‘The Flash’ Just Teased an Evil, Speedster Batman

Spoilers for The Flash Season 5, Episode 12 “Memorabilia” past this point.

The CW’s The Flash is no stranger to dropping massive Easter eggs for the rest of its DC Comics based universe, but this week’s episode laid a big one. In the midst of an Inception-esque dream sequence, a villain’s name was mentioned: The Red Death. And for any fan of recent comics crossovers, the mere allusion to the evil, speedster Batman was probably enough to send fans’ minds racing.

To get you caught up to the episode, Team Flash has decided to try and stop the metahuman serial killer Cicada (Chris Klein) not with fisticuffs, but with love. Love!!! Specifically by getting his niece out of her coma, and presumably winning him over with a kind gesture. To do that, Harrison “Sherloque” Wells (Tom Cavanagh) gets a machine from another dimension he previously used to sneak into the mind of Jervis Tetch, The Mad Hatter.

That’s our first Batman Easter Egg of the episode, by the way… Tetch has shown up before on the FOX show Gotham, but has yet to appear in the CW’s Arrow-verse shows. Still, it’s a fun mention, and ties into the widening net of what can be used on The CW, from Batwoman, to Superman himself.

In any case, Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy), concerned that Barry (Grant Gustin) will discover that she’s been secretly working with his arch-enemy Eobard Thawne (also Cavanagh), jumps into the machine without anyone else and gets trapped. So her parents Barry and Iris (Candice Patton) hook into the machine themselves. While Nora is in the little girl’s memories, they find themselves in Nora’s memories of the future… Specifically The Flash Museum.

There, Barry is tickled to find he’s been made into bobbleheads, action figures, and even is in comic books (including “The Flash” #172, which found Flash fighting Cicada, naturally). They wander from the gift shop into the Hall of Villains, and that’s where we’re in Easter Egg city. There are old villains, of course, including the Reverse Flash’s costume, Zoom’s costume, and The Thinker’s chair. There’s even Dr. Light’s costume, though she was only a minor villain on Season 2, and Amunet Black (Katee Sackhoff), a recurring thorn in Team Flash’s side.

Barry and Iris follow the young Nora to the Cicada part of the exhibit, and they’re floored to discover that not only is Cicada still active in the future, he’s still extremely deadly.

“The Flash did everything he could,” says a recording of Captain Singh of the Central City PD. “But Cicada killed more people than Zoom… Or even The Red Death.”

…He continues for a while, and we don’t touch on this again. So it’s possible that could just be a little tease for comic book fans. But The Flash has a habit of teasing next season’s big villain in the previous season, usually through a casual mention like this.

So, you may be wondering, who is The Red Death? Strap in, because this is about to get wild.

In the recent DC Comics crossover “Dark Nights: Metal,” written by Scott Snyder with art by Greg Capullo, readers met a series of evil Batmans from other universes, essentially variations on Bruce Wayne who saw their story go very, very wrong. They team up and attack the main universe, planning to drag the Earth down into their “Dark Multiverse” in order to consume it.

The team of Batmans consist of variations of the Justice League, and are all very terrifying. But one of the saddest is The Red Death, who is a literal fusion of Batman and The Flash. Frustrated that he’s not able to capture criminals efficiently enough, and denied access to the Speed Force by The Flash, Batman attacks him, straps him to the hood of a car, and drives him into the Speed Force. There, they’re bonded together. So now he’s a super-fast, evil Batman who constantly has Barry Allen in his brain, begging him to stop hurting people.

…It’s pretty messed up.

So will The Flash actually introduce this character? Could they introduce the rest of the Dark Knights, including the truly terrifying Batman Who Laughs, a Batman who has been turned into an S&M version of The Joker? Man, I hope so.

Or hey, maybe it’s just an Easter Egg. As we learn by the end of the episode, the future is malleable.

Where to stream The Flash