TV Underdogs: Can ‘The Flash’ season 2 use more Harrison Wells?

We made our love of Harrison Wells / Eobard Thawne no secret during “The Flash” season 1, even if he was a pretty awful guy bent on destroying Barry Allen forever. Tom Cavanagh is sensational in the role, mostly because he’s got that rare quality where he can play both sweet and sinister. He came across as so genuine in season 1, and you wanted to believe he was a caring guy even when you knew that he wasn’t.

What makes season 2 Harrison Wells (or Earth-2 Harrison, if you will) so interesting is that he’s almost a completely different person other than his occupation. He’s a jerk, but strangely he is still a better person than Earth-1 Harrison after Eobard basically took over his body. He has a simple motivation in trying to protect his daughter, and that put him on Barry’s team for a while; however, the trouble arises here when his interests don’t align with the team at STAR Labs.

So now that we know what Harry’s new agenda is (basically fattening up Barry with more speed so that Zoom has more to take), how else can he be used? This is what we’re investigating today in our latest chapter of our daily TV Underdogs series.

Why he’s an underdog – He’s a guy who at one point (or at least a few minutes during the season 1 finale) was not a sure thing to be coming back to the show. He’s had to carve out his own niche yet again, and even still his amount of screen time compared to many other main characters is pretty low. He’s still somewhat of a mystery, and there is a whole lot more to be learned. Therefore, how is he not an underdog?

Why he hasn’t been seen more – As we mentioned, you had to effectively find a new, interesting way to bring the character back into the fold, and that was probably not an easy thing to do. From there, the next order of business was figuring out a way in which to ensure that the other characters at STAR Labs could trust him. Circumstances have relegated him at times to the background, but to be fair, so has his own attitude. He’s been a combination of aloof and condescending to many of the other characters, so they don’t want to spend time with him.

How to give him more airtime – We feel like some of this is going to happen organically, but we want to see more of the Harrison – Zoom origin story, since that will give us much more insight into how much of the conflict of the present came about. The continuation of the Velocity story should be interesting since Harry has to be at the center of that, and we’re also insanely curious as to what would happen if Harry’s daughter ever makes it over to Earth-2. It feels like there is so much great material that could be mined from seeing him as a dad.

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