The Flash has always had one of the richest lineups of characters in the comics from his rogues gallery of villains to his multiple iterations. With the debut of The Flash last Fall, we got Barry Allen as the lead version of the Flash, and now we know just who will be playing the very popular Wally West in season 2.
We heard previously that Wally West would be joining the cast of The Flash in season 2, to basically the surprise of no one, but now we know who will be playing him thanks to TVLine. Keiynan Lonsdale is a relative newcomer to the industry, with his biggest role to date coming in the recent Insurgent. Executive producer Andrew Kriesberg had the following to say about the addition of Lonsdale as Wally.
“Just like when we met [star] Grant [Gustin] for the first time, we instantly knew Keiynan embodied all the heart and courage of a hero. We are so excited to be bringing this much-beloved character onto the show.”
Wally West was known as the main Flash for a long time in the comics, most well known to many in the Justice League cartoon from the early 2000s. He also was one of the lead characters in the comics at the time and later in the Young Justice cartoon series, though he was Kid Flash at the time. In more recent years however, we saw the change back to Barry as the main Flash, so Wally was no more for awhile.
One of the big changes in the New 52 was the change of the West family to being African American, which we saw on the show with Joe and Iris West as well. In the comics and those previous cartoons, Wally was a red-headed caucasian, but they are obviously keeping with the most recent iteration and have gone with that version of the character it appears.
Wally West is said to be a regular, but is said to not debut until this winter, so it’s possible he won’t show up until the second half of the season. Hopefully we learn more about that in the near future and more about how he will be implemented, since he is typically Iris West’s nephew, and she certainly doesn’t have a nephew in this universe, based on having no siblings.
