The past two seasons of the American superhero drama TV series “The Flash” have always been about Barry Allen, played by Grant Gustin, as the Scarlet Speedster, going up against other metahumans with super speed like him, or worse, actually faster than him.
It looks like Season 3 would have more of the same as reports have it that the season’s big bad shall be another speed demon called The Rival, whose human alter ego is Dr. Edward Clariss.
The character is actually based on DC Comics so some of the viewers of “The Flash” knows who The Rival is.
In the show, the character is to be played by Todd Lasance from “Spartacus: War of the Damned” and The Rival will be appearing right on the premiere episode of Season 3 of “The Flash.”
Dr. Clariss is a professor who believes he has recreated Velocity-9, the chemical that enhanced Jay Garrick’s super speed. Jay Garrick was the Earth-2 Flash and he turned out to be Zoom too, the big bad of Season 2 of “The Flash.”
When no one believed in his discovery, Dr. Clariss takes to the streets as the darker version of The Flash to prove it, details the Den of Geek.
The character was actually given a glimpse of during a trailer released at the San Diego ComicCon last month and The Rival actually looked a bit like the New 52 version of the Black Racer.
Wrapping around his head on Flashpoint
The teaser for “The Flash” Season 3 also showed Barry Allen trying to wrap his brain around Flashpoint and he seems to be drawing help from the new universe’s Henry Allen, his father.
There have been reports that the Flashpoint storyline for Season 3 of “The Flash” shall feature one particular element.
Accordingly, Barry Allen shall be getting new memories in the Flashpoint storyline to match his altered universe.
He shall have new memories of graduating high school and college, which are memories he never had with his parents in the original storyline. However, those new memories will be replacing other things from the other timeline.
It could be recalled that at the end of Season 2 of “The Flash,” Barry makes a sudden decision to travel back in time to stop the Reverse-Flash from killing his mother, the very same incident which sent his teen life into a tailspin.
The time-altering decision sets off a series of changes through the universe, forcing Barry in a very different world from the one he came from. While he will be happy at first to spend time with his previously dead but now alive mother, the negative consequences of Flashpoint will eventually catch up with Barry.
A different Cisco in the Flashpoint timeline
In the new promo entitled ‘Time Strikes Back’ aired by The CW recently, Barry was also shown trying to explain the situation to Cisco but Cisco is a rich man in the Flashpoint timeline and not interested in realities or science, notes Comicbook.com.
Meanwhile, at least two episodes of the upcoming Season 3 of “The Flash” will feature the mutated gorilla Grodd returning to Gorilla City.
Back in Season 1, Barry Allen, Joe West, and Cisco Ramon scoured through Central City’s sewers to track down a menacing threat that was killing city workers.
They eventually discovered Grodd. In Season 2, after Grodd mind-controlled scientists to steal chemicals in the hope of creating more intelligent gorillas, he was captured and sent to a jungle sanctuary on Earth-2 known as Gorilla City.
It appears now that the third season of “The Flash” shall feature a ‘Planet of the Apes’ storyline as Grodd and the Gorilla City shall reportedly be highlighted in a two-part episode.
Producer Andrew Kreisberg made the confirmation of the particular plotline during the TCA press tour. He said that Grodd will indeed be featured in Season 3 of “The Flash” but he will not be coming back to Central City.
Based on the comic books, Gorilla City is actually a tropical oasis hidden away from humans. The residents of Gorilla City are all hyper-intelligent apes who gained their telepathic power after an alien spacecraft crash-landed into their home.
Grodd went on to kill the king of the apes and took over the mantle, using his neo-magnetic radiation to force other gorillas to follow him.