The Flash Star Danielle Panabaker Shows Off Their Season 7 Gift

Delaying its premiere by a week to give the newest member of the Arrowverse, Superman & Lois, the two hours it needs for a "super" series premiere and recently announcing Jon Cor (Shadowhunters) joining the cast in the recurring role of Mark Stevens aka Chillblaine, The CW's The Flash looks poised for a quick start to its seventh season on Tuesday, March 2. As the fans continue counting down the days, "Team Flash" is hard at work behind the scenes making sure Season 7 is exactly what the viewers expect- and more. To celebrate the dedication and commitment that the cast and crew have shown during the COVID pandemic and heading into a new year, showrunner/EP Eric Wallace and the producers presented them with a gift that should definitely help keep the cold at bay.

the flash
The Flash (Photo: Katie Yu/The CW — © 2020 The CW Network, LLC. All rights reserved)

Thankfully, we have Danielle Panabaker (Caitlin Snow / Frost) to clue us in on what the gift was as well as the card that was included with it. We're not going to lie- we're big fans of how subtle the logo it and yet it still stands out.

The Flash (Image: screencap)
The Flash (Image: screencap)

Wallace explained heading into the season's production how the series will handle not having Hartley Sawyer (Ralph Dibney aka Elongated Man) on the series, with the actor fired after a number of tweets from Sawyer's past came to light that contained misogynist, homophobic, and racist language. First, the obvious question: is this the last we'll see of Ralph Dibney aka Elongated Man? Wallace admits that the character will be taking "a bit of a rest for a while," but viewers shouldn't assume that means he's gone for good. While Wallace chalks up the ability to bring him back as "the beauty of comic book stories and superhero stories," it sounds like his stretching abilities will come into play to cast a new actor.

"The beauty of comic book stories and superhero stories are the conventions that heroes come and go, but they never fade away and they never disappear entirely. So we're going to treat it like we would if we were writing a comic book graphic novel. We're giving the Elongated Man a bit of a rest for a while. But we will leave the door open," Wallace revealed. "Who knows what the future could bring. It is unknown. But I'm not saying by any means that it's the end of the character, in fact, quite the opposite. We just don't know when he will return, or in what form he will return. And that's the beauty of comic book stories. It keeps it fresh."

In fact, it sounds like that's exactly how Wallace and the creative team will still be able to have Elongated Man involved at the beginning of the seventh season (a must considering the role he plays in one of the major sixth season cliffhangers) without needing Sawyer: "In order to wrap that up, which we're going to do at the top of season 7, Ralph has to be part of that. Now thank goodness, Ralph is a guy who can change faces and his appearance in many ways. Without giving any spoilers away, there are a couple of ways that we can have Elongated Man still appear in at least one episode this season to wrap that storyline up, that gets us what we need and still allows fans to say goodbye to the character, at least for the indefinite future."

Wallace didn't hold back during the interview, also revealing that not having Elongated Man around did impact a major Season 7 storyline: "There was a whole storyline that involved Ralph with another character, in particular, going off on a two-hander journey — a season-long [arc] that would have involved a whole bunch of twists and turns that would have played into the season's big bad, which I don't want to spoil. And yeah, we can't do that anymore," Wallace explained. But what's Ralph's loss will be another character's gain: "We pulled the Elongated Man out of this particular storyline, and the storyline became so much stronger because now it's focused on the other character, [who] I don't want to reveal because it's a surprise. For that other character, it became a much more of an emotional journey. And this other character I'm referring to is one of our series regulars, so it's going to be very exciting. That particular character now gets to go somewhere that we never imagined they would until many seasons down the line, but we just pulled that up. So I think it's going to be really fun. And it was a good way to, like I said, make an awkward situation into a great opportunity that ends up making Team Flash as a whole, stronger."

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