DC TV Watch: Why ‘The Flash’s’ Savitar Reveal Will Be the Biggest Twist Yet

Welcome to The Hollywood Reporter‘s weekly DC TV Watch, a rundown of all things DC Comics on TV. Every Friday, we round up the major twists, epic fights, new mysteries and anything else that goes down on The CW’s Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl and Fox’s Gotham and what it all means. Note: Gotham did not air a new episode this week.

Supergirl

Return of President Marsdin | The last time Kara (Melissa Benoist) met the President of the United States (Lynda Carter) on Supergirl, the audience learned that she’s actually an alien posing as a human. But no one at the DEO has any idea that she’s hiding something so big. “She’s back as the President of the United States and she’s still got a secret in the next episode,” Benoist tells THR of Carter’s return to the show. “I want to know what’s going on with her character, too. I don’t even know!”

Her co-star David Harewood, who plays J’onn J’onzz (aka the Martian Manhunter), reveals to THR that J’onn and President Marsdin will come head-to-head in the hour titled “Distant Sun.” “She’s not very nice to me,” he says with a laugh. “We’re quite at odds. But I still don’t know that she’s not who she says she is. I’m waiting for that to be revealed.”

All you need is love | The biggest shock in this week’s musical crossover with The Flash came at the hands of the villainous Music Meister (Darren Criss), when he revealed he wasn’t a villain at all. He only wanted to get Kara and Mon-El (Chris Wood), along with Barry (Grant Gustin) and Iris (Candice Patton) back together and teach them all a lesson about love. “We’re all so obsessed with bad guys and good guys, heroes and villains, so that the fact that there’s a race of aliens out there who are very, very powerful who are attempting to bring people together, I think J’onn secretly likes that,” Harewood says. “He was pleasantly surprised that someone like that exists in the universe. It’s a good thing. I think this show itself exists in a particular world, a very bright, optimistic and hopeful world. If we took it too dark, it wouldn’t quite fit in with Supergirl. It’s a great thing that we concentrated on love. It didn’t stray too far out of the pocket of what this show is all about.”

The Flash

The magic answer | Could Barry’s struggle with figuring out who Savitar is and what his weaknesses are soon be over? The arrival of metahuman Abra Kadabra (David Dastmalchian) in next week’s episode could be the big break he’s been waiting for, but the knowledge of Savitar’s true identity will come with a price. “He has some information about Savitar. He knows who he is,” executive producer Todd Helbing tells THR. “There’s a really good conflict in this episode where Gypsy [Jessica Camacho] is after him for something and Barry and the team finds out that he knows something about Savitar, so they have a conflict over who gets to take him. She wants to take him back to Earth-19 and make him pay for his crimes. Can Barry get that information out of him before he vanishes?”

The biggest twist is yet to come | When The Flash finally does reveal who is underneath that scary armor, the producers promise it will be the most shocking moment of the series to date. “Normally we have shown the identity of the villains a lot earlier in the season,” Helbing says. “There’s a specific reason why we waited for this reveal until now. Nobody’s going to see this coming. Harrison Wells [Tom Cavanagh] in season one and Jay [Teddy Sears] in season two were satisfying reveals, but this one takes the cake.”

“It is a very different and jarring kind of reveal,” Gustin tells THR. “I can’t really tease much other than it’s going to be the hardest big bad to take down or even come up with a way to take down. It creates problems for us when we find out his true identity.”

And Patton agrees that Savitar’s big identity reveal will rival (if not beat the) Reverse-Flash (Matt Letscher) twist from season one. “One of our best villain reveals was Reverse-Flash and we’re always trying to live up to that,” she tells THR. “And I really think that this is on par with that. Without giving away too much, fans are going to be shocked. I was shocked when I found out. I was wondering how they could do it and make it work and keep it a secret, but I think fans are going to be really surprised. You won’t see it coming.”

Legends of Tomorrow

Major betrayal | The Legends made a huge mistake when they didn’t trust Mick (Dominic Purcell) as a part of the team. By insulting his intellect and his loyalties, everyone practically pushed him to the enemy’s side, and he betrayed the Legends by giving the Spear of Destiny to his old partner Leonard Snart (Wentworth Miller), who Reverse-Flash plucked from an earlier timeline before he became a hero. Now, the Legion of Doom has the Spear of Destiny. Armed with the information Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) procured on how to use it, the Legion rewrote reality in the final moments of this week’s episode. “It’s bad. Real bad,” Caity Lotz (Sara Lance) tells THR of where the show picks up next week in the new reality. “Things get so bad that it seems like there might be no coming back from it. They’re really going to have to summon all of their strength and mind power to figure out how to undo this.”

Not-so-natural born leader | Now that Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill) has relinquished control of the Waverider, Sara is the new, official captain, something Lotz never saw coming. “For Sara, it’s a lot of responsibility, which I think is healthy for her. It’s really good for her,” says the actress. “She’s always been such a lone wolf, absorbed in her self-hatred and drama and this forces her to get out of all of that. But it’s not easy. She’s making choices that can kill people or save lives. It’s definitely hard for her, but she’s doing really well with being in a leadership role. She either needs to be a lone wolf or leading the pack — she can’t really just follow along.”

Arrow 

Prometheus wins | By the end of this week’s emotionally and physically brutal hour, Prometheus (Josh Segarra) finally broke Oliver (Stephen Amell) down in one of the darkest moments of the series. He finally got Oliver to admit he didn’t kill for the greater good; he killed because he wanted to and he liked it. When Prometheus finally let Oliver go after six days of psychological and physical torture, Oliver showed up at the Arrow cave and told Diggle (David Ramsey) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) that he was done with their crusade after coming to that horrible realization about himself. “Prometheus’ plan was to show Oliver that all of his efforts are in vain and that everyone around him is going to be adversely affected by whatever ‘goodwill’ he has,” Ramsey tells THR. “That’s such an involved, intricate plan for a villain to have. The unraveling of Prometheus’ efforts and how it’s affecting Oliver will be the focus of the team for the rest of the season.”

In fact, now that Oliver declared that he was giving up, he’s going to contact the Bratva to get their help in taking down Prometheus in his place. That decision is not going to sit well with Dig and the rest of the team. “Diggle is probably the most evolved, righteous and stable member of the team,” Ramsey says. “He has a very clear view of how he feels about the Bratva. You just don’t get in bed with these guys. Oliver is a constantly evolving superhero and he doesn’t quite have those strong moral lines the way Diggle does. We’re going to have some major conflict. Diggle’s going to be talking to a wall when it comes to Oliver.”

Happier days ahead | This season has been the darkest yet, rivaling season one’s glory days. But executive producer Wendy Mericle promises that the back half of this season won’t be all dark. “There will be some levity coming up in some fun, surprising ways,” she tells THR. “There are some birthdays coming up that we’ve never celebrated on the show before that are going to finally be celebrated. It’s Oliver’s. Why not? It’s not going to be what you think it’s going to be, though, as is our standard.”

Felicity’s crossroads | While Oliver was getting dragged down by Prometheus, Felicity has slowly but surely been getting way in over her head with mysterious hacker group Helix. “She’s going to come out of this season as the most changed character,” Mericle says. “She’s never had to face this in a personal way and she’s now making decisions that are very akin to what Oliver was doing in season one. These are things that she would have judged pretty harshly in seasons past. But she has a new understanding of what everyone around her has been through and it’s going to give her a new appreciation for Diggle and Oliver.”

And Felicity’s illegal actions on behalf of Helix are going to get her in major trouble with her friends, leading to a Felicity vs. Team Arrow conflict. “There is going to be a major showdown with that,” Ramsey says. “Diggle has already warned her and appealed to her higher moral center, but it didn’t work. She’s going to get deeper into Helix and it’s all going to blow up when we come face-to-face. The team is going to be very divided when it needs to come together.”

What did you think of all the shocking twists, reveals and mysteries on the DC Comics shows this week? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Gotham airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox; Supergirl airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on The CW; The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW; Legends of Tomorrow airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on The CW; and Arrow airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.