Wally West has been a name that’s been bandied about in relation to The Flash since early last spring. In that time, we’ve learned quite a bit about what to expect from the Flash character, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him on the actual CW series. Recently, however, the network revealed that all of that is about to change. Wally West is heading to Central City for the midseason finale on December 8.
This week, the CW released information regarding the network’s upcoming episodes of The Flash, stating that the character will make his first appearance during the show’s jam-packed holiday episode. The logline for the episode says that Wally West will enter the picture during the episode when he meets Iris and Joe.
When Mark Mardon AKA The Weather Wizard (guest star Liam McIntyre) returns to break Leonard Snart AKA Captain Cold (guest star Wentworth Miller) and James Jesse AKA The Trickster (guest star Mark Hamill) out of Iron Heights, Barry must stop these rogues from taking over Central City during Christmas. Meanwhile, Joe and Iris meet Wally West.
I don’t know if you perused that all that closely, but there are a ton of characters that are going to pop up in “Running to Stand Still.” This includes the return of The Weather Wizard, Captain Cold (who will shortly head to Legends of Tomorrow) and the formerly announced return of The Trickster. With all that happening, I’m surprised there is room for the arrival of Wally. I expect it will probably be a b-plot.
If you know your comics, Wally West is a relative of Iris West who fights alongside Barry Allen as Kid Flash before becoming The Flash himself in later comics. There’s more to that story, but that’s the basic gist. On the TV series, Wally West is actually Iris’ brother, a fact we learned when Iris’ mom, Francine, revealed she had a son. This should theoretically give the character a stronger connection to Iris and Joe, as executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told Zap2It a bit ago.
We always knew we were leading up to this, rather than them suddenly having some cousin that shows up [because] we always hate it on TV shows when it’s year two and someone is like ‘Oh, Cousin John is coming. Oh, good old Cousin John!’ no one ever mentioned before.
Earlier reports indicated we may not see the character until the second half of the season, but now we know he will debut at least a little sooner. We also know he will be played by Australian actor Keiynan Lonsdale. It’s bound to be a momentous episode, so tune in when The Flash airs its holiday episode on Tuesday, December 8 at 8 p.m. ET.
