The Flash's Central City State Location Confirmed

While Marvel Comics characters generally exist in New York City or other big real-world locales, [...]

By Russ Burlingame

While Marvel Comics characters generally exist in New York City or other big real-world locales, DC has traditionally used places like Metropolis, Gotham City, Central City, and Coast City -- fictional towns that have a lot in common with "real" places, but which exist only in the DC Universe. This allows them to do something like having Metropolis become a "city of the future" or blowing up Coast City without breaking the reality of the story for people who live in the cities that would otherwise be featured in the tale. And as a consequence, most DC writers keep the exact state in which the fictional cities reside off the record, too.

On a recent episode of The Flash, though, a map of the post-"Crisis on Infinite Earths" Arrowverse Earth-Prime reveals that Central City, home of The Flash, is in Missouri. This syncs up with longtime fan theories that Central City is a stand-in for Kansas City, which despite its name is located in Missouri.

There is a (smaller and less populous) Kansas City, Kanas across the border, too, which has historically supported theories that Central City is meant to be Kansas City. After all, Central City has a "twin" or sister city in the form of Keystone City, where Jay Garrick lived and fought crime during his tenure as the original Flash and where Wally West would later call home during his time as the "main" Flash.

While fans and writers have often placed Central City in Missouri in the comics, and Keystone in Kansas, alternate possibilities have been Ohio and Pennsylvania (the latter of which is known as "the Keystone State"). Ironically, while Missouri shares borders with eight U.S. states, Ohio and Pennsylvania don't make the list.

world-map-post-crisis

(The list, if you're interested, is Iowa on the north; Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee across the Mississippi River on the east; Arkansas on the south; and Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska on the west.)

Of course, don't expect the exact geographical location of Central City on the Arrowverse map to make a huge difference in the way the city is depicted. This is a TV show, and it's way easier to just have custom "Central City" police cars and license plates than to try and get permission to use real-world imagery that needs to be cleared with somebody.

The Flash airs on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, before episodes of DC's Legends of Tomorrow.

Trending Now: