Jack Rowand/The CW
Wally West is "definitely Joe's son," executive producer Andrew Kreisberg said about the previously unknown member of the West family.
[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Tuesday's episode of The Flash, "The Fury of the Firestorm."]
The West family just got a little bigger on The Flash.
After doing a background check on her newly resurfaced mother, Iris West (Candice Patton) discovered that while Francine West (Vanessa Williams) was telling the truth about how she's dying from the fictional MacGregor's Syndrome, she didn't disclose the fact that Iris has a brother. When Francine left Iris and Joe (Jesse L. Martin) 20 years earlier, she was pregnant at the time, meaning that Joe has a son he never even knew about: Wally.
"We always knew we were leading up to this and rather than them suddenly having some cousin," executive producer Andrew Kreisberg told reporters. "Iris is now in the position that Barry was in last year. She’s keeping a secret to protect somebody and she’s going to find that, for all of her anger at Barry and Joe from last year, keeping this secret is not going to be so easy and it’s going to be weighing on her before she finally decides to take some action in an upcoming episode."
And yes, Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) is "definitely Joe's son," Kreisberg says.
Wally, aka the future Kid Flash, isn't the only DC Comics character being added to The Flash ensemble. During the hour, humanoid shark supervillain King Shark was brought to life via CGI.
"We said, 'No one’s going to let us do this,'" Kreisberg said. "It was a very expensive 30 seconds in the show. But our visual effects team are the best and they really love challenges like this. Obviously we can’t afford to do an entire killer King Shark episode, the fact that he’s one of Zoom’s minions ... he’s just the latest in another line of [bad guys], which does mean there is King Shark in Earth 1."
Despite the threat poised by King Shark, Barry's life was saved by the Earth 2 doppelganger of Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh).
"The next episode opens in a slightly surprising way," Kreisberg teased of the first face-to-face confrontation between Earth 2 Wells and Barry. "Obviously, this scene will play out but how it unfolds in [episode] five, I think the beginning of five is really exciting. You’re going to get a lot of answers to questions you have. Maybe [from Wells' perspective]."
While the show has no plans for an entire King Shark episode, fans can expect to see a future episode this season focusing on another metahuman, Gorilla Grodd. "We have another one in which Caitlin plays Fay Wray to Grodd’s Kong," Kreisberg said.
Added Danielle Panabaker: "In season one, you got to see just a tiny bit of her relationship with Grodd and you’ll get to see a little bit more of that and understand their connection from before. He has some unfinished business with her."
Also helping matters is the close bond Caitlin will develop with Earth 2's Flash, Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears).
"Obviously, there’s something going on there," Kreisberg said. "They’ll actually have multiple projects to work on. There are problems that come up that they’ll be working on together. Obviously we’re building a relationship between Jay and Caitlin and there’s going to be some fun and surprises there."
The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.
The Flash
