For five seasons, The Flash has gone up against a single overarching threat. Things will be different in the show’s sixth season.
During The Flash panel at San Diego Comic-Con, showrunner Eric Wallace revealed that the events of the highly anticipated Arrowverse crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will divide the upcoming season in half. He referred to each half as “graphic novels.” As a result of that split, ComicBook.com reports, the series will feature two big bads, one in each half of the season.
The season 6 trailer for The Flash provides a first look into the mindset of the villain set for the first half of the season: Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork played by Heroes alum Sendhil Ramamurthy. Rosso is a physician, who rekindles a friendship with former colleague Caitlin Snow. However, things take a turn for the worse and Rosso starts going down a dark path that causes him to become Bloodwork.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Wallace said of the villain in the first half of the season,
“The emotional journey that the big bad is on mirrors the emotional journey that Barry Allen must face going into season 6. The big bad this season, if we can do our jobs right, will be the most personal villain the Flash has ever faced emotionally since Eobard Thawne. Because this year’s big bad is facing kind of the same circumstances Barry Allen is going through, it’s going to bring them closer together in a darker way than villains that perhaps we’ve seen in the last few seasons.”
There’s been no word on the identity of the big bad for the post-“Crisis” half of the season. Given how integral the crossover event will be to The Flash episodes that come after it, it’s unlikely we’ll get any firm confirmation of this villain until the crossover is released. Clearly, the reverberations of Crisis on Infinite Earths will be felt well after the event has happened.
The Flash’s sixth season premieres on Tuesday, October 8 at 8/7c on The CW.