With Ryan Choi returning to the Arrowverse as part of The Flash season 8 crossover event, "Armageddon," viewers are wondering about the character's future. In the comics, Ryan Choi followed in the footsteps of Ray Palmer as a scientist and a superhero, becoming an all-new Atom. It was believed by many that the character might follow the same career path in the Arrowverse and Armageddon may be the story to make it happen.
Played by Osric Chau, Dr. Ryan Choi was a reluctant hero who was introduced into the Arrowverse during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event in 2019. Despite his reservations about getting involved, due to his being newly married and the father of a newborn daughter, Choi embraced his destiny as the Paragon of Humanity and helped to rebuild the multiverse. Despite that promising start, Ryan Choi has not been seen and only been referenced once since the final chapter of Crisis on Infinite Earths, where he was part of the team of scientists who devised the plan that ultimately defeated the Anti-Monitor, shrinking him down and trapping him in the microverse.
With Brandon Routh also signed on to be part of Armageddon, returning to the role of Ray Palmer, fans of Ryan Choi are anxiously awaiting to see if this will herald the arrival of the all-new Atom in the Arrowverse. This would be particularly gratifying given the failure of Zack Snyder to properly introduce Ryan Choi into the DC Extended Universe beyond a half-hearted cameo. The biggest question is just how Ryan Choi's Arrowverse story might be continued, whether or not he takes up the Atom mantle and costume for himself.
Ryan Choi/Atom Could Get His Own Arrowverse Show
The easiest way to continue the story of Ryan Choi in the Arrowverse would be to give him a solo series. A show in the vein of the All-New Atom comics focused on Ryan Choi's adventures would prove an interesting new take on the standard formula of both CW dramas and superhero shows, with Choi attempting to balance his family life, his research, and his new life as a shrinking superhero. It would also give the CW, which has become known for the diversity of its programming, a chance to present the first Arrowverse series devoted to an Asian lead. The recent success of Superman and Lois has proven that there is a demand for more family-focused superhero shows and a series devoted to a young father trying to balance various hats on top of becoming a superhero would be notably unique.
Ryan Choi Could Join Team Flash At STAR Labs
Another possibility is that Ryan Choi could join Team Flash and work directly with Barry Allen and his friends at STAR Labs on a regular basis. The Flash offers perhaps the most natural setting for Choi's talents and it would be fairly easy to introduce the professor into the team, even without him being a part of the upcoming Armageddon crossover event. The Atom's powers would also be a natural fit among the other metahuman abilities exhibited by the heroes of Team Flash and Team Citizen.
Unfortunately, everything that makes Ryan Choi a natural fit for Team Flash also makes him redundant. The team already has a top-notch techie in The Flash's Chester P. Runk and it seems unlikely Choi would be able to offer anything substantially different as a member of the team. Additionally, one of the chief problems with The Flash in recent seasons has been complaints that the ensemble felt overstuffed, even after Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavanagh left the series as regular cast members during The Flash season 7. Bringing Ryan Choi into the series would only aggravate this issue.
Could Ryan Choi's Atom Join The Legends of Tomorrow?
Perhaps the most obvious possibility for Ryan Choi's future in the Arrowverse is for him to join the crew of the Waverider in Legends of Tomorrow. Ray Palmer was a founding member of the team and a part of it until the Legends of Tomorrow season 5 episode "Romeo V. Juliet: Dawn of Justness." That episode saw him leave the Legends for the sake of his new wife, Nora Darhk, who was unable to manage her job as a fairy godmother while sharing his living quarters on a time-traveling spaceship. The team has been without a scientific advisor since then and is in desperate need of one now that their adventures have shifted to combating alien threats. If Ryan Choi is being set up to replace Ray Palmer as the Atom in the Arrowverse, having him take his idol's place on the Waverider seems a natural way of bringing his story full circle.
Unfortunately, while it makes a lot of sense on paper for Ryan Choi to join the Legends of Tomorrow, there are more practical reasons why he wouldn't be a good fit for the team. Chief among them is the fact that Choi's major motivating factor for being a hero is his wife and daughter. He was initially reluctant to believe that he was one of the seven Paragons during the Crisis on Infinite Earths arc destined to save reality. It was only the word of his idol, Ray Palmer, that inspired Choi to join the heroes of Earth-1 in a last-ditch effort to avert the end of all reality rather than going home to his family and waiting for the inevitable. Given that, it would be horribly out of character for Ryan Choi to abandon his wife and daughter to go hopping around the timestream with the Legends. Moving them onto the Waverider isn't really feasible, either, given the danger posed by life on a time-ship. It also would only serve to aggravate fans of Brandon Routh's Ray Palmer, many of whom didn't buy into the narrative reason for him exiting the show.
All of this presumes that Ryan Choi's Arrowverse future is based around his adopting the mantle of the Atom, during the course of The Flash season 8 crossover event. While it seems a natural development, given the presence of both Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi in the same story, there is no guarantee that this will come to pass after Armageddon. And yet the fact that these two characters are being reunited as part of the next Arrowverse crossover event seems to confirm that Ryan Choi is about to continue the legacy that he adopted in the comics and take up Ray Palmer's shrinking suit for himself.