Dr. Caitlin Snow — played by new mom Danielle Panabaker — might not be cooling her heels off-screen for as long as originally planned, given that Season 7 of The Flash won’t start production until… well, who knows when?
Caitlin and her metahuman personality, Frost, were written out in Season 6’s early finale, in scenes that were filmed several episodes ahead of time to accommodate Panabaker’s maternity leave. (The original cast member announced on April 2 that she and husband Hayes Robbins had welcomed their first child.)
And while the original plan was for Caitlin to remain off-screen for Season 6’s final three episodes (as she got treated by her mother for the wound inflicted by the new Dr. Light), the fact is that Panabaker will obviously be ready to return to work by the time The Flash gets the OK to resume production, seeing as Season 7 isn’t slated to premiere until January 2021.
TVLine on May 13 asked The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace if, in light of the aforementioned new timing, Caitlin might not ride the bench as long as planned. He said, “We’re in discussions about that right now” — though, as we suggested, it may almost be harder to write Caitlin and the superpowered Frost back in, having already written scripts that had Barry & Co. making do in her absence.
“It is tricky,” Wallace concurred. “But I think there is a happy medium which we’re going to try to accomplish. We have to see.”
Reconsidering those three episodes, the last of which would have served as Season 6’s actual finale, is but one of the challenges facing The CW’s No. 1 series as TV productions ponder how to safely, eventually emerge from the pandemic shutdown.
“First of all, how do we shoot these episodes? How do we shoot a season finale of The Flash, which is a big show with a lot of stuff going on, given the new world that were in?,” asked Wallace. Secondly, he noted, “Cisco went off to Atlantis” (but would have been back by the finale) “and Caitlin and Frost went off to the Tannhauser arctic site…. Those stories ended in a specific way, so how do we change that, or at least deal with it now that those episodes aren’t a part of Season 6?
“We have a little bit more breathing room,” the EP added, “and I think that’s going to be fun to play with.”
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