Harrison Wells Might Not Be the Villain You Think

Can we talk about the big elephant in the room after last week's series premiere of The Flash ? Despite all the whooshing around, the mystery with Barry's mother's killer, the friend-zoned love Barry has for his boss' daughter Iris, and the bad guy of the premiere, Stormageddon (that's what I'm calling him anyway), there's really only one big moment for which I need further explanation ASAP. Who is Harrison Wells? And why is he apparently pretending to be in a wheelchair? And why is he seeing newspaper articles from the future? Things are getting just as mysterious and fascinating as The Flash comics, and I am not one to complain. However, Harrison Wells is not a character from The Flash's source material. Whoever he is, he's clearly helped Barry embrace his inner superhero. Whether he's doing it for nefarious reasons or not remains to be seen, but theories abound.

People have taken to the interwebs to discuss and hypothesize about Wells' identity. Is his name a pseudonym for another character in the comics? Are the writers and creators of The Flash series just throwing us a red herring with the name and Wells' real identity is some other superhero? That could be a very real possibility. Red herrings are all the rage on TV shows, especially CW ones. I can't even count on my fingers and toes how many times I've seen a red herring on Smallville, Supernatural, and more. Let's take a look at some of the more popular theories surrounding Wells.

He Is Reverse-Flash

Reverse-Flash is a name that has been given to many villains throughout The Flash comic book series. Usually, Reverse-Flash's suit inverses the colors of the Flash's suit. Perhaps in this particular case, Reverse-Flash refers to Wells. Maybe Wells, as he is a genius and developed the particle accelerator, found the ability to make a suit that could replicate Barry's powers in the future and could also time travel. That's how he knows about the future Flash crisis, because he will do something in the present to build up Barry and later take him down.

He Is Eobard Thawne, aka Professor Zoom

Another popular theory has to do with Eddie Thawne's future identity. Instead of the obvious theory that Eddie becomes Professor Zoom, maybe Harrison is the real Professor Zoom who has come back from the distant future and Eddie is his relative.

He Is Not A Villain

Or maybe he's not a bad guy at all (I hope it's this one). Maybe Harrison is actually Barry from the future and the reason Barry from the future is missing while the world is "in crisis" is because he's come back to the present. He could've come back to stop himself from becoming a hero, but then changes his mind and decides to help himself become a better hero than he originally was. It might be far-fetched, but this would be an awesome way to let Harrison be a huge part of the story while remaining a good guy.

No matter what happens, Harrison's identity is yet another great reason to keep watching this exciting show.

Images: Cate Cameron/The CW (2); jasontoddism, iqntojones/Tumblr