If you’re a longtime fan of the Arrowverse, then you know of how the series comprising it have teased future big bads in seasons before they’re introduced. Actually, it’s Arrow that exercises this practice more often than not, but I’ll never forget how The Flash name-dropped Clifford DeVoe months before we met him as the formidable Thinker.
In keeping with that tradition, the Red Death had been casually mentioned a few months back when we got a glimpse at the Flash museum that’ll one day open in Central City. Of course, this caused the comic book readers among us to anticipate seeing the villain spawned from Dark Nights: Metal at some point.
While recently speaking with ComicBook.com, executive producer and showrunner Todd Helbing mentioned how he and his colleagues set up these little teasers, even referencing the bit about DeVoe we spoke of moments ago:
“There’s small Easter eggs, there’s big Easter eggs. When we were in season three, Savitar was talking about DeVoe being one of his biggest foes. We like to leave it up to the fans to try to figure out which its going to be. Who’s maybe a big bad the next season, who’s just a name drop. Godspeed sort of fell into the best of both worlds. We can have an episode with him, introduce him and then bring him back at some point in the future because he’s a major comics villain so we would never want to do a guy like that in just one episode.”
Based on that statement, I guess the Red Death could be either an overarching villain or a one-off if ever he makes his way to the small screen – or perhaps he could even appear in a crossover event. But when it comes to him specifically, Helbing had this to add:
“Red Death is pretty big. I think you can tell the bigger characters when we talk about them that we don’t do that just as a one off little Easter egg. We give them a little bit more like, ‘Oh, man. These people might be coming in the future, it’s a tricky thing with DC. We always need to talk to them in planning. There’s so many facets to it. There are always ways that we can try to make things work. That one’s particularly tricky but I would say never say never.”
Considering how Red Death is an evil Flash/Batman hybrid in the comics, I’m not sure he’d be adapted in the purest sense. Given that, maybe liberties could be taken and the Arrowverse version winds up amalgamating Barry Allen and Oliver Queen. It’s certainly one possibility to consider.
The Flash airs on Tuesday nights on The CW.
