‘Flash’ Explains How THAT Character Became Savitar, And What’s Next

At long last, The Flash finally revealed the true villain beneath Savitar’s armor, and it is indeed a familiar face. After Tuesday’s shocking twist, EPs explain why that scarred character made perfect sense all along, and how the final showdown will be unlike anything before.

You’re warned of FULL SPOILERS for Tuesday’s “I Know Who You Are” from here on out, but whoever had Savitar’s identity as a future version of Barry Allen, come on down and claim your prize! After an hour spent battling Killer Frost to protect a physicist who will one day entrap Savitar, Barry came to a sudden realization why the “God of Speed” knows their every move:

Savitar lived it once before, when he himself was Barry Allen.

Naturally, Savitar has been throwing that hint at Barry all year; constantly reiterating “I am the future, Flash” (not to mention a blue-lit armor reminiscent of the comic Future Flash) but there’s plenty more to unpack here. We still don’t know why a scarred future Barry would kill Iris, if indeed it was Iris’ death that traumatized his younger self in the first place, but Andrew Kreisberg at least tells Entertainment Weekly the reveal was well thought-out:

What’s really cool for anyone who thought that there wasn’t a plan, or we didn’t know, or we were making this up as we go, this was always where we were heading. The idea that the darkest villain we could come up with was actually a very damaged version of our hero was interesting and fresh to us. We’re not only competing with all the stuff that we’ve done on Flash, but we’re always competing with everything we’ve done on all the other shows. So to have our lead actor be both the hero and the villain isn’t something we’ve done before, so that was exciting for us as storytellers.

Kreisberg also revealed that next week’s “Cause and Effect” would help flesh out Savitar’s need to kill Iris, as well that present-day Barry would have a unique sympathy for his Season 3 big bad. “Barry sees in Savitar that he could’ve gone down that path, too, but he had Iris, Joe, Cisco, Caitlin, his father, he had the memory of his mother — he had all of these things that helped mold him into the hero that he is,” said Kreisberg. “Savitar lost all that.”

There’s still quite a bit more to piece together, between Future Barry losing Iris, traveling throughout the ages and universes to start his own cults and the like, but was Savitar’s identity a worthy reveal? Watch the trailer below, and stay tuned for the latest.

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