‘The Flash’: ‘The Present’ Easter Eggs & Other References

Check out our list of top 5 easter eggs & other references from tonight's winter finale of 'The Flash', 'The Present'. Did you find anything that we missed?

The Flash The Present Mark Hamill John Wesley Shipp

Warning: This article contains full spoilers from tonight’s episode of The Flash, “The Present”. We recommend a full viewing before reading any further.

Tonight’s winter finale of The Flash did not end of any crazy cliffhanger, but gave us something fresh in terms of going to the future in order to introduce a new threat for the back-half of the season. Will Barry Allen be able to save Iris West? We will find out in due time. Aside from that significant moment, the episode gave us a lot in terms of Jay Garrick and action, and moved the Savitar story forward quite a bit.

We can always count on easter eggs and references with The Flash, and tonight’s midseason finale was no exception. The episode gave us a quick trip to Earth-3, some more fun at Tom Felton’s expense, and some noteworthy nods to DC Comics lore. Now that you know exactly what the episode was about, check out the top easter eggs that we were able to find!

5) Infantino St.

Carmine Infantino was one of the creators of the Flash’s main woman, Iris West. The very first shot of the scene where Barry travels to the future starts with a street sign that prominently displays the name “Infantino St.”. This is a clear shout-out to the character’s creator, as it was fitting that such a pivotal scene involving Iris West would take place at a location so aptly named.

4) Tom Felton & the Philosopher’s Stone

This one is a “two-for-one”. For starters the Philosopher’s Stone itself is a reference to an item of the same name from DC Comics’ lore. In the comics, the Philosopher’s Stone is one of the Four Wonders of Alchemy, which Doctor Alchemy uses to manipulate inanimate matter. They just so happened to go with this particular Wonder of Alchemy for the show, I’m betting, so they could have Tom Felton say “Philosopher’s Stone”.

For those of you who live under a rock, this is also significant because of his work in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and subsequent sequels.  The Sorcerer’s Stone was named after the book of the same name, which was based on the UK print edition titled Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

3) Future Barry

Future Barry seems to play a big role throughout the entirety of the Arrowverse, as we find out all the way back during The Flash season 1 he is the reason the Reverse-Flash terrorizes them in the first place, and was also the inventor of Gideon. In Legends of Tomorrow, it was recently revealed that future Barry also left a galactic voicemail message for Rip Hunter, which Jax and Stein intercepted, warning of an eventual war. One again, future Barry plays a role in the show as it is revealed that it is actually the Flash from years later who traps Savitar in his box. It will be interesting to see if they ever show how that played out.

2) Earth-3 Trickster

Now this was a huge nod for all comics fans out there – not only did Mark Hamill reprise his role tonight, but he did so as the Trickster from Earth-3, who was very comic-booky, to say the least. To begin, the Trickster of Jay Garrick’s Earth has purple hair and looks much more like the Joker. There is a character named the “Jokester” in the comics he resembled, but Jay Garrick himself called him Trickster. Regardless, Trickster did the most comic-booky thing that The Flash has ever given us, showing his weapon of choice was a giant clock & TNT bomb strapped to his chest with the word “BOOM!” on it. I’m not sure if that was a nod to the comics or to Looney Tunes, but either way it was pretty cool.

1) Iris’ Death

Although Iris’ death in the show was much different, the character has died before in the comics. In the comics, Iris was killed by season 2 big-bad, Professor Zoom. On the show, however, it was shown that she is eventually killed by Savitar. This is the first time Barry has seen the future, and will most likely act as this year’s big threat going into the back-half of the season. To make matters worse, Barry does not just witness her death, but witnesses himself unable to save her and unable to return to do anything about it.

Earlier this season, Iris’ name disappeared as the author behind the article from the future newspaper, and putting two and two together, Barry concludes she may just be meant to die in his new timeline. Will what he saw of the future actually become a reality, and did Barry messing with the timeline sentence Iris to death? For now, we can only guess.

Did you catch any easter eggs that we may have missed? Make sure to sound off below in the comments. 

Josh Behr

Josh Behr

Jack of some trades, master of some others. That saying never really made a lot of sense to me.