The Flash: Five DC Characters We Hope to See

With both The Flash and Arrow adding familiar DC Comics characters to their upcoming season lineups this week, the DC Universe on television is getting bigger.

Somehow, this time around feels a bit different than it did when Smallville created a proto-Justice League or brought on the Legion of Super-Heores in the waning days of its decade-long run. The idea of shows in their first and third seasons opening up the wider world of the DC Universe feels like something that could create more, expand further, whereas with Smallville even the best such episodes felt more like a one-off.

So it's easy to get excited about where it could go. Some have already speculated that with The General, Plastique and Multiplex, the network could be lining things up for a Firestorm series down the line if Robbie Amell's character catches on with audiences. Stephen Amell told fans worried about the lack of a connection to Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League that the shows strive to capture the excitement of the Justice League every week.

So...who would we like to see join the Arrowverse? On Arrow, there's already a pretty healthy population and many of them are somewhat limited by the grounded, gritty feel of the show. On The Flash, though, things are a bit more fantastical. Here are some ideas...

[note: There are some characters, such as the Rogues and the Reverse Flash, who have been implied to be involved in this season. We won't talk about them, since this is fantasy casting, not trying to be right.]

Captain Atom

With Firestorm and the implication that Dr. Megala could show up down the line, it seems like a no-brainer to bring in Captain Atom eventually.

He'd be a difficult character to work into the series given his current, nearly-infinite, power levels but a reworked version of the Charlton Captain Atom could certainly work for the series.

If anything, this seems like a character they could introduce down the road. With The General and the description of Plastique, it sounds like the government will be going after metahumans in the hope of harnessing their powers. What more logical endgame for such a story than Captain Atom and Major Force?

For context, Captain Atom is Captain Nathaniel Adam, who was imbued with massive power after a military experiment conducted on him as a condition of his court-martial, framed for a crime he didn't commit. It was Col. Wade Eiling (later The General, cast last night) who oversaw the project.

Maxwell Lord

This one might seem a bit out of the blue, but consider this: with Amanda Waller no longer running A.R.G.U.S. this year on Arrow and the Suicide Squad playing a bigger role, it doesn't seem impossible that there will be another shadowy government entity in The Wall's future -- and why wouldn't it be Checkmate? Both she and the Squad have a long history with the organization in the comics, and it's got ties to Mark Shaw/Manhunter, who is appearing on Arrow as well.

So with all this Arrow talk, why have him here on The Flash? A couple of reasons: first of all, the idea of a government projcet looking for metahumans for their own ends lends itself to a shadowy organization being behind it. You can't very well say that The General is just acting on behalf of the Air Force without vilifying the U.S. Armed Forces by extension, which nobody wants. Giving these antagonists a powerful splinter group within the government opens up a lot of options without burning any bridges.

There's also the fact that Arrow still seems (mostly) to be full of non-powered folks. Over on The Flash, though, you've got a lot of fairly powerful names being bandied about, and the Infinite Crisis-era Lord with an almost Bolivar Trask-style distrust for the metahuman community would be a perfect fit. 

J'Onn J'Onzz

It seems pretty obvious from David S. Goyer's comments that Martian Manhunter won't be used in the movies...so why not bring him to the small screen?

Introducing him toward the end of the season could establish alien life, and the idea of something like StormWatch. A force of "guardian angels" operating outside of time and space would play nicely with a series that has time travel implications, and it would give them a very different cast of new potential freaks of the week to go with in future seasons.

The biggest complications is that he's a very powerful character and so, like Captain Atom, introducing him means you have to either use him sparingly, use him once and then write him out, or come up with a series of threats so massive that he's needed. Maybe if they were to deal with a Crisis-level event at some point, though, having those characters would be handy.

Impulse

The idea of Barry's grandson making an appearance on the series would be a ton of fun...if for no other reason than whatever contortions they would likely have to do in order to preserve the "will they or won't they" they're going to set up for Barry and Iris.

This one's really unlikely, as too many speedsters will get redundant quickly and we already know (or rather assume) that Professor Zoom and/or the Reverse Flash will pop up in the show's first season. Still, Bart is a great character and it could be fun to see how he's handled on the small screen.

You never know, though; they've already committed (seemingly) to the time-travel element of The Flash, and if you have time-travel, you can have all kinds of wackiness like grandchildren from the future without breaking the series logic too much.

The downside? If they use Bart, it probably hurts the prospects of ever using Wally down the road. Also, I stand by my theory that when the smoke clears from the current storyline, Wally West will be a redesigned "Impulse" in the New 52, and if that's the case they'd likely never use Bart in that role on TV.

Booster Gold

The Flash showrunner Andrew Kreisberg had big plans for Booster Gold at one point, with a pilot script that was seemingly always "almost done" for Syfy.

Whatever happened to that, it's impossible to know whether NBC Universal still holds the rights to Booster or whether it has reverted since the project never got off the ground.

If The CW has access to Booster, though, why not use him? In The Flash we have a story that is definitely implying time-travel and playing with some of the tropes of Flashpoint, a story for which only Barry and Booster were unchanged between universes? Seems like a gimme.

Also, more Booster Gold is never a bad thing.