Who Is Chester P. Runk? The Flash Season 7's New Team Member Explained - Screen Rant

Warning: The following feature contains SPOILERS for The Flash Season 6.

Chester P. Runk is set to have a major role to play in season 7 of The Flash. It remains to be seen, however, if the show's take on Chester will come to resemble the original Chester P. Runk from the comics, who was a fast friend of the Wally West's incarnation of The Flash and, after a shaky start, a valuable ally.

The Season 6 premiere of The Flash introduced the character of Chester P. Runk into the Arrowverse. Played by Brandon McKnight, Chester was presented as a brilliant but broke scientist, who hosted a streaming series through which he broadcast his experiments. Team Flash discovered that Chester had lapsed into a coma after his last show, in which he attempted to fashion a gravitational wave emitter with parts he scavenged from a junkyard and accidentally opened a miniature black hole. Eventually they figured out that Chester's consciousness had become tied to a black hole which threatened to devour Central City, and they managed to bring his body and mind back together.

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Chester's command of science proved impressive enough that he was hired on at STAR Labs, acting as Team Flash's resident engineer while Cisco Ramon was traveling the world and charting all the changes between Earth-1 and the newly formed Earth-Prime after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Chester only appeared in a handful of episodes and didn't have much effect on season 6's story. Despite this, Brandon McKnight was signed on to be a series regular for The Flash season 7 and Chester P. Runk was featured prominently in the trailer for the new season, suggesting he may have a hand in solving the problem of Barry Allen's dwindling speed.

Chester P. Runk's Powers & Origin Explained

The Flash vs. Chester P. Runk in The Flash Vol. 2 #9

Created by writer Mike Barron and artist Jackson Guice, Chester P. Runk first appeared in The Flash (Vol. 2) #9, in February of 1988. A brilliant but maladjusted young scientist, Runk attended MIT on a scholarship, studying physics and engineering. At the age of 24, he began work on a matter transmitter device which could effectively teleport solid objects from one place to another. However, due to Runk's arrogance causing him to ignore basic safety protocols (like most comic book scientists), his device imploded and bonded with his body during his first test.

This resulted in a number of interesting changes to Runk's physiology. He became stronger and denser than an average human being, capable of shrugging off hits from a Mack Truck and ripping one apart with his bare hands. Runk's most impressive power, however, was his ability to absorb any kind of solid matter into himself and teleport it and himself at will. This power also allowed him to travel into another dimension. This dimension, which Runk dubbed The Void, was a wild place full of dinosaurs and other strange prehistoric creatures, comparable to Marvel Comics' Savage Land.

Unfortunately, Runk's power came with a hefty price. He became consumed by an uncontrollable hunger, feeling as if there were an empty hole inside him that could never be filled. At first the only thing that satisfied the hunger was overeating, but normal food was not enough once Runk's weight grew to 500 pounds. He calculated that absorbing dense materials (such as diamonds and platinum) into the Void could satisfy his new nutritional needs, though he had to consume 47 times his own body weight every day in order to prevent his body from collapsing into its own mass. In effect, Runk had become a living black hole.

To Runk's credit, he did try to mitigate the damage his powers might cause at first. When he realized it was possible for people to live in The Void, he began picking fights with criminals (whose weapons couldn't hurt him) and absorbing them into the other dimension, effectively turning The Void into a prison of sorts. Unfortunately, the anti-social Runk also began absorbing people who annoyed him, starting with his psychiatrist, before moving on to women who turned down his romantic advances and men who mocked his weight on the street. Finally, he turned to crime, and began robbing diamond exchanges and precious metal depots to acquire the heavy minerals he needed to stop himself from becoming a living singularity and destroying the Earth.

In was in this capacity that The Flash first encountered Runk, who teleported him into the Void after their second fight. Thankfully, Wally West had read up on Runk after their first battle, and come to the conclusion that Runk had a basically good heart. After saving all the decent people trapped in The Void (who had formed their own tribal society to stand against the criminals Runk had captured), The Flash sought out Runk at the home he had built for himself and offered up an idea that would allow him to satisfy his hunger without hurting anyone. With The Flash vouching for him, Runk began returning people back to the real world and started a business renting his powers out as the ultimate waste disposal solution.

Chester quickly earned a fortune, as his powers allowed him to safely dispose of everything from rancid garbage to radioactive waste. More importantly, he found a true friend in Wally West, who was the first person to show him much in the way of kindness and understanding. The two became roommates for a time, sharing the mansion Wally had bought with his lottery winnings. Chester later bought the mansion from Wally and hired his mother as a personal assistant to manage his appointments, as he traveled the world helping people by making their problems disappear forever.

How The Flash's Chester Compares To The Comics

Apart from both being scientific geniuses, there's little common ground between the Chester P. Runk of the comics and the Chester P. Runk of the Arrowverse. In the comics, Chester was mean-spirited until Wally West's friendship inspired him to stop lashing out at other people over the smallest slights. By contrast, the Chester P. Runk of the Arrowverse is socially awkward but well-meaning, trying too hard in his efforts to be liked. The other major difference is that the Arrowverse's version of Chester hasn't shown any signs of having superpowers.

How Chester Could Fit Into Team Flash in Season 7

Brandon McKnight as Chester P Runk Grant Gustin as Barry Allen The Flash

One way Chester can help Team Flash in season 7 is by charting the differences between the Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis realities. As the only member of the team who didn't retain his memories of the Pre-Crisis timeline, Chester has already proven invaluable in explaining certain things that the rest of the team didn't know. For instance, Chester helped Barry Allen to figure out how to reach the Post-Crisis version of villain Pied Piper and win his assistance by recalling how circumstances played out differently in their first battle on Earth-Prime. While Pre-Crisis, Pied Piper had become an ally to Team Flash, in the Post-Crisis reality, Piper developed a grudge against The Flash, due to Barry Allen accidentally injuring the man he loved.

However, based on the first trailer for The Flash season 7, it seems Chester P. Runk will play a major role in Team Flash's creating an artificial Speed Force to restore Barry Allen's powers. The trailer depicts Chester typing away at a keyboard and looking astonished, before a screen shows the artificial Speed Force powering up and some kind of electronic device sparking. While it's not certain that the two scenes are connected, if there's anyone in Central City capable of constructing something as futuristic as an artificial Speed Force, it's the same man who accidentally opened a black hole while trying to build an interstellar phone.

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Matt Morrison (1289 Articles Published)

Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word "blogging" was coined. He got his start writing for the legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing, before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on to write for over a dozen websites, including 411 Mania, Comics Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American Comic Books, Japanese Manga and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Managing Editor of Kabooooom.com, the house critic of Explore The Multiverse and writes reviews for No Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog – My Geeky Geeky Ways – which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series making up The Arrowverse as well as his comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.