Flash's New Season 2 Costume

As CW’s The Flash preps for its season 2 premiere later this year we’ve received a steady drip of teaser trailers and character reveals.  The latest installment of this is the reveal of Flash’s new costume for the upcoming season.  For the most part this costume is looking the same as Flash’s old duds with the major addition of a white circle emblem eclipsing his chest lightning insignia.  The new design could mean a lot of different things but it certainly conveys a central new fact about The Flash as a show overall and its plans going forward.  This new, circle costume actually appeared previously on the show, worn by a future version of Barry. 

It was the future Barry who came back in time with the Reverse Flash the night Barry’s mom died and even convinced his younger self not to save his mom.  It seems clear from the outfit change that The Flash wants to maintain a sense of chronological momentum with its characters moving forward and changing as the series goes on.  This was always sort of in question for The Flash as unlike Arrow it didn’t take the tract of its hero having to really earn his stripes.  Barry Allen is the Flash from about mid-way through season 1 forward while on Arrow Oliver Queen is only considered to be Green Arrow in this upcoming season.  

The circle costume also could indicate something about Flash season 2’s new villain Zoom.  It’s unclear how much the show’s Zoom will be in line with Hunter Zolomon from the comics as really nothing about that character has been introduced on the show so far and the creators have said we’ve already met Zoom somewhere in season 1.  It could be they’re referring to some different iteration of the Reverse Flash or an ally going rogue but this could also mean Zoom is an evil future version of Barry created when the future was rewritten at the end of season 1.  It certainly seems like this new costume suggests we’ll be coming back to the death of Barry’s mom and the character’s future in the upcoming season. 

Most of all this new costume cements a general tone of CW’s whole roll out of comic book shows.  Arrow, Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow all depict a conscious shift towards greater fidelity to the out there ideas, concepts, and iconography of the comic books that started out near the 2^nd half of The Flash.  Switching to this costume is sort of like CW promising that all the time travel and talking apes won’t be at all reduced now that Legends of Tomorrow is coming in to be CW’s Avengers show, rather they’ll be doubling down on comic fidelity in the coming season.