The Flash Season 7: Everything We Know About Casting, Stories And More

With the launch of Batwoman Season 2, the Arrowverse is officially back in action this TV season, after each of its half-dozen shows had their return to production delayed by the COVID pandemic-related shutdown.

Next to suit up is Black Lightning, which kicks off its fourth and final season on Monday, Feb. 8, to be followed two weeks later by Superman & Lois' series debut and then The Flash Season 7. (Supergirl's final season and Legends of Tomorrow Season 6 are still awaiting premiere dates.)

Needless to say, it has been a lonnnng eight months (and counting) since The Flash — now the Arrowverse's most senior show — brought its sixth season to an early close, with three episodes in the Eva McCulloch/Mirrorverse arc left unfinished. Those episodes will instead now kick off Season 7.

Here is everything else we know about The Flash's long-awaited season ahead. (Want more scoop? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line.)

It was announced in late October that Season 7 of The Flash would be up and running on Tuesday, Feb. 23 at 8/7c, easily (and understandably) marking its latest-ever season premiere date. Update: Instead, a Superman & Lois "two-hour premiere event" will now lay sole claim to Feb. 23, pushing The Flash's return to Tuesday, March 2.

In the ersatz Season 6 finale's "bonus scene," though Iris had been making headway in terms of acclimating to the Mirrorverse and being able to use its tech to find Singh, it all became too, too much for her — and she began to crack and refract light, before "blinking" away... to where? Had Season 6 not been cut short, viewers would have found out in the very next episode, which is now the Feb. 23 premiere.  "It's very strange for me that we were one day away from finishing that episode which suddenly is our Season 7 premiere," showrunner Eric Wallace told TVLine. "Fortunately, you find out where Iris went and, oh boy, will there be tears. Oh my. Tears in our season premiere."

The above trailer for Season 7 — which was released at DC FanDome and features a smattering of unseen footage from the unfinished Season 6 episodes — shows Iris being taunted with the prospect of a "broken mind" by some sort of Mirrorverse doppelganger, all as Barry continues to grapple with his speedster "power outage."

The Season 7 premiere will feature "a big guest star from seasons early on," Wallace told EW.com. He elaborated a bit to TV Insider, saying, "We have a villain that we haven't seen in many, many, many seasons returning at the top of next season, and that character may or may not play directly into Eva's next level of her plans."

The Flash first teased the introduction of the white-and-gold clad Godspeed back in Season 5, when Barry and Iris' daughter Nora, in the year 2049, bested the sinister speedster (with help from the imprisoned Eobard Thawne). The Season 6 premiere then established that Team Flash had chased down a total of four Godspeed drones, all of whom were incapable of speaking except in a screeching "modem language." When the "real" Godspeed showed up in Season 6's penultimate hour, Barry was able to sideline him with the help of Hartley Rathaway/Pied Piper, though he came to realize that was not the real August Heart either. (That drone alternately warned team members, "The one sent me wants infinite velocity" and "We deserve your speed.")

Wallace confirmed for TVLine that Season 7 will bring about the one, true Godspeed, adding during the show's DC FanDome panel in September, "Unlike, say, Reverse Flash, [he] has no emotional connection supposedly to The Flash, so the question is: Why is Godspeed angry at The Flash?"

As first reported by TVLine, Shadowhunters vet Jon Cor has landed the recurring guest star role of Mark Stevens aka Chillblaine. "Scientist Mark Stevens is a charismatic bad boy obsessed with cryogenic technology," reads the Season 7 addition's official description. "But when he's not breaking into corporate safes, he's busy breaking hearts with his irresistible charm and roguish style. Armed with his own cold weapons, he'll become a new thorn in the side of Team Flash as the DC Comics villain Chillblaine."

Showrunner Eric Wallace told TVLine last spring that because the pandemic had postponed the filming of what would have been Season 6's final three episodes, Danielle Panabaker — who had just been written off the canvas, for her maternity leave — might rejoin the mix sooner than planned. As it turns out, TVLine hears that whereas Panabaker's Caitlin/Frost had originally been written out of those three leftover episodes, she will resurface in at least one of them.

Have a wastebasket handy! Arrow (and its planted spinoff) may be gone, but Diggle, for one, lives on. David Ramsey will guest-star as John Diggle in a total of five episodes across The Flash, Supergirl, Batwoman and Superman & Lois — as well as play "a mystery role" during Legends of Tomorrow's sixth season. (Ramsey will also direct a total of five Arrowverse episodes this TV season.)

Although Season 4 addition Hartley Sawyer was fired over the summer (due to assorted problematic tweets), showrunner Eric Wallace told EW.com that Ralph Dibny will make an appearance in an early Season 7 episode, to tie up loose threads from the Season 6 finale, in which Eva McCulloch framed Sue Dearbon for murder. He will just look quite different, as the elastic metahuman is able to do. After that, "We're giving the Elongated Man a bit of a rest for while. But we will leave the door open," Wallace said.

As announced way, way back in March 2020, both Kayla Compton and Brandon McKnight are series regulars effective with Season 7, continuing on as Citizen reporter Allegra Garcia and geeky tech whiz Chester P. Runk.

The Flash Season 7 will take a cue from the civil unrest that flared up over the summer, in the wake of George Floyd's murder, by having CCPD Captain Joe West (played by Jesse L. Martin) be "challenged by the events of the world that are going on nowadays –  in a sci-fi superhero way, because we're on a superhero show," Wallace revealed at the show's DC FanDome panel. And in that story arc, "he really rises up," the EP made clear. "If [Joe West] sees injustice, he's not a person who turns a blind eye to it. He's a person who says something and does something."

Season 6 introduced a "graphic novel" format in which "Graphic Novel No. 1" (featuring Dr. Ramsey Rosso aka Bloodwork as its Big Bad) set the stage for the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover event, while Graphic Novel No. 2 focused on Eva McCulloch's evolution into a new Mirror Master. But because the pandemic postponed the Mirrorverse arc's final episodes, "that has really affected our storytelling for all of Season 7," giving it a "narrative unpredictability," Wallace told TVLine. "There are going to be more Graphic Novels next year," he said, "but they're not going to be broken up in the way I think folks expect."

As always intended, Cisco will return from his journey to Atlantis in time for what would have been Season 6's finale. And while any Aquaman nod likely was left on the proverbial cutting room floor, "The information that he picks up in Atlantis is critical to not only solving the mystery of the artificial Speed Force, but to everything — to bringing Team Flash closer together and obviously to help get Iris back," Wallace told TV Insider.

Elsewhere among Team Flash and friends:

⚡️ "We have a big Nash Wells arc coming up that I think will expand upon the Wells mythology and give it not only some closure from the past, but also take it in a very new and exciting direction," Wallace told TV Insider.

⚡️ "You'll see much more of Team Citizen investigating a very specific thing I can't talk about right now," Wallace teased at DC FanDome.

⚡️ Caitlin's sassy Frost alter ego might go on "a date soon," Panabaker said at DC FanDome.

⚡️ Perhaps egged on by the metavillain Top (as hinted in the trailer and again played by Ashley Rickards), Cecile's own powers will be "evolving into something that's more active," Danielle Nicolet shared at DC FanDome.

Given alllll that Barry and Iris went through in Season 6 alone — including him cheating a presumed but accepted death during Crisis, followed by her harrowing entrapment inside the Mirrorverse — showrunner Eric Wallace told TVLine "a happy ending" does await the oft-tested marrieds. "Because I love happy endings."

"I know you've been through a lot [in Season 6].... But don't worry, there will be a happy ending," the EP reiterated in a message to the "WestAllen" faithful. Grant Gustin, meanwhile, gave the couple's fans even more to hope for, saying at DC FanDome, "We're going to see them together a lot more next year than we did last year."

And we can't think of a better note to end this round-up on!

Want scoop on The Flash, or for any other show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt's Inside Line.