The Flash

SPOILER WARNING: Don’t read on unless you’ve seen the Season 2
premiere of “ The Flash ,” titled “The Man Who Saved Central City.”
“The Flash” returned for its second season with a literal bang (or
five), revealing that Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell) and Martin
Stein’s ( Victor Garber ) Firestorm were responsible for closing the
wormhole that threatened to destroy Central City in last season’s
finale, seemingly killing Ronnie in the process. Six months later,
we found Barry Allen’s ( Grant Gustin ) titular hero attempting to
work solo to protect the rest of his friends, but a powerful
metahuman known as Atom-Smasher (Adam Copeland) soon
reminded the Scarlet Speedster that there’s safety in numbers.
Just as well, since the dust had barely settled before a
mysterious newcomer called Jay Garrick ( Teddy Sears ) appeared
in STAR Labs with a dire warning for Team Flash.
Another surprise in the hour came courtesy of Harrison Wells
( Tom Cavanagh ), who managed to both help and taunt Barry
from beyond the grave, providing the confession that would help
exonerate Barry’s father, Henry (John Wesley Shipp) for the
murder of his mother and managing to squeeze in some gloating
in the process.
Variety spoke to “Flash” executive producer Andrew Kreisberg
about the premiere’s big reveals and what’s ahead for Team
Flash this season.
We saw Barry trying to work alone to avoid endangering the team
in the premiere, but has he moved past that impulse now,
knowing that they’re so much stronger when they work together?
I don’t think, moving forward, it’s so much about Barry going it
alone – obviously, he knows how important his friends are to him
and how important his friends are to his work and to the show. I
think Barry Allen, and the show itself, have grown up a little from
season one — and I don’t mean that as a slight on season one,
it’s probably the year of television I’m most proud of having
done. Whereas [before] Barry would’ve pushed people away or
made a slightly more immature decision when faced with the
problems he’s gonna be faced with in season two, he’s tending to
be more mature about his decisions and his reactions.
I think that for Barry, what’s really going on for him emotionally
is what Wells said to him on that videotape: “you’re never gonna
be happy.” I think that’s really the thing that’s eating at Barry all
year long — it’s this belief that maybe he made a mistake, and
maybe he should’ve saved his mother. That’s the thing that’s
weighing on him as he faces all the challenges he’s facing this
year: “if I had made a different decision, would everything be
different now for everybody?” And it’s a little bit more heady, but
it’s interesting, because it’s somebody who had the chance to
heal their core wound and didn’t take it, and in some ways, at the
time, everyone was so proud of him for making the heroic choice,
but as the season goes on, it starts to wear on him … he begins
to question whether or not he did the more heroic thing by not
doing it.
When did you decide to have Wells help exonerate Henry after
last season’s cat and mouse game?
It was sort of based on last year, trying to get Wells’ confession.
It was one of the earliest ideas we had for the premiere as we
were thinking about things: what could we do that was different
and giving Barry a different start to the year … and not feel like
“oh god, every time we go to the prison it’s gonna be
depressing.” But the thing I love about the Wells character is that
you literally never know what he’s going to do. He basically tells
Barry, “even though I’m dead, you’re never gonna win, and to
prove it I’m gonna give you the thing that you want, and guess
what, you’re still not gonna be happy.” We just love the idea that
even though he’s been erased from existence, he’s still Barry’s
nemesis, and in giving him the gift that Barry has long desired, it
still doesn’t quite feel like victory. That’s the thing that’s going to
be haunting Barry.
What went into the decision to have Henry leave (at least
temporarily) to let Barry fulfill his heroic potential?
It was part of the maturing of the show; Barry’s a grown-up now
and he would’ve been infantilized if he was constantly having to
be there for his dad.
Martin Stein (Victor Garber) has seemingly assumed the Harrison
Wells role in STAR Labs, and he seems like a natural addition to
the team, but we know he’s also signed on for “Legends of
Tomorrow” at midseason, so what can you preview about his
“Flash” arc?
He’s been dealing with the loss of his superhero self, and
Professor Stein was really the perfect person to step into this
world — he was one of those weirdo kooks who believed in time-
travel and aliens and metahumans, so that he got to be part of it
just made sense. Victor himself is such an amazing actor and he
has this unbelievable ability to make the implausible sound
plausible and the ability to ground the most crazy things that are
going on around them and make them relatable to the audience.
And that was one of the things that Tom’s character served last
year. So in the early going, Victor is going to represent a little bit
older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more cautious voice amongst the
team. Obviously, his connection to Firestorm is not over and is
going to continue in a fairly “Legendary” way, if I can make a
horrible pun, but as long as we could have him on “The Flash,”
we were so happy to do so, because he so feels of the “Flash”
word.
Ronnie sacrificed himself to close the singularity, but since we’re
dealing with Earth-2 and the idea of multiple universes, is there a
chance we could see a version of him — or some of our other
departed characters — again this year?
Yeah, that’s part of the fun of Earth-2 and introducing the
concept of Doppelgangers and that’s part of what we’ll be
exploring this season. We were really conscious of not wanting
to repeat ourselves and last year was obviously all about time-
travel. I think that whether people realized it or not, the whole
series was about time-travel from the beginning… Looking back,
you realize that there was a lot more time-travel in the pilot than
you might’ve realized at first, and we wanted to do something
different in season two, especially with “Legends” co-opting the
time-travel concept. So obviously, the multiverse is a huge part
of the DC Comics universe and it felt right to tackle it. And as we
always do with “Arrow” and “Flash,” we laid the seeds of season
two towards the end of season one, so creating the singularity
and the breach and seeing Jay Garrick’s helmet were all portents
of what was to come, and we’ve been having a lot of fun with it.
Getting to see who’s over there and who’s not, and getting to see
some of our actors getting to portray different versions of their
characters, that’s really the fun of when you look at the great sci-
fi shows like “Star Trek” and “Doctor Who,” when they go into the
mirror world. Not everybody will have a sharp Van Dyke to signify
that they’re evil. [Laughs.] But that has been part of the fun of the
show. Unfortunately our imaginations are far grander than the
pile of money we have, because we would be going the whole
hog on some of these things, but so far it’s been really great,
we’ve had a lot of fun exploiting the idea. And the other great
thing is that while we’re solely focusing on Earth-2 for the time
being, there’s an Earth-3 and Earth-4 and Earth-5 and so on, and
there’s definitely room to explore all of that, certainly over the life
of the series.
We finally met Jay Garrick in the premiere; what does he add to
the show, from your perspective, especially in regards to Barry’s
journey?
It’s funny, Teddy looks more like what you’d think a comic book
superhero would look like, but I think what’s so interesting about
this is that last year Barry had mentors and fathers and [we
explored] the search for fathers, and this year, Barry’s
relationship with Jay is a little bit more like an older brother. Jay
has already been to war, Jay’s been The Flash a little bit longer
than Barry and he’s a little bit more hardened by experience and a
little bit more solitary. But he knows things about being The Flash
that Barry doesn’t know yet because he doesn’t have the wealth
of experience, and Jay is able to teach Barry some new Flash
tricks that didn’t even occur to him.
But by the same token, Jay has lost something and he’s a Flash
without a secret identity; he’s a Flash who worked on his own;
he’s a Flash who didn’t have a team at STAR Labs; and that’s
something that Barry’s able to give back to Jay, that sense of
community and a sense of what it is you’re fighting for and home
and friends. Watching the two of them come together is some of
the most heartwarming stuff. And there’s probably a romance on
the [horizon]…