This week on The Flash, Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin) begins working with the newest speedster in Central City, Dr. Meena Dhawan (Kausar Mohammed) who has created her own artificial speed in her lab at Fast Track. However, Barry’s stunned to discover that she’s working with a Dr. Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher) — something that should be impossible considering Thawne (Tom Cavanagh) is imprisoned on Lian Yu. But while the Thawne of it all is a stunning reveal, there’s another surprising development in “The Man in the Yellow Tie”, one that potentially resolves the Green Lantern tease first brought to the Arrowverse in the Arrow series finale.
Warning: spoilers for this week’s episode of The Flash, “The Man in the Yellow Tie” below.
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After discovering that Eobard Thawne — with his original face — is working with Meena, Barry goes to Lian Yu trying to find answers. The Thawne wearing Harrison Wells’ face is still there and still powerless and the two quickly surmise that when he was nearly erased Armageddon, so was Thawne’s past, meaning that this new iteration of the OG Thawne is from a different timeline. When Barry leaves Lian Yu to go back to Central City, however, it’s revealed that the imprisoned Thawne is not alone. John Diggle (David Ramsey) has been lurking in the shadows.
It turns out that Diggle has been trying to get the mysterious box he found in the Arrow series finale to open again but has been unable to. Because Thawne is from the future, he thinks that the villain might have some insight on how to open it. Thawne explains that the box only comes to those who are at a crossroads and ready to choose their destiny. It closed because Diggle wasn’t ready, and to open it now, Diggle has to be in a headspace to be open to the possibilities. Diggle goes to that headspace and the box opens, but after seeing everything across the universe and all the possibilities it holds for him, he rejects what it offers and throws it aside. The box vanishes entirely, with Diggle giving up his cosmic destiny because it didn’t lead him back to his family.
For fans, Diggle refusing the call of the mysterious box one last time may be shocking. Fans of the Arrowverse have long hoped that Diggle would eventually join the Green Lantern Corps so when the box first appeared in the final episode of Arrow, complete with an eerie green glow, it seemed to be implied that it contained a Green Lantern ring. Now that Diggle has rejected the box again and it is gone — potentially for good — it would seem that so too is any chance of Diggle becoming a Green Lantern. However, it might not be. When we spoke with Ramsey last year, at the time the actor spoke about his Arrowverse appearances last season and how they tied into that box and what he called Diggle’s “galactic destiny”.
“Obviously he has the deepest history with Flash because he knows all the characters on Flash. So, every time he appears on these shows, he fits within the storytelling of that specific episode,” Ramsey said. “But he’s kind of hiding something in his back pocket. And we started telling that on Batwoman. They kind of have these headaches that he’s kind of there to see a doctor. Ultimately, what he saw in the box, he declined the invitation to. That decision has consequences. And we start telling ultimately, his cosmic destiny if you will, his kind of galactic destiny if you will. We begin to tell the consequences of denying that through this kind of crossover that we’re doing.”
It’s also important to note that while what happened this week on The Flash did seem to resolve the question about that box, there still could be more surprises in store, just over on Superman & Lois. That series’ showrunner Todd Helbing told TV Guide that Ramsey will appear as Diggle in the upcoming Season 2 finale with his appearance directly setting up the events of Season 3.
The Flash airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
