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HR Wells’ true motives revealed on ‘The Flash,’ now things get interesting
The truth is out and the latest incarnation of Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) isn’t all he’s cracked up to be. In fact, it could be said that HR Wells of Earth-19 is a fraud. It turns out he’s not a scientist, but rather a novelist and the face of STAR Labs where he comes from.
You see, it was his partner — whose identity has yet to be revealed — that actually solved Harry’s puzzle and made contact with Earth-1. Still, Team Flash didn’t kick him to the curb. Instead, HR convinced them that keeping him around for at least a few weeks is a good idea. As Cavanagh explains it, HR is a bit of a con man.
“In the first season he seems good but he’s bad. In the second season he seems bad but he’s good,” Cavanagh admits on the Vancouver set of “The Flash.” “Now this, in the third season, well … I wonder what he is. A bit of a con man.”
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“Last year I was trying to fill in gaps that we don’t have on a daily basis on our show. We had a big bad but not a daily antagonist,” the actor explains. “Everyone is very winning on our show, they’re so great … I thought it’d be great if there was a guy who wasn’t so great. And that’s what I was last year. A daily antagonist, a guy you couldn’t trust, a malcontent, a bit of a b****. Socially inept. But ultimately he’s kind of a good guy.”
Now, while it may not be clear exactly what kind of person HR is, it’s easy to see his time on Earth-1 isn’t going to be smooth sailing.
“This show, a superhero show, works best with conflict large and small. So I’m happy to drop off these little fire bombs here and there,” Cavanagh says. “He’s one more fire that they have to put out. And is it the best to extinguish it completely or to keep the embers burning, if you will.”
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Of course, one of those conflicts is going to involve Cisco (Carlos Valdes). After all, it’s possible that nobody gets closer to the various versions of Wells than Cisco, whose parting from Harry was especially emotional.
Now, for the first time ever, Cisco is he intellectual superior to Wells.
“I think this has been a really interesting dynamic to explore with Tom,” Valdes says. “I think the dynamic with HR is going to be interesting. It’s going to be fun, for sure.”
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As for that novel he’s writing, Valdes teases that it’s going to be the key to learning the truth about this particular Wells. “Viewers can expect a lot of HR’s business and back story to be rooted in some of this writing of his and specifically the narrative he’s tackling that will reveal itself in upcoming episodes,” he says.
The craziness of HR Wells, it seems, is just getting started.