The Flash is still months away from premiering its sixth season on The CW, but big news about a huge upcoming villain should get any Flash fan excited. The show will introduce a new character by the name of Bloodwork, and with a name like that in a comic-based TV show, you can probably guess that he's not the friendliest guy in Central City.
Eric Wallace, who stepped up as the new showrunner of The Flash for Season 6, spoke at San Diego Comic-Con about Bloodwork as new villain. Bloodwork will be the big bad for only the first portion of the season, with another big bad taking over the villainy in the second half. At the panel for The Flash, Wallace said this regarding the next guy to cause trouble for what remains of Team Flash:
Ramsey Rosso, played by the wonderful Sendhil Ramamurthy, he is an acquaintance of the lovely Dr. Caitlin Snow, however, their old reunion goes very, very south, and when he joins Team Flash, he ends up going down a dark path. The mad science thing. Then he becomes the most terrifying foe that Team Flash has ever faced.
Bloodwork will have known Caitlin back in the day, but all signs point toward their reunion as less warm and fuzzy in the long run. He'll evidently join Team Flash, and whatever he does will be bad enough that he qualifies as big bad but not so destructive that it takes the good guys 20+ episodes to deal with him.
Fans of Bloodwork from the comics likely know him as Ramsey Rosso, who works at a morgue in Central City. Suffering from hemophilia, he was preoccupied with the properties of blood, and experiments resulted in new abilities, including haemokinesis (the ability to control blood), invulnerability, and blood generation.
Unfortunately, the Bloodwork of the comics got on the wrong side of the Scarlet Speedster when he began stealing evidence, and The Flash found out. He did eventually defeat the blood-obsessed baddie, but not without suffering a great deal of pain.
If Ramsey Rosso joins Team Flash, as Eric Wallace indicated at the Flash panel, then the TV version may not work at a morgue like his comics counterpart. He could simply be another scientist. The Flash is bringing in at least one other scientist; perhaps somebody with Rosso's talents becomes necessary before the heroes realize there's something hinky about him.
Eric Wallace went on at the SDCC panel to explain another way Bloodwork is different from past supervillains:
The other villains played by the rules a lot of times. Reverse-Flash, who I loved, Tom of course, and Zoom and Savitar, but there’s a unique relationship between Doctor Ramsey and Barry himself. They’re both facing something horrible as Crisis approaches. It’s very different than what we’ve seen in the past. It’s gonna be great.
The upcoming "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover will impact the various shows of the Arrow-verse leading up to the event, if the tags at the end of the season finales are any indication. "Crisis" is an especially big deal for The Flash, which has been teasing Barry disappearing from the very beginning with that pesky newspaper. At least he has a new suit!
Apparently, the upcoming Crisis could be a big deal for Bloodwork as well. Although he may not have made huge headlines for disappearing, something is in store for him. Is this just leading up to "Crisis," or will it culminate in the crossover? Unfortunately, it'll be a while before viewers get to see him in a full episode of The Flash, but the first Season 6 trailer gives a look at him and what his creepy, creepy motivations are. Take a look:
Admittedly, The Flash has gone the route of seemingly introducing somebody as the big bad and then throwing in a big twist, as with Alchemy and then Savitar in Season 3. Still, The Flash hasn't gone the route of one main antagonist in the first chunk of the season and then another in the final chunk.
That said, there will be more than one supervillain facing off against Team Flash in Season 6, and that's all due to "Crisis on Infinite Earths." Reverse-Flash will almost certainly have a significant part to play in the crossover, not to mention the various baddies scene in Arkham Asylum and whoever may turn up to cause trouble from Arrow, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow.
Eric Wallace spoke to CinemaBlend and other outlets at SDCC round tables about how "Crisis" enabled the Flash team to handle its season in a new way, saying this:
I think 'Crisis' happening when it's happening now has turned out to be the biggest blessing for this show possible. Because what it's doing for us is we have something that has to be dealt with in the middle of our season. We know when it's going to air, in the fall, in December, whenever it is. So we have to draw towards that. So it gave us a season that wrote very neatly into kind of three sections.
The Flash (along with the other shows of the Arrow-verse, following the precedent set by Arrow way back when) generally features a midseason finale with a cliffhanger to keep fans on the edges of their seats throughout hiatus, but keeping the same bad guy.
Thanks to "Crisis on Infinite Earths," The Flash Season 6 can be split into three sections, and considering how "Crisis" will be split between fall and midseason, the normal midseason finale format wouldn't work. If knowing that the season will be split into three isn't enough for you, Eric Wallace continued to share some of what to expect in each stage:
Pre-Crisis, building up to the dread that's hanging over them, what's going to happen, and where's The Monitor, and what is he going to promise or not promise, what's going to happen to Oliver. All these things, and then Crisis itself, which is its own self-contained kind of miniseries. But what it did for us was what's post-Crisis even look like? We've been waiting for five and a half years with this newspaper, holographic thing hanging over us. We'll work here now. It's not 2024, it's 2019. Once we get past that, it's a whole new game. It's a whole new world. I'm a very comic book geeky guy, so let the geeky comic book games begin, starting in post-Crisis. And I think you're going to see that in Season 6. A little bit more of a comic book feel, while also deepening the character.
The Flash will come with Pre-Crisis, Crisis, and Post-Crisis, and it will be one of only a few Arrow-verse shows that will be able to explore these periods in depth. Arrow will end after only ten episodes. If it does extend beyond the final episode of "Crisis," it won't be by much, and there won't be much time to delve into the aftermath.
Legends of Tomorrow doesn't premiere until midseason. Throw in the fact that Supergirl is set on Earth-38 and Batwoman will be a freshman series without a ton of time to establish its Pre-Crisis status quo, and The Flash could be the place to be to really see the aftermath of the event that could change the entire Arrow-verse more than anything ever before.
Who will be the villain following Bloodwork in Pre-Crisis and the baddies coming in "Crisis?" Only time will tell. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more on The Flash and the rest of the Arrow-verse from San Diego Comic-Con.
