When Season 1 of The Flash ended things with Barry running circles around the inside of a black hole, the show left fans with way more questions than most series do after a single year on the air. Time travel is a beast of a plot mechanic. Some of those ponderings involve which characters we’ll be seeing again, and how that might happen, and high on that list is Eddie Thawne. So will we get to see him again in Season 2? It looks like the answer is “entirely possible, but not extremely likely.”
The complications that The Flash is bringing to its storylines through the use of alternate timelines and multiverses almost necessarily connote that anything is possible in this world now. Here’s how show star Grant Gustin explained things at Comic-Con last weekend, according to ScreenRant.
They said when Rick Cosnett was leaving the show, just for personal reasons, there’ll be ways to bring him back. Obviously it’s true. There’s time travel in the show. But yeah, we have a multiverse on the show that anyone who has died can still be on the show.
In the Season 1 finale, just as Reverse-Flash and Flash were in mid-fight, Eddie shot himself in the chest, essentially knocking Eobard Thawne-as-Dr. Wells out of existence…or at least this realm of existence. There is definitely another parallel universe out there where Eddie is alive and well, without ever having a need to sacrifice himself for the greater good. But it doesn’t sound like anyone has been talking to Cosnett about coming back to live in that other universe, and it’s not clear whether he’d be up for it or not.
It’s worth repeating Gustin saying Cosnett left for personal reasons, which is something that could be hypothesized in many ways, from him having problems with the show to him having non-entertainment problems that caused scheduling issues or something of that sort. Adding some further quasi-mystery to it all is the fact that Cosnett has just joined the upcoming ABC thriller Quantico for a recurring role as a gay government analyst. So if he’s perfectly willing to take on a role in another show, those personal reasons for stepping out become all the more interesting.
Even if the present-day Thawne family member is gone, that presumably doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of Eobard Thawne, and we’re definitely getting an altered version of Harrison Wells in Season 2. And because Joe doesn’t have a partner, the show will be pairing him up with Shantel VanSanten’s Patty Spivot, who will also be Barry’s new love interest, since Iris will be mourning and shit. We’ll get to see some other familiar faces returning, as well as some other new ones arriving in Central City for the first time.
Whether Eddie is back or not, The Flash will return to The CW this fall for its premiere on Tuesday, October 6.
