Tonight sees Grant Gustin’s 100th episode as the star of The Flash, and as with Arrow‘s hundredth episode two years ago, it will bring back elements of the show’s past in an attempt at exploring the history of the world it inhabits.
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Gustin and his onscreen daughter Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) travel back in time to tackle old foes, with a focus on the legacy of The Flash — something that Kennedy’s character has been talking a lot about, but which we asked Gustin to consider at a red carpet for the hundredth episode last month.
“It’s something that’s popped into my head a couple of times over the last five years,” Gustin said. “I think that’s something I’ll think about more when this trip is over and appreciate more when the journey of the series is over. But I mean, it’s pretty cool. If I do nothing else, I was The Flash for 100 episodes.”
During those 100 episodes, few plot points have stuck in the audience’s mind as persistently as the ties to Crisis on Infinite Earths, a comic book storyline in which Barry Allen died at the hands of the Anti-Monitor. After a few years largely on the back burner, plot elements from Crisis are back in a big way in the show’s current, fifth season.
“It is really fulfilling” to see some of the Crisis stuff play out, Gustin told ComicBook.com. “I hope we can stick around long enough to see what’s going on with that newspaper article. We’d have to make it four more seasons, five more seasons. It’s cool, though. It feels like it’s earned. Me and Stephen had that conversation a lot during the crossover, actually. There’s a lot of even just comedic moments that we have that are funny because they’re earned — because of the history of the characters and the journey they’ve been on. It is one of the best parts of doing these as a series versus a film — people have been with us. I’ve met kids who have gone through all of high school watching this show. To have that kind of stamp on people’s lives is pretty special.”
That ten-year timeline mirrors what Gustin told us at San Diego Comic Con in 2017, when he said, “We don’t really talk about on a yearly basis but it was mentioned early on and that’s a goal. Obviously we’d have to go I think ten years to reach that. So there’s a possibility for sure. It’ll be fun to get there.”
Another place Gustin would not mind getting (back) to? Earth-2. After years playing Barry, time traveling, moving between universes, and now, it seems, interacting with John Wesley Shipp’s Earth-90 take on the character, Gustin admits that one of the first alternate versions of Barry he ever embodied is one he would not mind checking back in with.
“I would like to see what’s going on with our Earth-2 Barry and Iris,” Gustin said. “With the exception of our guy Barry, that was my favorite version of Barry Allen. I’d like to pop in on them and see how they’re doing.”
The Flash airs on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT, before episodes of Black Lightning on The CW.
