NOTE: A major spoiler from the recent midseason finale/premiere of The Walking Dead is present in this article. Exercise caution if you haven’t watched AMC’s acclaimed series that far!
The Walking Dead’s Emily Kinney has officially earned the accolade of being the most shocking casting yet for The CW’s highly successful DC Comics-inspired series, The Flash. Kinney has recently been cast as DC villain, Bug-Eyed Bandit, normally a nemesis of The Atom, portrayed by Brandon Routh in his DC Television Universe incarnation on Arrow.
Predictably, Kinney’s Bug-Eyed Bandit will be the antagonist of the upcoming eighteenth episode of The Flash, titled, “All-Star Team-Up.” As the episode suggests, The Flash will team up with Atom, who will first debut his A.T.O.M. exosuit on episode 15 of Arrow’s current third season, and will be a special guest star of the episode, alongside fellow Arrow lead, Felicity Smoak.
Those versed in DC lore will find this new Bug-Eyed Bandit to be quite a radical re-imagining, namely since the character is normally a male. This new female version of Bug-Eyed Bandit will now be Brie Larvan, rather than Bertram Larvan, as in DC Comics, and is described as the, “Anti-Felicity”, engaging in a hacker battle with Felicity as she menaces Central City with her tech skills. In DC lore, Bug-Eyed Bandit also has the ability to control insects, though it’s unconfirmed exactly how much this ability will exist on The Flash.
This casting comes on the heels of Kinney’s regular gig on AMC’s highly successful series, The Walking Dead ending, as her character, Beth Greene was killed off in the recent midseason finale. Beth’s death was received negatively by many people (including us, as mentioned in our review of the episode), and a petition has gone around with over 40,000 signatures, begging AMC to bring the character back to life somehow. So far though, that’s obviously not going to happen, particularly since Kinney will likely be recruited into the DC Television Universe again at random, especially if an Atom-centric spin-off series is being developed, as rumoured.
Catch The Flash on CTV in our native Canada, and on The CW in the U.S., on Tuesdays, at 8:00 EST.
Keep speeding to Eggplante for all news and updates on The Flash.