We sat down with Candice Patton at San Diego Comic Con to talk about the shocking ending to The Flash Season 5 and how the characters will move forward into the Crisis on Infinite Earths!
After revealing that Season 6 will pick up “about 10 seconds” after the end of Season 5, Candice dove into how Iris and Barry will face the heartbreaking loss of Nora.
“I think there’s a deep dive for both Barry and Iris. I tink they both deal with grief in their own way and they both resort to getting to work. There’s always some mess in Central City and it’s always easy to deal with that. And that’s what we kind of get into in Episode 1. They both realize they’re going about it the wrong way– trying to push this stuff to the side. They realize they have to be there for each other and grieve together in order to move on and move forward.”
Nora’s death is devastating on its own, but it also set off a “time flux.” Now, Barry’s still going to disappear in a crisis, but he’s going to do it in 2019 instead 2024. This, of course, is a setup for Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it’s also something the show will address long before that.
“We deal with that very very early in the first episode. Barry and Iris both will have to come to terms with the fact that the date has changed, they’ll obviously have to deal with telling the rest of Team Flash. It’s an emotional scene, definitely a really good one. And yeah, it sets up the first half of the season.”
Aside for Team Flash, Season 6 may see a long-awaited facet of Iris’ character truly brought to fruition, as well: Her journalism career. Sure, Iris has blogged and “started a newspaper,” but her career has only been teased and when it is, it’s largely used as a plot device for someone else to swoop in and save the day. In this next season, Iris’ career may finally hit its stride.
“It’s something I’ve wanted for a long time as an actress, as this character. We also have a new showrunner Eric who loves the character Iris West and wants to see that happen, so we’re really moving into that this season. We see her hiring employees for The Citizen and we see her moving toward that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist that we know in the comics, which I know everyone has been waiting for.”
Watch the full interview at the top of the page!
The Flash Season 6 will premiere on October 8, 2019 on The CW.
