Savitar has been missing for a couple episodes and Barry will go against his second strongest threat of the season tonight: Grodd. The Season 1 villain is bringing an army of gorillas to Central City to take down his biggest comic book nemesis. The Flash, Kid Flash, Jesse Quick, Vibe and Gypsy will all suit up in “Attack on Central City.” But after Grodd, Barry and the team will have to come face to face with Savitar, who showed Barry a vision where he saw Iris die. Barry has seemingly proven he can change the future, but Iris’ fate is still undecided. What Team Flash does have working in their favor, though, is that vision may not have been a coincidence. Elements of the vision could have been fabricated by Savitar and the Philosopher's Stone. In other words, that was a vision Savitar wanted Barry to see and is just another part of his evil plan to make Barry pay for what his future self did to Savitar.
So when TV Line confronted showrunner Aaron Helbing about whether that vision of Iris dying was a coincidence, of course he left the possibilities wide open, but acknowledged Savitar does have a concrete plan.
“I would say that Savitar has a plan,” Helbing teased. “Since Savitar was kind of tethered to the Philosopher’s Stone, he sent Barry to a time that he needed him to go to.”
Helbing also spoke on whether the creative team developed the newspaper headlines before or after Barry went to the future to see Iris die. He did not directly answer the question, but revealed he and the creative team had imagined Barry going up against Solovar in the arena (as we saw last episode) was something he’s wanted on The Flash since Season 1.
“Oh, we wanted to do this type of two-part episode since Season 1, when we first introduced Grodd in Episode 5. We ask everyone on the show, ‘What do you absolutely have to see? If you could see anything, what would it be?’ And ‘Barry against Solovar in an arena,’ that alone is a headline we were definitely going to strive for. That’s something we’ve been building towards.”
The Flash Season 3 episode 14, “Attack on Central City” airs Tuesday on The CW.
