Tom Cavanagh’s Harrison Wells Is Definitely Reverse-Flash On The Flash

That’s one mystery cleared up on The Flash. Tom Cavanagh, who plays Dr. Harrison Wells, told Comic Book Resources at the TCA press tour that he is definitely the Reverse-Flash, and has known that since the beginning. But in the words of the great philosopher Hermes Conrad, “That just raises further questions!”

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The big one is which Reverse-Flash he’s supposed to be. There’s the classic, Eobard Thawne, also known as Professor Zoom. Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins introduced Zoom, a.k.a. Hunter Zolomon, who many fans have seized on as the closest thing to the TV show’s yellow-suited villain. There’s even a more recent Reverse-Flash in the New 52 comics continuity named Daniel West, brother to Iris, but that one seems the least likely of all.

Which one is Wells? Cavanagh knows, but he wasn’t telling CBR.

"To me — to me — there is one Reverse-Flash. I think I’m not going to get in right yet to the specifics of it, but that is, as I approach it, when I play it, that’s the starting-off point."

That sounds like he’s talking about Thawne, as I would consider him the one true Reverse-Flash. If Wells is really a Thawne, it could explain why Reverse-Flash went easy on Detective Eddie Thawne in the midseason finale. Heck, he might even be directly descended from Eddie, in which case it wouldn’t do to have him killed.

Speaking of the showdown in the last new episode we saw of The Flash, Cavanagh says that was definitely him in the costume when Flash and Reverse-Flash duked it out. Yet we also saw Reverse-Flash manhandle Wells. How is that possible?

Personally, I believe that’s another hint that we’re talking about the Thawne Reverse-Flash, who hails from the future in the comics. Wells clearly has both advanced technology and knowledge of the future at his fingertips, and I think most fans figured him for a time traveler even if his identity as the man in yellow was a red herring. Now that it’s not, the most logical explanation is that the Reverse-Flash we saw in those scenes was Wells from the future — logical for a show about the Flash, I mean!

What’s clear from the interview is that Cavanagh is really enjoying Wells’ double life, which is in many ways even more of a duality than Barry Allen and the Flash. He’s had a blast keeping us all guessing, even if he got to play the part knowing where his journey would end up going all along.

"It’s so much fun. It’s just so much fun to do that. Any actor will say, when you get a chance — not even a chance, an obligation — to deliver lines that have two different meanings, or come from two different places, or play on two different levels, that’s tremendously enjoyable. It’s been really enjoyable, because the way I always approached Harrison Wells was not from the Harrison Wells character, but rather the reason to be here for me was the Reverse-Flash. So approaching the Harrison Wells character was actually approaching it from the truest sense of who I am, and that is the Reverse-Flash."

You’ll get your first chance to see Wells for what he really is when The Flash returns with new episodes on Tuesday, January 20.

Next: Check out the synopsis for Flash's return episode, Revenge of the Rogues