The Flash Showrunner Refutes Savitar Casting Reports

Despite numerous reports that The Vampire Diaries veteran Todd Lasance would play the super-speedster Savitar on the upcoming third season of The CW’s The Flash, executive producer Greg Berlanti has officially put the kibosh on that rumor via Twitter.

Savitar is not only not Lasance but, according to Berlanti, hasn’t yet been cast.

Lasance was spotted on set when the season first started filming, so during a presentation at the Television Critics Association recently executive producer Todd Helbing was asked about the speedster whose costume Lasance was spotted wearing. Helbing seemingly confirmed that the speedster in question was Lasance, but now Berlanti has clarified that the character seen on set and in a teaser for The Flash‘s third season at Comic Con was not in fact Savitar, who was announced during The CW’s DC Television presentation that same day.

Several news outlets took Helbing’s original comments to be confirmation that Helbing was acknowledging Lasance was the one in the suit, and therefore Savitar, but it appears that at least half of that supposition isn’t true.

The character Lasance is assumed to be playing is a dark-costumed speedster with glowing lightning bolts on his costume and large wings on the sides of his mask. If it isn’t Savitar, it’s not yet clear who he might be, other than perhaps an alternative-universe version of an existing speedster.

Savitar is a character created in the Mark Waid-written “Dead Heat” storyline in the comics. Whereas most comic book supervillains have long and storied careers getting in and out of jail, Savitar was a major threat for that one story and then more or less never appeared again, save for a cameo in the “Chain Lightning” story about a year and a half later, and a brief appearance in The Flash: Rebirth, in which the character died.

A master of the Speed Force, Savitar has spent his entire long life studying velocity, becoming a master of speed on a level that nobody else ever has. After being shunted into the future during a battle with Max Mercury, he ended up facing off against The Flash and the family of speedsters that surrounded him. During that battle, Savitar revealed that one of the skills he had honed during his years of study was the ability to lend or borrow speed, effectively making him more powerful in the presence of other speedsters.

Savitar is one of a pair of “big bads” expected to play major roles in this season of The Flash. The other, Doctor Alchemy, will follow in the footsteps of last year’s Zoom and have one actor (Tobin Bell, best known for his work on the Saw franchise) voice the character while another depicts the man under the costume — a man whose face will remain hidden for an as-yet-undisclosed amount of time.

There’s plenty of speculation that Harry Potter alum Tom Felton might be playing Dr. Alchemy — which would be kind of fun, since the villains powers are derived from an object called The Philosopher’s Stone.

The Flash will return on October 4, 2016, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. The new season will pick up where Season Two left off, with Barry Allen having traveled back in time, saved his mother’s life, and created a new timeline where things happened much differently than he remembers.