Your handy guide to every DC Comics reference in The Flash season 1 is here!
This article contains The Flash spoilers in every possible variety. Don’t read if you haven’t watched season one!
Regular readers of my weekly Flashreviews know about my obsession with chronicling every DC Comics reference crammed into each episode. I love doing it, and I’m finally putting my knowledge of DC Comics history to good use, something that parents, teachers, and former employers all agreed was impossible.
As much fun as it is going through these each week, as the season progressed, stuff that seemed to mean one thing early on ended up meaning something entirely different later. With that in mind, I’ve gone back through the series, my original notes, and the comments from sharp-eyed readers (who helped to keep me honest) to revisit what I thought I knew about the DC Comics easter eggs in The Flash season one.
Keep in mind that, if you’re just reading this during your first viewing of The Flashseason one, then you might want to instead use the reviews as your guide. Those are linked in the episode titles for your convenience.
For easy organization, this is organized mostly chronologically. However, stuff that was clarified in later episodes will be explained in the entries for the earlier ones. This way, I’m not repeating myself like I’m caught in a time loop. I make a few exceptions for characters who are vaguely referred to early on but don't get their big debut until much later. To keep things simple, I put the bulk of their information in the most appropriate episode entry. Also, I kind of stopped keeping track of "52" references (because they're annoying) but if there's demand for it, I can partition them off in their own section.
Oh, and if you want to read full episode reviews, just click the titles!
Here goes...
The Flash Season 1 Episode 1: "City of Heroes"
- The basics of Barry’s origin are all in place and are mostly unchanged from his first appearance in “Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt” from Showcase#4 in 1956 by Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino. While there was no particle accelerator involved in the comics lightning bolt, the basics — that police scientist Barry Allen was struck by lightning and soaked in chemicals that resulted in super speed — remain the same.
Showcase#4 also introduced Iris West, although, unlike in the TV show, they were already romantically involved.
- The scene in the diner where Barry’s perceptions shift is also an homage to that first Flash story.
- The Reverse-Flash didn't come on the scene until a few years later, first appearing in The Flash #139 by John Broome and Carmine Infantino. Like on the show, Eobard Thawne is a time-traveler who has it in for Barry Allen and friends. His history is far more complicated than I can get into here, but you get the idea. He caused all kinds of headaches for Barry throughout the decades.
- The Reverse-Flash as the murderer of Barry’s mother comes right out of the pages of Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis'The Flash: Rebirthcomic.
Before the publication of Rebirthin 2007, Barry had a more normal home life. Mom and Dad lived to ripe old ages, and neither of them ended up in prison or in a chalk outline.
- Eddie Thawne was an original character created for this show, and while he is tied to the Reverse-Flash (he’s an ancestor of Eobard Thawne), there’s a chance a different kind of future awaits him.
- Henry Allen is played by the great John Wesley Shipp, who played Barry Allen on the gone-too-soon original FlashTV series in the early '90s.
- Cisco Ramon first appeared in Justice League Annual #2 (1984), and he became a member of the reviled "Detroit" era of the team's history, with the name "Vibe." While we won't see the Cisco of this show become a metahuman until season two (at least), there are lots of hints that it's on the way. Vibe has (as you might imagine) vibrational powers, but he's also uniquely attuned to the vibrational frequencies that keep the parallel universes of the DC Multiverse apart.
That should come in pretty handy considering that we're dealing with parallel worlds in season two.
- Caitlyn Snow is sadly destined to become the villainous Killer Frost. I'll give you three guesses what her powers consist of. There have been several versions of Killer Frost in DC history and, while there is a Caitlin Snow in the comics, TV Caitlin's history is an amalgamation of them all. She was primarily a Firestorm villain, and an earlier version of the character had some romantic feelings for Firestorm, so the Caitlin/Ronnie angle makes sense here.
In a later episode, Caitlin makes a crack about her relationship with Ronnie, saying the two of them were like “fire and ice.” This is just one of many pieces of foreshadowing about their metahuman future that was teased all season long.
- Detective Fred Chyre was created by Geoff Johns and Angel Unzueta. He first appeared in The Flash #164 in 2000. It's a damn shame they killed him off so early, because I really enjoyed Al Sapienza's brief time on screen here ("My father gave me that pen...before he died"). Maybe there's a chance he can be brought back!
- Of course, the monkey cage with the “Grodd” nameplate paid off later in the season when the gorilla with telepathic powers made his live action TV debut.
- The fact that the show went with two Weather Wizards is appropriate. While Mark Mardon (who we meet later in the season) was always the super-villainous Weather Wizard, it was his brother Clyde’s technology he was exploiting. They both first appeared in The Flash#110 back in 1959 by John Broome and Carmine Infantino.
- Future Flash love interest Linda Park is doing these news broadcasts, but it sure isn’t the Malese Jow (who plays Linda when she’s introduced later this season) version of the character. I’d chalk it up to coincidence, but since the Linda we get to know is also a journalist, this one just seems like a goof. Maybe since she's doing it for Channel 52, and 52 is shorthand for the DC multiverse, there's something to be worked out. Nah, probably not...
- The abandoned Ferris Air airstrip that Barry tests his powers at is a big fat Green Lantern reference. Ferris Air once employed a test pilot by the name of Hal Jordan, who of course becomes Green Lantern. There are loads of Ferris Air and Coast City references peppered throughout this season and Arrowseason 3, but they saved the biggest one for the end of the season, when they make reference to a test pilot who disappeared.
- That newspaper headline from the future is a big fat reference to Crisis on Infinite Earths. I freaked out about it for a thousand words over here. But here’s the short version...
Barry Allen died saving the DC Multiverse in Crisis on Infinite Earths #8. During this time, the skies over all of the Earths turned red, so the headline is a significant reference to this. But there’s something else cool about this, and it ties right back into the beginning of the episode...
- You’ll see that, when Barry is struck by the lightning, a red shadow seems to pass through him. When Barry died during the Crisis, he basically discorporated. It was later revealed that he became pure energy, and traveled back in time, essentially becoming the lightning bolt that struck him to give him powers in the first place. Maybe that's what the red shadow is.
Felicity once joked that Barry will eventually be able to run so fast that he just turns to dust, leaving nothing but a Flash suit behind. That's a reference to how he croaked in Crisis on Infinite Earths#8.
- Nice shout out to WayneTech in that headline at the end, too. I half expected the byline to read Lois Lane, but instead it's Iris West-Allen. Those two have a rocky path to their wedding, though, and I'll get into that in a bit more detail later on.
Head to page two for info on more episodes!