom Cavanagh, shows up and says, ‘She’s on the loose. She’s destroyed everything.’ That’s where this all started. We’re just paying it off,” Wallace said.
He continued, “So, when you see the Red Death, it’s the culmination of a geeky dream that, quite frankly, I’ve had for three years. I’m so glad we got an opportunity to do it. Also, you don’t have to wait until the end of the season to see the suit and to see the Red Death come to life. It’s going to happen very early in Season 9, very quickly. We’re not going to make people wait. We’re getting right to it. And boy, does all heck break loose when we find out why the Red Death is here and why she hates Barry Allen. Because remember, the villain never thinks they’re a villain. So conversely, they think the hero is not a hero.”
Who is Red Death?
First introduced in comics in 2017’s Dark Nights: Metal event by writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo, The Flash has name-dropped Red Death a few times in recent seasons. Specifically, Red Death was confirmed to exist at some point in The Flash‘s story during Season 5’s episode “Memorabilia” when a recording in the Flash Museum in the future mentions that the villain Cicada was more deadly than the Red Death.
Leslie’s appearance on The Flash in Season 9 will mark her return to the Arrowverse following Batwoman‘s cancellation after three seasons —and her second on the series —last year. In an interview following the series’ cancellation, Leslie said that she was “always down” to come back to the Arrowverse.
“If my schedule allows it, I’m always down to play in Gotham,” Leslie explained. “I mean, Batwoman is a part of my fibre at this point. It’s a part of my fabric. I think the most amazing part is, that was a character that we created. It’s not something I have to play into, it’s something that we created out of our own spirit and our own souls.”
The Flash airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
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