The Flash Adds Clancy Brown As General Wade Eiling

The CW has been busy over the last few weeks with populating its upcoming series The Flash with exciting DC Comics characters, but this new addition just may take the cake. The character himself isn’t all that interesting or well-known, but the actor that will play him is. According to THR, The Shawshank Redemption, Starship Troopers, and beloved voice actor Clancy Brown has joined the series in a “pivotal recurring role.”

Brown will play General Wade Eiling a.k.a. The General, the head of a black ops army team pursuing Plastique (Kelly Frye), in hopes of turning her into a human weapon. The General is described as “a tall and imposing man with a face carved from years of duty.” He’s also a fanatic intent on protecting American interests around the world, and will have “ties to a central Flash character.”

There are multiple versions of The General in the comics, one of the most recent being a normal General who injects himself with a “Captain Nazi” super-soldier serum and becomes a large, hulking and super-strong humanoid. General Eiling himself is a pretty dangerous guy, who at one point fired a nuclear missile to kill Superman, completely content with the human casualties it would cause. In other words, he’s going to be a massive threat to the Flash and his team, whether he’s a hulking brute or not.

This won’t be Brown’s first foray into comic book adaptations. He voiced the villain Parallax in Warner Brothers’ ill-fated Green Lantern, and voiced Lex Luthor several times over the years in animated shows like Justice League, The Batman, and Superman. Additionally, he’s lent his talents to Marvel cartoons like Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. (in which he plays Red Hulk, a character very similar to The General), The Spectacular Spider-Man, and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. 

The General will make his first appearance in The Flash‘s fifth episode, which means we luckily won’t have to wait long before we get to see Brown in action. Plus, his character’s ties to the Suicide Squad in the comics means he may stick around for a bit, crossover with Arrow at some point, and even show up in that Suicide Squad spin-off that’s been teased.

Tell us, what do you think of Clancy Brown as The General? Sound off in the comments below, and make sure to catch The Flash when it premieres on Tuesday October 7th, 2014 on the CW.