The Flash may have just had its mid-season finale last night, but there is already so much to look forward to for when it returns next year.
Today, Variety announced that comedian Tone Bell will be joining the cast of The Flash. Bell is set to play Scott Evans, the new editor for the Central City Picture News. This means Bell will be Iris West’s (Candice Patton) new boss. Scott will replace the former editor, Eric Larkin (Tom Butler) who was killed earlier this season by Dr. Light (Malese Jow) from Earth 2. Bell will join The Flash for the later half of the second season.
Although he has been named one of Variety‘s 10 Comics to Watch in 2015, it sounds like Bell will be playing a more serious character. Scott Evans is described as the type of editor who believes in double shifts and no breaks and encourages his reporters to go above and beyond the call of duty to report on the truth and find out what is really going on in Central City. It sounds like Team Flash may have to deal with more than just meta-humans and start to fight the press pretty soon. As if the evil Zoom weren’t enough of a challenge.
Bell is currently starring in Truth Be Told on NBC, but the series has been trimmed to 10 episodes, which means it probably won’t be renewed for a second season. Bell is also working on a comedy for FX and will star in, write, and executive produce the series based on his own life.
Bell isn’t the only new face coming to Central City. While Iris will be getting a new boss sometime next year, last night we watched her gain a new brother. In the last minutes of the mid-season finale of The Flash, they introduced Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale). In the comics, Wally West was Iris West’s nephew, but in the TV series, he is the younger brother she didn’t know she had until recently when her dying mother came back into her life. Wally West is known for becoming Kid Flash, The Flash’s sidekick and later his successor. The Green Arrow has had a sidekick for a while now, so it only seems fair that The Flash has one too.
Other than The Flash, Lonsdale has appeared in Dance Academy, Insurgent, and will appear in Allegiant which is set to premiere March 18, 2016.
With these new characters will come new challenges for Team Flash. Iris in particular will be tested on professional and personal levels. Barry will face new obstacles from the press and a new sibling rivalry. And Joe will have to deal with having another son who capers around Central City in a mask. Oh yeah, and they still haven’t defeated Zoom or solved the issues with the breaches between the different earths.
We can certainly expect a lot from the second half of The Flash‘s sophomore season. It almost makes me wish I could, I don’t know, run fast enough I could time-travel and not have to wait until The Flash returns on January 19, 2016 at 8/7c on the CW.