For a show about people who go fast, I suppose this was inevitable. Who is The Turtle on The Flash ? The DC comics character and newest metahuman, played by actor Aaron Douglas and appearing in Tuesday's episode "Potential Energy," has the ability to slow time.
The Turtle also has a built-in relationship with Cisco Ramon (who, considering he names the metahumans, I'm guessing might be a fan of Entourage as well as slow things) that already sounds hilarious. “In a surprisingly funny twist, Cisco has actually been hunting The Turtle the entire series,” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “To Barry’s surprise, everybody knows about Cisco’s hunt for the great white whale, which is The Turtle; he’s the only one who didn’t know about it. We love the idea that there was a villain out there that they knew about, but they just haven’t bothered to tell the audience about yet.”
I love this. The Flash universe is already so vast due to its connection to Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow, and I like that they can just add in layers like that. Characters have a lot more going on in their lives than the various metahumans that darken the doorsteps of Central City, so it makes perfect sense to me that one or two of them would go unnoticed by the protagonist.
That said, maybe it's a good thing that Barry has not yet encountered Turtle. They sound like natural enemies to me. In the same interview, Kreisberg also talks about the elephant in the room that is introducing a character on The Flash who could most directly affect the hero's goal. "All Barry wants to do is get faster," he said "because if he can get faster, he can take on Zoom. He’s going up against a villain who is literally slowing him down. This is one of our best episodes coming back that we’ve ever done. It feels big and emotional."
In the comics, there are a few characters that go by this name. "The Turtle" goes up against both Jay Garrick and Wally West (who have both just recently arrived on the CW series) and is a criminal, but not a metahuman. "Turtle Man," on the other hand, is a bank robber and inventor who earned the title "the slowest man on earth." He's not a metahuman either. That detail has been added for the series, thought it looks like the dramatic effect of Turtle being meta will be great.
Image: Katie Yu/The CW
