Spoiler warning: This interview contains plot details for the Season 3 premiere of The Flash, titled “Flashpoint.”
After one brief but poignant episode spent in the “Flashpoint” timeline, Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) has returned to his own time, but as we saw in the final minutes of the premiere, things aren’t exactly the way he left them.
While the full repercussions of Barry’s trip through time have yet to be seen, the premiere did reveal one major consequence of his extended jaunt in an alternate reality — the love of his life, Iris West (Candice Patton), is estranged from her father, Joe (Jesse L. Martin), shattering the family dynamic that has become the emotional core of the show.
SEE ALSO:'The Flash' Season 3 puts Barry and Iris' love story front and center“Joe and Iris don’t have the relationship that we’re used to seeing, which is really difficult because we know the West family to be a very, very strong family unit,” Patton tells Mashable. “So as we move forward, we’ll see how strained that relationship has become because of the timeline being changed, and how that affects everyone else.”
Patton admits that it’s been hard for her and Martin to adjust to playing those scenes of friction between father and daughter this season, given the rapport between them in real life.
“I will say it was super strange to play and almost everything in me didn’t want to play those scenes just because it felt so unnatural to have this strained relationship with Joe,” she says. “It’s an interesting dynamic and interesting to see how that strained relationship also affects Wally [Keiynan Lonsdale] and how it affects Barry and how it affects the team, because you have people who aren’t getting along, so Team Flash is not at its best.”
Grant Gustin as Barry Allen and Candice Patton as Iris West in "Flashpoint."Credit: Katie Yu/The CWDespite the distance between Iris and Joe, Patton says Iris’ relationship with Barry is still strong in Season 3. That doesn’t mean it’ll be smooth sailing for the couple, though.
“Overall they are OK, and they still have the desire to create a relationship with each other, but things are changed and they’ll come to find out that there are parts of that final scene that we saw at the end of Season 2 with Barry and Iris that Iris doesn’t remember happening,” Patton teases. “I won’t say too much about what that is, but you find out that everything’s different and people’s memories are changed.”
One benefit of Barry’s time in the Flashpoint reality was that he had the chance to spend time with his parents, which Patton says has helped our hero work through his grief over their deaths.
“I think there’s definitely a lighter version of Barry this season, which is really nice. I think he’s come to terms with his mother and father’s deaths; some things in life you have to accept and move forward, and once he does that, it allows him to live a lighter life,” she says. “But it’s The Flash— we always have drama and villains and people threatening to destroy the world, so there’s a balance for Barry, for sure. It’s business as usual!”
For those who may be wondering if the Flashpoint storyline will be resolved quickly, executive producer Andrew Kreisberg promises that “the ramifications of it are going to last forever, and that was really exciting to us. One of the things that Barry learns is, if you break a dish, you can glue it back together again, but you can still see the cracks.
"It’s going to help explain why time travel is not a get-out-of-jail-free card where somebody dies and it’s like ‘Oh, I’ll just go back in time and save them.’ There are ramifications to messing with the universe and one of the things that Barry is going to have to do this season is learn to live with them.”
As the producers previously teased at Comic-Con and the Television Critics Association summer press tour, the ripple effects from Flashpoint will extend to characters on The Flash and even into the other shows in the shared “Arrowverse.”
“There are some good things that come out of it, but there’s the guilt for the people who have good things to know ‘this wasn’t supposed to be my life and why am I the one of the group who was the beneficiary of this?’” Kreisberg says. “So it’s sort of like getting everything you want, but all your friends didn’t, and they had something taken away from them. So even if you weren’t the cause of their unhappiness, how can you really enjoy what you have because you know it should be different?”
Kreisberg says that Season 3 will see Barry grow up in a big way, now that he’s faced with the far-reaching consequences of his actions: “He really becomes an adult and that’s been really exciting for Grant, that’s been really exciting for us -- it was very black and white before this, very ‘that’s good and that’s evil,’ and like most adults, Barry has to learn that people make mistakes. The question isn’t ‘Did you make a mistake or not,’ it’s ‘What are you gonna do about it?’ And if there’s nothing you can do about it, how are you gonna live with yourself?”
The final scene of the season premiere also hinted at one of the major villains for the year -- Doctor Alchemy -- while we have yet to see the other, the speedster known as Savitar.
Alchemy somehow communicates with Edward Clariss (Todd Lasance), the man who was the villain known as The Rival in the Flashpoint timeline. After his disembodied voice wakes Clariss up in the middle of the night, Alchemy ominously scratches his name into the mirror in Clariss' bedroom, but what's the connection between the two? Is Alchemy simply Clariss' alter-ego, Mr. Robotstyle, or is the villain able to telepathically communicate with other people? Could Clariss actually be Savitar in Barry's new timeline, incited to violence by Alchemy?
We'll have to wait and see.
Speaking to Mashablein August, Kreisberg explained that the decision to feature two antagonists this season felt like a natural choice following the solo threats of Reverse-Flash and Zoom in previous years.
“Barry’s powers have increased and he’s certainly increased his ability to be The Flash and he’s doing it at a high level, so he needed two villains to really give him a challenge this season,” he says. “And as the season unfolds and you begin to understand the relationship the villains have to The Flash and also to each other, and why they decided that combining forces is the way to go, it will all make sense. I know we always say this, but we’re so excited about what we’re doing on The Flashthis season — it feels like it has the potential to be the best season.”
In DC Comics canon, Savitar is a speedster whose obsession with gaining new abilities earns him a cult following, and Kreisberg says that aspect of the character is part of what makes the villain “something different and new" for Season 3.
SEE ALSO:The CW's superheroes will face the Dominators in four-show crossover"The Flashvillains have been very singular -- Reverse-Flash just wanted to go home and Zoom just wanted to live; this is somebody who invites worship and invites praise and loyalty," Kreisberg teases. "There’s something so scary about a cult, because it’s out there and it’s everywhere and the power of belief is one of the themes that we’ll be exploring this season, whether that’s belief in someone else or belief in yourself. It just creeps us out. To watch what people are willing to do for this villain, and the lengths to which they’re willing to go to worship him, is something that we think is something interesting and different for The Flash.”
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
TopicsThe CW
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