Season 1 of The Flash gave viewers one of the most enjoyably twisty villain arcs in comic book TV with Reverse-Flash, the time-traveling and identity-swapping villain played in part by Matt Letscher. He returned in Season 2, once for an episodic trip back to the past, and once for the finale, when Barry screwed with the timeline by saving his mother Nora. We will be getting a lot more of Letscher's yellow-tinged baddie when all the DC shows return to The CW this fall, and there's a pretty unexpected reason why the actor is excited about it: he won't have to wear a hand-me-down supersuit anymore. Here's how Letscher put it.
I did get my own suit this year, so I hope they put it to good use. [The original suit] was built for Tom, who is probably two inches shorter than me and a lot skinnier, so you can only imagine the sausage casing it felt like when I tried to get into that.
Now, certainly that's not the only reason Matt Letscher is enthused about coming back to The CW's superhero shows, but it's probably a much more important one than viewers might imagine. Reverse-Flash, after all, is not the kind of character who is known for heading out on nightly excursions while dressed in casual slacks and a button-up shirt. He's a man on a devious mission, and those kinds of missions are best completed while wearing a noteworthy costume, and Reverse-Flash's yellow duds were pretty awesome, even when we couldn't tell how uncomfortable the actor was inside of the suit.
I can't imagine having to put on that kind of a uniform for a job on a daily basis, or even once for Halloween. And that would be assuming it was made to fit my non-superhero body. Just the thought of getting crammed into a too-small leather suit is enough to cause sweat to form across my brow. And thinking about the squeaky sounds between sweaty skin and leather is giving me a facial tic.
In any case, none of that anymore for Letscher, who will be much more comfortable when he joins all four shows within The CW's DC TV universe. It was recently announced his Reverse-Flash will be part of the antagonistic supergroup the Legion of Doom that will cause havoc for the titular Legends of Tomorrow team, and he'll be joined by John Barrowman's Malcolm Merlyn, Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold and Neal McDonough's Damien Darhk. Amusingly enough, Letscher also told TVLine the following info.
We're not going to be driving around in our Legion of Doom-mobile together or grabbing lunch.
Oh, but what could have been had they decided to go that way?
When the DC shows start up again on The CW, The Flash will be neck-deep in the Flashpoint storyline (complete with Reverse-Flash locked up in a cage, as seen in the Comic-Con trailer), Legends of Tomorrow will be setting up a season full of Justice Society characters, and Arrow will be getting back to the basics of its street-level crime drama origins. And throughout it all, Matt Letscher will be smiling, no longer thinking of himself as sausage stuffing.
The Flash will premiere Season 3 on Tuesday, October 4. Arrow Season 5 will debut on Wednesday, October 5, and Legends of Tomorrow will kick Season 2 off on Thursday, October 13. To see everything else popping up later this year, check out our fall TV schedule.
