The Flash's Rick Cosnett on Last Week's Bombshell And What Comes Next

From his role in the pilot as "Detective Pretty Boy," Rick Cosnett's Eddie Thawne has grown into a surprisingly appealing character -- and one whose fate now hangs in the balance as Eobard Thawne -- a descendant of Eddie's from the future and the season's Big Bad on The Flash -- has him in custody and, last week, dropped a number of revelations on Eddie that will shake him to his foundations.

That's according to Cosnett, who joined ComicBook.com for a discussion about the seasons final episodes and what's to come from his character now that everything seems to be tumbling down around him.

When he comes out of it, Cosnett tells ComicBook.com, Eddie will be a completely different man -- and while he admits that Team Flash will ultimately find him, he stops short of using the word "rescue."

One of our readers brought up that you were touted as having a "secret past" back before the season started. That hasn't been explored much so far -- are we going to see more of that, or was that just to toy with viewers?

Well, I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I am actually Eobard's ancestor. Obviously at the beginning, they told us what was happening and what was going on and that of course was a big bombshell...but there is going to be another bombshell by the end of the season, and that's all I can tease on that front.

Recently I speculated that perhaps your character would turn out to be very important, but that your significance has been forgotten by history by design. Is that something you could see playing out with Eddie?

You know, I think Eddie's definitely at a crossroads. He gets to decide now what to do with this information and that's what the whole other time-travel episode that we had was: Do you try to do something good? Do you try to change the future so that it will become better? Or do you do something to try and make it turn out better and then it becomes worse?

I love that we get to play with that idea, and let's just say that Eddie now has a choice as to what to do about his own future. That's something I find fascinating. I never want to go to a clairvoyant, or someone who tells me the future, becuase I feel like I'll start doing stuff that will f--k that up. There's that whole thing to play with.

I will say the gang does find Eddie. I won't say what state he's in or whether they rescue him, but he's very much a different man to the one who was on the bridge proposing to Iris.

Your character has gone through quite a lot and you've rolled well with most of the punches. What is it about this time around that seems to have really had an impact?

You're right; Eddie's reaction has always been so not only diplomatic, but also sensible and good and he's really grounded.

This time, Wells has kept him down there for so long. It's really frightening to be down there, not only with someone so scary and a metahuman but also to be faced with so many things at one time, not only that he's actually an ancestor of this person, so it's almost like when you're told you're adopted or something -- his whole world has been turned upside-down. On top of all of that, he discovers the girl he was just about to spend the rest of his life with will marry what he thought was one of his best friends.

That cuts him to the core, and things will never be the same for him.

Do you think there's any doubt that Wells is a reliable narrator?

I think he is very skeptical, especially with Wells. He definitely has a backbone and knows that he can think for himself. But in the end, he can't help but think, what if this is true? Can I do something with this?

He's not the type of guy to just sit back but at the same time, he very much can differentiate between the truth and telling himself a lie. I think in a sense, he's very in touch with the truth of the situation, which is why it cuts him so deeply. Also, because I think he always had a sixth sense. Somewhere deep inside I think he had a suspicion about Barry and Iris, always, and that coupled with this new information and this new information that he won't amount to anything, just really gets him because it's based in truth.

And now he gets to decide what to do with that, and we're going to see it all unravel over the next few episodes.

Iris just told Barry that she loves Eddie and that she doesn't want to pursue things with him now. Do you think Eddie almost runs the risk of making this happen by trying to prevent it happening? I feel like part of the fun of time travel is that you can have the best of intentions and really just still screw everything up utterly.

Yes, absolutely. It really is, because you may do something and it's so wonderful that we've tackled this topic because I've always found it fascinating in life. 

You do something that has repercussions. Often, something bad will happen but things will turn out even better than they would have if that bad thing hadn't happened. This whole show deals with that, and Eddie's storyline also deals with that: doing something to prevent something bad happening, things a lot of the time turn out worse.

Often, when bad things happen in my life, I think, "Well...could have been hit by that bus, so lucky me."