DC’s Red Death: How The Flash Just Made Batman the Villain of Season 9

Warning: this article contains spoilers for The Flash: Season 9, Episode 1!

The Flash is back for its ninth and final season on The CW. And while the season premiere isn’t necessarily the most eventful we’ve ever had, there is one massive twist saved for the very end. “Wednesday Ever After” reveals the latest speedster villain to threaten Central City, and it’s the Red Death.

That’s right, Barry and Team Flash are fighting Batman this year. Not a bad way to go out. But if you’re not familiar with the Red Death or why this unholy hybrid of Barry Allen and Bruce Wayne is so deadly, read on to learn more.

Who Is the Red Death?

The DC multiverse is comprised of many parallel worlds all vibrating together, but there’s even more to it than that. In the comics, there’s actually an entirely separate branch of reality known as the Dark Multiverse. In this realm, worlds are forged from the nightmares of heroes like Batman and Superman. At a forge called the Orrery of Worlds, their worst fears become flesh and blood.

That’s where the Red Death was born (at least as far as his comics origin goes). This villain is a version of Batman who was driven mad by the loss of so many Robins. This Batman becomes obsessed with the idea of harnessing Flash’s speed to ensure he’s always fast enough to save his children. Batman lashes Flash to the hood of his Batmobile and drives into the Speed Force, which causes both men to merge into one bloodthirsty speedster.

Despite this upgrade, the Red Death isn’t quick enough to save his world from destruction (the chaotic worlds of the Dark Multiverse rarely maintain cohesion for long). But soon after, the Red Death is recruited by the Batman Who Laughs to serve their master, the demonic Barbatos, and help him drag all of existence into the Dark Multiverse.

The Red Death and the Dark Knights

The Red Death is one of the main villains of 2017’s Dark Nights: Metal. He’s part of a team called the Dark Knights. This anti-Justice League is comprised entirely of versions of Bruce Wayne from worlds in the Dark Multiverse. Like Red Death, these Batmen have all been consumed by darkness and have taken on superhuman powers to correct their failures.

For instance, The Dawnbreaker inherited a Green Lantern ring as a child and used it to kill Joe Chill, transforming him into a superhuman Batman without Bruce Wayne’s usual discipline. The Devastator is a Batman who transforms himself into Doomsday in order to kill an out-of-control Superman. And the Murder Machine is a cybernetic Batman whose mind has been consumed by an AI of Cyborg’s invention.

The Dark Knights are led by the Batman Who Laughs. This particularly demented Batman is one who made the ultimate choice to kill Joker. But because the Clown Prince of Crime always gets the last laugh, his death released a toxin that slowly transformed Batman into a new Joker. The Batman Who Laughs is the right-hand man of Barbatos, the demonic caretaker of the Dark Multiverse. However, his ambitions stretch far beyond this realm and into other dimensions.

The Red Death is also the odd man out in the Dark Knights. Because his body is home to the minds of both Bruce Wayne and Barry Allen, the others only view him as half a Batman. That becomes pivotal during the course of Dark Nights: Metal, as Barry briefly regains control of his body and tries to fight against Barbatos’ plans. 

The Red Death in The Flash: Season 9 

The Red Death is a character whose appearance in The Flash has been a long time coming. He was first teased back in Season 5’s “Memorabilia,” in a scene where Barry travels to the future and finds a reference to the villain included among the items at the Flash Museum.

It’s taken the series three years to pay off on that particular tease. But now it appears that the Red Death is being positioned as the main villain of Season 9. Barry faces off with the new Captain Boomerang in “Wednesday Ever After,” with the triumphant Owen Mercer retreating to a secret facility to take payment from his secret benefactor. This reveal also suggests that the opening nightmare sequence was the product of the Red Death. Who better than he knows the power of exploiting Barry’s fears about protecting his loved ones?

Beyond that, though, we don’t know much about The Flash series’ version of the Red Death. We can probably assume the basics are the same. This is a version of Bruce Wayne driven mad by a desire for speed. Like in the comics, he may have become fused with a version of Barry, which could be his supervillain Achilles’ heel.

But does the Red Death also hail from the Dark Multiverse? Will we be introduced to that twisted realm over the course of Season 9? Or is this a Flash from an alternate future timeline, similar to how Season 3 handled Savitar?    

There’s also the question of who’s been cast in the Red Death role. Bruce Wayne has been conspicuously absent for the majority of the Arrowverse’s lifespan. To date, we’ve met two versions of Bruce Wayne played by two different actors. The late Kevin Conroy played Earth-89’s Bruce during the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover. Later Warren Christie played Bruce’s childhood friend, Tommy Elliot, disguised as an almost perfect doppelganger of Bruce. Will Christie return to play Red Death when he’s eventually unmasked?

There are a lot of unanswered questions right now. But one thing is clear – we’re finally getting a version of Batman in the Arrowverse’s Earth-Prime, just in time for the Flash’s final season. This is a villain with the power to rattle Barry’s world like few before him, and it should make the upcoming return of Javicia Leslie’s Batwoman all the more interesting. Maybe The Flash will be able to give Batwoman viewers some degree of closure regarding the hunt for Bruce Wayne?

For more on The Flash, find out how to stream Season 9 episodes, and brush up on what to expect from DC in 2023.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.