It’s not just other speedsters and super villains that are being introduced in The Flash Season 2. Barry Allen will also be getting a new love interest in the form of the Central City Police Department’s newest recruit Patty Spivot, who is being played by One Tree Hill star Shantel VanSanten. With less than a month to go until the Scarlet Speedster’s sophomore season airs, we finally have our first look at the live-action Patty.
The CW has released an extended trailer for The Flash Season 2, and in it we are introduced to Patty, who is Joe West’s new partner. Despite not having any powers of her own, Patty makes it clear in the preview that she’s not afraid to help stop the metahuman criminals running rampant in Central City. We only see a couple seconds of her in the preview, but it certainly looks like she can handle her own. According to EW, Patty will start out as a standard police officer who is eager to join Joe’s anti-metahuman task force and will subsequently prove herself out in the field.
Executive producer Andrew Kreisberg also explained that there is a specific way Patty wants to fight metahumans, which will be revealed the course of the season. In addition, Patty’s character announcement several months back (when she was being identified as “Wendy”) revealed that she is a science enthusiast, which will surely help her connect with Barry, who’s one of the CCPD’s forensic scientists when he’s not running around saving people and punching bad guys.
In the comics, Patty Spivot was a lab assistant (and later blood analyst) at the CCPD. In the pre-New 52 universe, Patty held romantic feelings for Barry, but because he was with Iris West, she never told him about how she felt until much later. After Barry and Iris’ marriage was erased from continuity thanks to Flashpoint, Barry and Patty started dating early on during the New 52 and eventually she discovered his secret identity, but they recently broke up in The Flash #40.
You can catch the first look at Patty, as well as plenty of other cool teases (including more info on Atom Smasher) in the full trailer below.
Fans will meet Patty when The Flash Season 2 premieres on Tuesday, October 6 at 8 p.m. EST on The CW.
