In the upcoming Flash episode "When Harry Met Harry," Harrison Wells of Earth-2 calls upon a "Council of Wells" to help him solve the mystery of The Thinker. Because truly, why use the superior brain of just one Wells when you can call upon a multi-verse of Wellses? And with that many Wellses on hand, there's a lot to talk about. Thankfully, a group of journalists and I were able to talk to Tom Cavanagh last week from The Flash set in Vancouver about the upcoming episode, and what fans can expect.
"This show will come and run its course, or it will be like Supernatural and never end," Cavanagh joked. "And, then it will all be done, but at least we will have this stamp of shamelessness. With the Council of Wells, I will always be able to point to that and go, 'Look at this exercise in egotism that we managed to pull off.' Unfortunately, for Brent Crowell, who is our production manager, it was his first time directing this show. He got saddled with having to tolerate me not playing just one character, or two characters which I normally do, but playing a multitude of characters, each one worse than the next. But, only if you line them up that way."
When it came to creating these new characters, Cavanagh revealed, "I remember Steve Van Zandt saying that Bruce Springsteen always has a number of songs in the scrapbook, ready to go. Steve’s quote was, 'It’s really annoying.' I’m that way with characters. I have a number of them. It’s just a question of, 'Well, do we want ten? Do we want two?'" Ultimately they settled on three new characters (and one bonus appearance that I won't spoil), but Cavanagh said there will be plenty of time for more. "I had a bunch of those ready last year when we searched for H.R. I threw the steampunk guy, and the mime guy, and Hells Well, the Texan. Once again, another exercise in shamelessness that went so well that we decided to expand. Business is booming when it comes to the Wells."
Cavanagh also told us that in regards to the Wells in general, each year he tries to fill a void for the S.T.A.R. Labs team:
In the first year, we didn’t have a daily antagonist. We had the main, over-arching antagonist, which was the Reverse-Flash, which I played. In the second year, we didn’t really have that as much, at least not a comic-book regular the way the Reverse-Flash is. So, I introduced Harry, who is kind of socially awkward and difficult and antagonist, but ultimately a good guy at heart. At least it had some grit and conflict in our daily rapport and within the cortex in S.T.A.R Labs and so on and so forth. They made it nice for someone to be antagonizing Snow and Ramone. Then, in the third season, I thought we could do a little more comedy here, so H.R. was created.
When I asked what made Harry different in Season 4 from the Wells of the past (even though we have seen Harry before), Cavanagh said:
It’s difficult for someone writing an hour-long to be that adept at comic writing, so H.R. is a bit of a challenge. But, Harry is sparse and curt and fits in well, it seems. He likes these people despite himself. But, again, his social graces are poor and lacking [...] It’s nice to have somebody who is no fun at all. It adds a nice little element. We have an arc to him which I won’t reveal right now [but] one of my favorite scenes ever doing The Flash was when H.R. - who loved Harry, and Harry who hated H.R. – shared scenes together.
Take that as a hint for things to come ... The Flash airs Tuesday nights on the CW.
