Tonight’s episode of The Flash saw Team Flash take another big step toward figuring out the identity of the Thinker and the nature of his master plan, which is strange considering we usually don’t learn important details about the main villain until much later in the season. As it turns out, that’s by design. We attended a press event where showrunner Andrew Kreisberg explained why the writers are taking a different approach this time around.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for “Elongated Journey Into Night”!
At the end of the episode, Ralphy Dibny finally comes around and gives Barry the name of mysterious villain, DeVoe. But this wasn’t the first time Barry heard the name (thanks to the wonders of time-travel, natch), so he already has a headstart when he goes to work on the clue with the rest of Team Flash. As Kreisberg explains, the show usually keeps the main villain’s identity a secret until the endgame, but holding onto that information for too long can cause issues, so now they’re revealing just about everything to Team Flash (and the audience) in the first nine episodes of the season, which will all lead to a big confrontation with the Thinker.
“It's a constant problem for these kinds of shows, how much do you hide the bad guy? One thing we might have done [in Season 3], we might have done a disservice to ourselves last season, was we knew who Savitar was from the beginning, and I think we waited too long to reveal it to the audience. We lost what I think could have been some valuable real estate exploring that, and so this season we just wanted to be cards up and reveal, here's the bad guy at the end of Episode 1, and they're gonna get on him fast. And this season we worked on having a plan where, trying to figure out who the villain is wasn't what the issue was, the issue was we know who it is, but how do we stop him?” Kreisberg said.
The Thinker has been manipulating events in order to create a new batch of metahumans, using Team Flash and even Barry himself to do so. His true goal remains unknown, but we can clearly see the steps of his plan in each episode. Because this season’s villain is such a meticulous planner, the show writers had to be, too.
“For us, it's just about having a plan. I can point to what I think are our best seasons and say, those are the years where we really had a solid plan, and then there are other years where we either jettisoned the plan that we had, or we just didn't have as clear an understanding of what we were doing,” Kreisberg explained. “This year, I don't want to give away the full breadth of it, but obviously at this point you understand that the Thinker has plans for these metahumans, he arranged for them to be created, and, so again, we just thought the audience, especially because of the opaqueness of last season, it's like, I get it, I know what's going on, and we created a structure that allows us to have our bad guy of the week but still have it fit in with the overall structure of the season.”
Of course, if the Thinker is so smart, it’s natural to question why he’s giving up so much (seemingly important) information to his enemies while he’s still hatching his evil plan.
“Because he doesn't care," Kreisberg said. "That's the one thing that's been interesting about him. He's playing chess, and I know that's sort of a cliche to say, but in this case it's really true. As far as he's concerned, he's already checkmated Team Flash. He doesn't really give a shit what they know and when they figure shit out because, he's gonna say in an upcoming episode, you've already lost. It's really about us trying to figure out how to get ahead of somebody who is playing so far ahead of you. That's really the trajectory of the season as opposed to just trying to figure out who the hell they were, like it was with Zoom or like it was with Savitar or even, to a certain extent, as it was in Season 1 with Reverse Flash; it was, who are you? Those questions weren't answered until 16, 17, 18, 19 in all three of the first seasons, so this season we're like, oh we know who it is.”
Be sure to check out our review of The Flash: “Elongated Journey Into Night,” and read about why Danny Trejo couldn’t stop breaking character while filming this episode.
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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