ComicsOnline continues with more Season Four interviews with the cast and crew of The Flash! With Barry’s surprising exit at the end of Season Three, a new leader has taken his place with Team Flash, Iris West!? Candice Patton was kind enough to share her thoughts on Iris’ new role in the team, her relationship with Barry, and what to expect moving into the new season. Check out our full round table interview below:

ComicsOnline: So everyone has been saying that Iris becomes the leader of Team Flash in Barry’s absence. How does that come about and what is her leadership like for the team?

Candice Patton: We left off season three with Barry disappearing into the speed force and one of the last things that he said to Iris was to keep running and keep moving forward. That’s how she kind of starts to deal with him being gone. She needed to suppress all of these feelings and step up as team leader since Barry’s gone. I think its a role that suits her very well, but I think that she’s also doing it to deflect how she’s really feeling. CO: To touch on how Iris is feeling, when we think about all of the things that have been ripped away from Iris since the beginning of the series (Eddie, Barry, etc.), do you think that she is ever going to catch a break?CP: The show is going to be much lighter this year. I think I did enough crying in season three to cover the rest of the series and I’m really happy to not have to do a lot of those scenes in season four. We are going to keep it really light. There’s a lot of funny stuff that we’ve shot so far. Episode 2 we are shooting now and just reading it, it is probably my favorite since the pilot. I’m really excited about it.

 

CO: Is Iris bitter or sad that Barry’s gone?

CP:I think that she’s all of things. She’s obviously sad and depressed, but also a little angry about how he left without consulting her. Not thinking about how it would affect he. I think when Barry comes out of the speed force, that’s a conversation that they will have to deal with before they get married. There’s communication issues between Barry and iris and as much as we love seeing them together, they’ve got to work some stuff out. It’s a bit…dysfunctional.

CO: So viewers didn’t know until the very last episode of Season Three if Iris was going to make it out alive, how long did the creative team keep you in the dark?

CP: They never actually told me. No one who was a producer told me, but Grant (bless him) told me very early on that “You’re gonna die, but Greg Berlanti told me that you’re not really gonna die…Don’t worry, you still have a job”. I was like…good to know. I knew very early on. 

CO: Do we feel that emotion as well going into the new season? 

CP: No, I don’t think so since its six months in the future. Any sense of “Oh my God, I’m alive” has already happened.

 

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Special thanks to Candice Patton for her time at SDCC 2017.

 

 

 

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