Cate Cameron/The CW The Flash showrunners and cast members kept warning us that things were more complicated than simply saying "Harrison Wells is the Reverse Flash," and we totally should have listened to them.
Warning: major spoilers below! If you haven't watched this week's episode of The Flash, "Tricksters," avert your eyes now!
So...Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) is not the Reverse Flash after all! Although the man that looks like Harrison Wells has been speeding around town in a yellow suit, he's actually not the real Harrison Wells. It's actually Eobard Thawne (played by expert villain portrayer Matt Letscher), a completely different and separate person altogether, who sucked Wells' life out with some future tech after the car crash that killed Wells' wife, and genetically cloned Wells' DNA to make himself look like the scientist in the past, stealing his looks and his entire life for the past 15 years.
Is anyone else's brain hurting?!
"That's future tech. We're calling it genetic camouflage," executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told E! News and a small group of reporters after screening the episode early. "He basically stole his body. He rewrote his DNA to match Wells'. What happened to Harrison Wells' real body and what really happened that night and all of these things are going to start coming out. I know people were concerned that the events of episode 15, when they were erased in episode 16, but what happened in 15, not all of it went away as people are going to find out soon."
So, has the real Wells been dead and gone for good for the last 15 years?
"He's had a lot of times where he's talked about [his wife] Tess," Kreisberg said. "One of the things that bled through was Wells' love for Tess that Thawne absorbed when he absorbed his body. That's a fun thing that comes through."
And Kreisberg promised that "we haven't seen the last of" Letscher as the real physical appearance of Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse Flash who has been stuck in the past ever since he tried to kill Barry and ended up killing Barry's mother that fateful night 15 years ago. Check out Letscher had to say about his grand introduction onto the show right here!
Thanks to "Wells" coaching Barry (Grant Gustin) on how to phase through a solid object by tapping into the speed force in order to save his life, Barry was able to deduce his mentor was speaking about having those kinds of powers through experience...and realizing that he is the Reverse Flash.
"Wells had to give Barry something he probably didn't want him to know that he could do," Kreisberg said with a laugh.
And that also led Barry to take a drastic measure in deterring Iris (Candice Patton) from pursuing her investigation into Wells now that her mentor is missing (since the Reverse Flash killed him): He revealed himself as The Flash to Eddie (Rick Cosnett)! That way, Eddie could come up with a bogus story for why Iris' mentor was "on vacation" indefinitely, keeping Iris out of harm's way.
"For us, part of the fun of Eddie is he's such a nice guy and such a good guy, so when you have a love triangle, it's hard for Barry to not like Eddie even though he's dating Iris," Kreisberg said. "He's a stand-up guy and he clearly cares about her. The biggest conflict that's going to come between them is Barry and Joe [Jesse L. Martin], whether it's right or wrong, have made this decision to keep Iris in the dark about things, and Eddie as always, as the much more emotionally in touch character, is like, ‘This is ridiculous. By not telling her, you're actually putting her in more danger.'"
He continued, "That starts to become the conflict between the three men because Eddie is not happy with how Barry and Joe have been handling this. It starts to really impact his relationship with Iris. There's a great moment with Barry where he says, ‘How do you just lie to people like that?' It makes Barry look at himself and go, ‘When did I become such a great liar? I thought of myself as being so innocent and pure.' It really starts to grate on Eddie and Iris in the next episode, which is our [Arrow] crossover. Eddie, Iris, Barry, Felicity [Emily Bett Rickards] and Ray [Brandon Routh] all go out for dinner and, as everyone is talking about their feelings, Eddie and Iris get into a fight. Barry's the fifth wheel. It's fun."
As if all that action wasn't epic enough, fans were also treated to a hilariously twisted reprisal of Mark Hamill's Trickster from the original '90s TV show...and he dropped the most hilariously perfect Star Wars reference on the CW series, that we almost couldn't believe they allowed it to happen! Turns out, the original Trickster is the father to his young admirer/new Trickster (Devon Graye), and yes, he revealed his parentage by telling the young psychopath, "I am your father." We could barey hold in our nerd squeals!
"In rehearsal, I actually said, ‘I am your daddy,' which actually got a big laugh at the table read," Hamill said. "I thought it would have been fun to self-parody the line. But it got a big laugh! So if you're happy, I'm happy."
And this isn't the last you've seen of Hamill's Trickster if The Flash showrunners have their way. Kreisberg revealed the plan is to have him return and "hang out" with the other Rogue villains.
If anyone could pull off something that epic, it would be Kreisberg & Co.
Watch the minute-long, super-teaser trailer for the rest of the season above now!
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on the CW.