One Show Discovered The Multiverse Years Ago (And Did It Better)
The concept of the multiverse is certainly having a moment. With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the MCU is finally embracing a core trope of both Marvel and DC Comics—one which offers nearly endless possibilities for future exploration. It is not hard to see the appeal of multiverses to viewers; they are a sort of genre-within-a-genre, nesting speculative fiction within fantasy.
By introducing variety within an established framework, multiverses offer storytellers the opportunity to invigorate a tired premise (The Man in the High Castle), to subvert a well-known convention (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse), or to retcon a fractured franchise (X-Men: Days of Future Past). In one show, however, the multiverse did all three (and more!). By introducing the multiverse early and returning to it regularly, The CW’s The Flash was able to mine the concept for maximum story value, crafting some of the best episodes of the series.
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In its sophomore season, The Flash introduced its multiverse right out of the gate, integrating Earth-2 into the overarching plot. Although the series was still new, there were two functional reasons to take on canon supervillain Zoom—and delve into the multiverse—so early in its run. First, Season 1’s serialized plot concludes with the defeat of the Reverse Flash, and thus the elimination of Dr. Wells; the only way to keep actor Tom Cavanagh on the show (to which he was indispensable) was to have him play a different character, Earth 2’s Harry.
This strategy actually proved so effective that The Flash retained it in subsequent seasons—giving Cavanagh the opportunity to flaunt his versatility (and his importance to
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