'The Flash' Season 3 Will Have Grant Gustin Doing 'Flashpoint'
'The Flash' star tweets the title of Season 3's first episode, and it's a big one.
Grant Gustin, the star of the CW’s The Flash, confirmed on Twitter today that Season 3 of the DC superhero series will be modeling its main story on DC’s 2011 continuity-changing series, Flashpoint, written by current DC head Geoff Johns.
On Twitter, executive producer Greg Berlanti gave Gustin permission to reveal the title of the season’s first episode: “Flashpoint.” That’s a more-than-direct reference to Johns’s Flashpoint, which DC Comics used to reset its complicated continuity built upon decades of comics in an initiative dubbed, “The New 52.”
In the Season 2 finale of The Flash, Barry Allen (Gustin) travels back in time to stop his nemesis Reverse-Flash from killing his mother, Nora, whose death put Barry on the path to becoming a superhero. But what happens when Barry uses his superpowers to stop the event that made him one?
That’s the same idea behind Johns’s comic Flashpoint, where Barry’s chase for Reverse-Flash makes ripple effects across the DC Universe: Bruce Wayne doesn’t become Batman, Cyborg becomes the world’s most famous superhero, Superman doesn’t exist, and neither does the Flash. Barry Allen is just a regular forensic scientist in Central City, and not the famous speedster in red.
What could Flashpoint mean for the DC Arrowverse? With Supergirl moving to the CW, the TV episode “Flashpoint” could be the status-quo shakeup the Arrowverse needs to welcome the Girl of Steel into its universe. In the wonderful crossover between Supergirl and The Flash that aired in March, it was established the heroes live on different parallel Earths. Flashpoint could, like its comics, be a nice reset that not only pleases hardcore fans, but casual viewers intimidated by these different worlds.
The Flash returns this October to the CW.
