‘Arrow’ is about to push pause on its second season, taking a break– as most shows do– for the winter.  (The thinking is that people are too busy with the holiday season to faithfully tune in to their favorite shows… thus ratings dip.)  But they’re going out with a bang, with the highly anticipated introduction of Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin) which may hopefully lead to The Flash getting his own companion series next fall.  Gustin will debut in this week’s episode entitle ‘The Scientist’.

Here is the plot synopsis for that penultimate episode:

“A seemingly impossible robbery at Queen Consolidated’s Applied Sciences Division brings Central City police scientist Barry Allen (guest star Grant Gustin) to town. Citing a similar case back home, Barry offers to help Oliver (Stephen Amell) and team with the investigation. Oliver senses there is more to Barry than meets the eye, but he’s distracted by the similarities between this current case and something that happened on the island.  Meanwhile, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) takes a liking to Barry, which doesn’t go unnoticed by Oliver. Sin (guest star Bex Taylor-Klaus) asks Roy (Colton Haynes) for help when a friend of hers goes missing.  Roy is surprised when Thea (Willa Holland) not only encourages him to help, but joins the search. Unfortunately, Sin’s friend is connected to Brother Blood (guest star Kevin Alejandro), and their search ultimately gets one of them seriously injured.”

As exciting as that is, the just released synopsis for the next episode, entitled ‘Three Ghost’  hints at even more big DC TV news:

OLIVER IS VISITED BY GHOSTS FROM THE PAST — After a fight with Cyrus Gold AKA the Acolyte (guest star Graham Shiels), Oliver (Stephen Amell) is drugged and left for dead. Determined to cure him, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) makes a risky decision. The cure causes Oliver to hallucinate, and what he sees forces him to confront his past. Meanwhile, Barry (guest star Grant Gustin) continues to help Felicity, and their connection grows stronger. The Arrow asks Lance (Paul Blackthorne) to look into Gold, but when the stakeout on Gold goes bad, someone is killed. Roy (Colton Haynes) is captured and tortured by Brother Blood (guest star Kevin Alejandro). John Behring directed the episode with story by Greg Berlanti & Andrew Kresiberg and teleplay by Geoff Johns & Ben Sokolowski

This is Graham Shiels, who will be playing Cyrus Gold AKA the Acolyte (an acolyte of Brother Blood’s perhaps?):

Now for the uninitiated, the character of Cyrus Gold is a very important one in the comics.  Cyrus didn’t make many appearances… at least not in human form.  But the character became quite the headache for the Golden Age Green Lantern, The Justice Society of America and later, basically the entire DC Universe.

Yep, Cyrus Gold was killed in Gotham City’s Slaughter Swamp and reborn (on a Monday) as the savage, chalk-white zombie Solomon Grundy!  The character has been a persistent threat in the DC Universe since the 1940s and is considered one of the best-known villains in the company’s stable.

Something tells me that Shiels and Cyrus Gold will be cropping up again after this episode.  The question is where?  Will he return  to plague The Arrow… or will he move to Central City to pester The Flash?  And I wonder how either show will portray him.  Shiels looks pretty bulky, but not humongous like the comic book Grundy.  Well… at any rate, the character won’t pop up again until next year at the earliest, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Are you excited to see Solomon Grundy introduced in DC’s TV Universe?

Source: Blastr