The Flash Officially Picked Up to Series at The CW

The CW have picked up Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti's Arrow spinoff The Flash to series. The series will presumably get an initial 13-episode order with the possibility of picking up a back nine if the first half of the season is a success (as did Arrow and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in their first seasons). Barry Allen -- who gains super speed and dons a costume as the superhero The Flash -- first appeared in the two-part midseason finale of Arrow in late 2013. The character was expected to appear again, and experience the accident that granted him powers, in the season's twentieth episode in April, but the midseason finale episodes were so well-received and highly-rated that the network elected to simply give the character his own full pilot rather than the "backdoor pilot" treatment they had planned for Arrow. The series will star Glee's Grant Gustin as Barry Allen/The Flash, a Central City CSI who works with S.T.A.R. Labs to help manage his powers. Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) and Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) will be the S.T.A.R. scientists closest to him, and they have already appeared on Arrow as well (in the aforementioned Episode 20). Jesse L. Martin, Rick Cosnett, Candice Patton, Tom Cavanaugh, John Wesley Shipp, Michelle Harrison and Patrick Sabongui also star.