The Flash musical: Who is the Music Meister?

It takes a special kind of villain to make the Fastest Man Alive and the Girl of Steel dance (and sing) to his tune.

Barry Allen is used to facing bad guys who want to destroy him and the people he holds dear. Obviously, for The Flash musical crossover with Supergirl, it wouldn’t do to have Savitar or Zoom dancing around.

(Although … nah, definitely not.)

That person arrived on this week’s episode of Supergirl in the form of Music Meister (played by Darren Criss), though he didn’t introduce himself. He simply put the whammy on Supergirl with just a glance, hopped through a portal to Earth-1 and set off in search of the Flash.

Why? We won’t know that until tonight. However, Criss did tell Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview that he considers Music Meister more mischievous than evil.

"“Come on, he makes people sing and dance. How mean could he be?” the actor playfully protested. “He’s just kind of a troublemaker. I’ll leave it at that. They’ve let me kind of do a lot of silly things on set, so considering how much they’ve allowed me to run with this, I have a feeling he won’t seem as villainous"

He’s also been described elsewhere as a kind of misguided Cupid figure, which is why Iris West and Mon-El are likely to end up entangled in his plot, whatever it may be.

The most surprising thing about Music Meister, though, is that he wasn’t invented for this Flash musical episode. The villain first appeared in the aptly named “Mayhem of the Music Meister!” episode of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series in 2009, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris. He subsequently showed up in the comic book based on that show as well.

On The Brave and the Bold, Music Meister could control people through song, usually forcing them to sing and dance. He also had a baton that could fire energy blasts that looked like musical notes and an uncanny ability to change clothes quickly.

That power set is a little far out there for Arrowverse, so it appears Criss’ version can cause people to fall into a dream-like world where he calls the shots … er, tunes. While the people affected by his power are in a coma, previews for “Duet” suggest that if they die in his reality, they die in real life too.

Next: Read the official synopsis for Duet

Since supporting characters from The Flash, Supergirl and other DCTV shows are clearly in Duet, it remains to be seen if Music Meister zaps all of them or simply can make Barry and Kara think they are part of his show. A musical episode obviously isn’t a well the writers and producers want to go to very often, but if this one proves popular, there’s no reason to think we couldn’t see Music Meister show up again. You’d hope next time the heroes would be ready for him, but maybe they’ll be ready to take a break from their problems and sing again.