There was a time when Grant Gustin was best known for his recurring role as Sebastian Smythe in Glee, but for almost a decade now, the actor has been entertaining the masses as the Arrowverse’s Barry Allen, a.k.a. The Flash. This chapter of his professional journey is ending soon though, as it was announced in August that The Flash is wrapping up with Season 9. Production on the final season has now kicked off, and Gustin shared an emotional message and some throwback pictures to commemorate the beginning of the end.
Several days after the news broke that The Flash will be ending its run (pun intended) on The CW, Grant Gustin said on social media that the show concluding was “bittersweet” and thanked fans for all their support over the years. A little over a month later, Gustin returned to Instagram to talk about this final stretch of the proverbial race now that cameras now rolling on The Flash Season 9. As he wrote in the caption:
Tomorrow we start filming the final season of The Flash. I’ll save the long, emotional captions for later in the season, but to say I’m grateful for this journey and the growth it’s provided me in so many different ways would be a gross understatement. Thankful to everyone who helped give me this opportunity and all the fans of the show that have showed me and anyone that’s been a part of The Flash love along the way. Here’s a bit of a photo dump from my first year on the show.
Arrowverse fans will recall that Grant Gustin debuted as Barry Allen in the Arrow Season 2 episodes “The Scientist” and “Three Ghosts,” the latter of which ended with Barry being struck by the lightning that gave him super speed. Almost a year later, The Flash premiered on The CW, and you look through Gustin’s collections of photos from the Season 1 period below, with some highlights including him looking at a Flash building advertisement, performing opposite John Wesley Shipp and promoting the show with the rest of the cast. Now we have to wait to regroup with Gustin after Season 9 is finished filming to read the longer emotional message he’ll write.
The Flash will go down as the longest-running Arrowverse show, overtaking Arrow’s 170 episodes across eight seasons. The Flash is also the last series set in the “main” Arrowverse continuity, as Superman & Lois has been revealed as taking place on a different Earth. So although The CW still has Superman & Lois Season 3 on the way, as well as fellow DC fare like Stargirl and the forthcoming Gotham Knights, The Flash’s final season will also essentially conclude the continuity that launched with Arrow’s premiere in 2012, excluding any comic book tie-ins, and provided that Justice U project starring David Ramsey’s John Diggle doesn’t get off the ground.
No specific plot details for The Flash Season 9 have been revealed yet, although we will be reuniting with Sendhil Ramamurthy’s Ramsey Rosso, a.k.a. Bloodwork, who hasn’t appeared in Season 6. While the majority of the The Flash’s main cast will remain intact for this final batch of episodes, Jesse L. Martin will only reprise Joe West in a recurring capacity. Originally Barry Allen’s showdown with Eobard Thawne, a.k.a. Reverse-Flash, at the end of Season 8 was intended to wrap up the series, but now showrunner Eric Wallace and his writing team have an extra 13 episodes to make that happen.
The Flash Season 9 will begin sometime in 2023, but you can catch up on the previous eight seasons with a Netflix subscription. Learn what’s premiering on The CW later this year by looking through the 2022 TV schedule.
