The Flash Star Carlos Valdes on the Evolution of Cisco's Pop Culture References

For the past five seasons, Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) has been a source of humor on The CW's The Flash. The character has had an uncanny ability to give villains their nicknames and through his numerous pop culture references, he's become one of the most relatable characters on Team Flash. Though those references were scripted towards the beginning of the show, Valdes revealed in a recent panel at Fan Expo Dallas that some of the lines have gotten increasingly improvised.

"At the beginning, it was a lot more scripted. I kind of had to figure out how to find my legs in terms of my freedom of being able to play around with the character and the lines and stuff," Valdes recounted in the panel ComicBook.com attended. "I was doing theater before I was doing Flash and in that world, like the text is sacrosanct, you know what I mean? You don't change a word, and every word is there for a reason and your job is to make it work and I came from a mentality where I'm an instrument, I'm just there to make it work basically."

From wearing goofy t-shirts to making reference to various comic book characters, including Marvel's Spider-Man, fans are likely to hear a few pop culture references each episode. Valdes says that's because the crew behind the camera encouraged him to experiment, unlike his previous career path in theater productions.

"That encouraged me over the course of that season to take more liberties with it, make it more my own and make it more of what I thought Cisco was and the potential that I saw in him being this relatable, millennial character," he says. "So, I started to mess with some references and put some of my own little things in there and I think over time it evolved into like a 50/50 kind of thing. So, when you're seeing some sort of pop culture reference now, there's a 50% chance that the writer's wrote it or that I wrote it or whatever, you know what I mean."

The Flash Season Six finale airs on The CW this Tuesday, May 14th at 8/7 p.m. Central.

Who's your favorite character on The Flash? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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