Flashpoint itself won’t last the whole season, but just because Barry somehow fixes the timeline doesn’t mean there won’t be lasting repercussions. Some characters may be changed forever, others may come back to life and never-before-seen enemies will rise from the shadows in the aftermath of Barry’s decision to travel back in time to save his mother. Two of these Flashpoint consequences come in the form of The Flash Season 3’s biggest villains, Doctor Alchemy and Savitar, executive producer Aaron Helbing revealed during an interview with Empire.
“The impact and the various decisions are going to reverberate throughout the entire season. It’s the reason that villains like Dr. Alchemy and Savitar are a part of the show. We liken it to when you have a perfect, pristine vase that you break. Even if you put it back together, there are always going to be those cracks. It’s never, ever going to be exactly how it was,” Helbing said.
As we assumed from the trailers, Flashpoint is also the reason The Rival is in Central City. His appearance will carry through into episode 2.
“This guy, Edward Clariss, remembers everything that happened in “Flashpoint.” All of the pieces that we set up in “Flashpoint” are going to play out throughout the entire season. It’s going to be something that Barry and his team are going to be grappling with and struggling against and trying to overcome,” Helbing added.
The Flash Season 2 explored doppelgangers and Earth-2 alter-egos and Flashpoint presents yet another opportunity to see your favorite Flash characters in a different light. Cisco, for example, has become the richest, snobbiest man in the country. That’s a significant change from Cisco’s identity on Earth-2, an evil metahuman named Reverb. Diggle and Joe will also be strongly affected by Flashpoint, but how exactly remains to be seen.
“When we introduced the multiverse, the sandbox got even bigger and there were more interesting things in there that we got to play with. And the actors have a lot of fun at the same time. When we did our Earth-2, Iris was a little different, Joe was a little different, a lot of the characters were different,” Helbing said. “Then when we do a “Flashpoint” storyline, there’s a distinction with a difference, again, with the characters. That kind of revitalizes a lot of people. As storytellers we get to continually go into these interesting worlds with these interesting characters who are similar yet slightly different, and it just makes the storytelling that much more interesting and exciting, I think.”
It’s still unknown what actors will portray Doctor Alchemy and Savitar, although we do know Doctor Alchemy will appear in Kevin Smith’s episode, Season 3 episode 7.
The Flash returns Oct. 4.
