As mentioned in our review earlier today for tonight’s episode of The Flash, the Pied Piper torments the STAR Labs team, and yesterday, we participated in a group Q&A with Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg for some intel on what we can expect from The Flash’s newest foe.
“Like many of the comic book characters, they sometimes are a little bit silly, and the Pied Piper dressed very flamboyantly, and he would play his pan-flute and warp people’s minds. We wanted to do something a little bit more grounded,” Andrew Kreisberg said of their take on the villain. Cast to play the role was Andy Mientus, known to TV audiences for his role on the second season of Smash. “We were all fans of Andy from his work on Broadway. When he came in, we said he was ‘Evil Harry Potter’!” Kreisberg exclaimed.
Like Captain Cold and Heat Wave before him, Hartley Rathaway (the Pied Piper) has technology-based powers and is not a metahuman. With that said, the team hasn’t really faced anyone like him before. “We wanted them to go up against somebody who is brilliant, and a genius, and somebody that they really had to outwit, which was different, because a lot of times, it’s Barry either having to outrun or outspeed the villain. This one was really complicated, in that we had to do a lot of different things,” Kreisberg explained.As for other villains… look for the endgame of the Harrison Wells story “this season.” “Wells has a definitive plan, and when you look back, you will see he has had a definitive reason for doing all of the things that he’s done throughout the course of the season, and we think it makes sense. Hopefully you all will too!” Kreisberg said hopefully. The audience learning the truth about Wells so soon was a conscious decision by the executive producers.
“With Arrow, I think we learned not to jerk the audience around too much,” Kreisberg explained. “I think sometimes people withhold secrets at their peril. We felt like if we hadn’t revealed it, then it wouldn’t have been a satisfying conclusion of those first 9 episodes. The only debate we had amongst ourselves was ‘how long will the audience accept knowing that he’s the villain,’ and having the rest of our characters not know, which is something that we’ve been dealing with for the back half of the season. Are people going to feel like they’re dumb for not realizing this? I think part of what’s keeping this next stream of episodes going is how good at hiding his villainy Wells is, and how strong Tom’s performance is, and having episodes like ‘The Sound and the Fury’ where he really is being incredibly selfless, and yet, part of you knows it’s all a show, and it’s all fake… but just how effective it really is, and even moreso than that, how much you want it to not be true,” he said.
“I think that’s the biggest thing that we have discovered as writers, and when we watch the episodes.. you watch Tom in those scenes and you see how kind he is, and supportive… there’s always those little moments throughout the episode – and even the moments that Tom brings into it, like throwing in an ad-lib, or the way he reads a line that we weren’t expecting, or just a look he gives,” Andrew continued. “Even though we know – we’re the ones who made him evil – we sit there and are just like ‘Why? Just please be Harrison Wells! Please don’t be this nightmarish demon!’ But I think that hopefully, we’ve plotted it so that not being sure what he was, and then knowing he’s the Reverse-Flash but still not knowing what his full agenda is, people will continue to invest in him without feeling like they’re too far ahead of the characters.”
The Flash is new tonight at 8PM (ET) on The CW. Take a look at some preview images here!
