Todd Lasance Takes a Super New Role
The Vampire Diaries and Spartacus alum, Todd Lasance, has landed a villainous new role on the anticipated third season of the hit CW superhero series, The Flash, According to The Hollywood Reporter, will be playing DC Comics supervillain Savitar.
Savitar has been a part of The Flash canon since he was first introduced in 1995 by Mark Waid and Oscar Jimenez. As most supervillain origin stories go, he actually began as a good guy, a regular human who was a pilot for a third-world nation during the Cold War. When he was testing a supersonic fighter jet, his plane was struck by lightning just as he reached top speed.
That accident gave him speedster powers, and he named himself after the Hindu god of motion since he believed his newfound powers were a divine gift. But Savitar was different from other speedsters. Described as a “vicious and cruel man,” he became obsessed with his new powers, and dedicated his life to studying Velocity and pushing himself. He discovered many new powers that no other speedster had ever been able to accomplish. He could lend speed to other objects and even other people, heal himself instantly and even protect himself with a force field. But the one thing he always craved was more access to the Speed Force.
During Savitar’s life, his quest for knowledge and increased power gained himself fans and followers who eventually formed a cult, with Savitar acting as their leader. After a battle with Johnny Quick and Max Mercury, Savitar was thrown forward into the time stream and disappeared for decades while his cult continued to grow in numbers. When he finally showed up in the future, he had gained a new objective: defeat all the other speedsters in existence. That resulted in all the living speedsters teaming up to defeat Savitar, led by Wally West’s version of the Flash. They eventually defeated him by having the Speed Force absorb him.