The Flash: Danielle Panabaker and Andrew Kreisberg Talk Firestorm and Killer Frost

This week’s episode of The Flash is called “The Fury of Firestorm.” As the title hints, the issues facing Dr. Stein (Victor Garber) are at the forefront, as Barry Allen and his team search for a new match for their ailing friend, who has been showing increasing physical side effects since the death of his “other half”, Ronnie Raymond.

“The Fury of Firestorm” introduces Jefferson "Jax" Jackson (Attack the Block’s Franz Drameh), who will be a part of the upcoming spinoff, Legends of Tomorrow (as will Garber). However, while Jax seems like a candidate to merge with Stein to become Firestorm, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) has some notable reservations.

 

This is highly personal for Caitlin, of course, because she was married to Ronnie, and Panabaker remarked, “I think that’s what’s especially hard for Caitlin, and maybe ultimately cathartic about this experience, is she’s so connected to Stein and cares so deeply about him and for him because he is this last connection to Ronnie. So she’s particularly invested in taking care of him and getting it right and not messing this up and making sure that his next partner is just as good, if not better, than Ronnie was.”

The Flash executive producer Andrew Kreisberg had high praise for Panabaker, saying, “I thought she was amazing in this episode. As always in any ensemble, some shows are more about one character than the other, and even though we did have the episode where Ronnie died and moved past it, as Danielle said, this was the episode where she kind of dealt with it.”

He added, “Because it’s The Flash and it’s science-fiction, she can grieve through wanting to protect her dead husband’s co-superhero. And we thought Danielle was just… this episode makes me cry, especially at the end.”

Panabaker in turn spoke very fondly of Garber, who is now filming Legends of Tomorrow. “I have such love for Victor and we’re so lucky to have him; saying goodbye to him - I’m gonna tear up right now! - knowing he’s going off to do [Legends], it’s sad. We miss him!”

Said Kreisberg, “That’s the thing that you can never count on about a show, about why it works or why it doesn’t - all those scenes, it’s all genuine." He added, “I think that’s what’s really special about The Flash. Everybody on the show, the characters really care about each other but the actors do too and that really shines through, and I think that’s why the audience has become so invested in them.
It’s also why the audience is willing to go on these Earth-2s and doppelgangers and all that nonsense - it’s not nonsense, I love it! - but it’s because you’re so invested in the characters you’ll watch them go through anything, because you know you’re experiencing with them emotionally.”

Danielle Panabaker as Killer Frost in The Flash: Season 1 finale.

Of course, Flash fans are eager to see how and when Caitlin will transform into her comic book alter ego, the villain Killer Frost - especially after we got a glimpse of Killer Frost in The Flash: Season 1 finale, as Barry ran through his past, present and future.

Matching, if not surpassing, fan enthusiasm is Panabaker, who exclaimed, "I’m so excited for Killer Frost! I can’t wait!" Kreisberg laughed, noting how happy Panabaker was the one day she was in costume for the finale and recalling, "She looked so incredibly scary and she was going ‘Don’t I look great? Don’t I look awful?!’"

That being said, it didn't sound like Killer Frost is going to be directly introduced very soon - but Kreisberg stressed that didn't mean they don't have a plan, noting, "Greg [Berlanti] and I and Marc Guggenheim and everybody who works on both shows [Arrow and Flash], we’ve been so blessed with the success that we’ve had that we’ve been able to… A lot of things we’ve done, we’ve rushed and we’ve rushed through them and we’ve gotten to them very fast. But because of the success that we’ve had, we’ve been able to know that we’re going to be on for a years and we were able to play some things the sort of slow con [way] on some of these things. Just because one thing is happening fast, it doesn’t mean that something else is never going to happen, it just means that it’s being platformed. Sometimes you guys realize that these things are being set up [or] it’s only in hindsight that you look back and you go, ‘That thing in episode whatever from early Season 2, that tied to the thing that led to the other thing’ There are plans for a lot of this stuff."