The Flash‘s executive producer Andrew Kreisberg discusses the season finale and teases season 2.
Warning: This story contains major spoilers from The Flash‘s season 1 finale, “Fast Enough.”
In The Flash‘s heart-wrenching season 1 finale, a member of the team made the ultimate sacrifice to stop Eobard Thawne while the season was left on a major cliffhanger with a black hole hanging over Central City.
Yes, a black hole.
But let’s back up, first. When it appeared that the Reverse Flash had gained the upper hand and would kill Barry and everyone else present, Eddie shot himself to ensure Eobard Thawne was erased from existence. His sacrifice saved everyone — temporarily, anyway. However, his body was also sucked up into a wormhole, which is an ambiguous fate in a show like The Flash.
Eddie’s sacrifice “wasn’t always the plan, but it was always a possibility,” Kreisberg tells EW. “When we named Eddie’s character and gave him the last name of Thawne, there was a whole subset of the audience that believed he was the Reverse Flash, which was intentional. But then we had to live with: Why did he have that name?”
He adds, “One of the sad, surprising things about the finale is that for all the good that Barry does, in the end it’s Eddie who saves the day. It’s hard.” Kreisberg goes on to compare Eddie’s death to those of Tommy (Colin Donnell) and Sara (Caity Lotz) in Arrow, calling it a “a terrible decision to have to make.”
But, Kreisberg reminds us, “As with both of those actors and characters, they lived to come back another day. While Rick [Cosnett] won’t be a regular” next season, “Flash is the kind of show between hardcore sci-fi and time travel that I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Eddie Thawne.”
As for how Eddie’s death affects the characters moving forward, “To lose somebody like Eddie — who has never been anything but a good guy and is the one who sacrifices himself not just for our characters, but for the world — that’s going to have an impact and it’s not something that’s going to go away right away.”
Eddie’s death is “not the easiest thing for Barry to try and get past or even for Iris to get past,” Kreisberg explains. “It would’ve been very easy for Eddie to sacrifice himself after Wells had told him he doesn’t get the girl and doesn’t have a future.
“For us, what made it even more heartbreaking is that Eddie didn’t kill himself because he didn’t have anything to live for, he killed himself because he had everything to live for,” Kreisberg says. “At the end of the day, all he ever wanted to do was protect [Iris] and that’s why he made the ultimate sacrifice.”
In terms of how Eddie’s sacrifice worked, “It doesn’t completely obliterate all of their memories of Eddie and everything, but it has the desired effect of ‘harm to Eddie means harm to Tom Cavanagh’s character,'” Kreisberg tells THR.
And though Eddie’s sacrifice erased Eobard Thawne from existence, “Tom Cavanagh will continue to be a regular on Flash,” Kreisberg teases. He also says they would like Matt Letscher (original Eobard Thawne) to return at some point.
As for the black hole hanging over Central City in the finale’s final moments, “you should be worried about anything and everything that happens,” Kreisberg teases. “Part of the fun of The Flash is when you have people dabbling in sci-fi physics, they’re significantly altering the world.”
He continues, “We established in the finale that the entire series of The Flash is, in itself, an alternate timeline that’s been skewed from the real one. Wells setting off the accelerator created all the metahumans, and the results of the singularity will also have long-term effects.”
So, what else besides closing the black hole over Central City can we expect in season 2? “We are going to introduce a few more speedsters next year and a bunch more villains,” Kreisberg previews. “How they and those villains come about is part of the surprise of season 2. We’re really excited.”