The CW has cornered the market on superhero series on the small screen. The premiere of Arrow in 2012 was successful enough to warrant a spinoff in the form of The Flash in 2014. A two-night crossover extravaganza between the two shows hit the airwaves back in December to the delight of fans and critics alike, and Flarrow was an immediate hit. Now, with third installment in the CW universe Legends of Tomorrow premiering in 2016, both Arrow and The Flash have had a lot of work to do to set up the latest spinoff. This year’s crossover extravaganza will have a massive cast of characters to juggle. As it turns out, the influx of new faces means that one of the most pivotal Flash characters won’t be playing a part: Iris West.
Actress Candice Patton had this to say in an interview with MTV about Iris’ upcoming absence:
Iris is not involved at all in the crossovers that we have explored thus far. That doesn’t mean we’ll never see that. We know that crossovers have been extremely popular in our universe on the CW, so I’m sure we’ll have more. But I will say, so far, in this season, she does not appear in any of the crossovers in a large way.
News that Iris won’t be playing a considerable part in the crossover extravaganza is certain to disappoint fans of her character. She did briefly appear in the Flash half of the first Flarrow crossover, but she was still out of the loop regarding Barry’s big secret at the time. Now that she is in on Team Flash and at least friendly with Felicity, Iris should have a natural in to interact with Team Arrow on any visits to Central City.
Of course, the news that Iris won’t be playing a part in the extravaganza may well mean that Team Arrow aside from Oliver won’t have too huge of a role in the event, either. Flarrow this year seems to be more concerned with Legends of Tomorrow than either Flash or Arrow – although Legends of Flarrow does have a rather nice ring to it – and so characters other than the titular characters themselves may well fall by the wayside.
Nevertheless, it is a shame that even now that Iris has expanded her potential crossover role beyond playing waitress and understandably mooning over the size of Oliver’s arms, she will remain a player only within the Flash part of the CW’s superhero universe rather than in the Legends of Flarrow-verse as a whole.
On the bright side, the crossover extravaganza of this December should be an absolute thrill ride through everything from the grittier realism of Arrow to the fantastical superpowers of The Flash to the new time-traveling shenanigans of Legends of Tomorrow. We can only hope that Iris will have her chance to join in on the wider crossover action once Legends is set up.
