Carlos Valdes: The Flash Season 3 Challenges The Cast to Create Something Completely New

Everybody loves The Flash‘s Cisco Ramon — but will they still when the new season debuts in October and Cisco (along with pretty much everything else in The Flash’s world) is radically changed by the events of “Flashpoint?”

That’s the question we wanted to put to Carlos Valdes, who plays the good-humored engineer who provides gear, computers, and more to the superhero community of The CW’s DC Universe.

What’s the world around him like now that things are different — and, something we didn’t know at the time but do now — Cisco is the richest man in America?

Valdes joined ComicBook.com during a press event at last week’s Comic Con International: San Diego for a brief interview. You can see it here, or read on below.

What can you tell us about the dynamic between the S.T.A.R. Labs team now that things are so different?

I mean, different is the word, right? That’s the key word, it’s different. In our typical reality that viewers are used to, you have a dynamic that’s very locked in: friends that know each other and have gone through thick and thing together and they’re bonded and united by all of that struggle and so they click really well.

In this universe, some of those people doin’t even know each other, so you’re already having to deal with dynamic hurdles in that respect. I think for Barry, there’s a struggle there to put the pieces back to how he knows them to be.

Does Cisco even know who Barry is? It seems like he may not have even come to S.T.A.R. Labs, if even S.T.A.R. Labs exists.

He does not know Cisco. But the scene where he sees this version Cisco and discovers all that…it’s been very entertaining playing that, I’ll say that much.

The first season, a lot of the fun of your character was getting to see him react to each new thing. Now that we’re in a totally new world, has it been fun to rediscover that sense of wonder a little bit?

Oh, absolutely. That’s gripping work. What people want to see in theater and art is discovery, you know what I mean? And I think there’s plenty of that to go around, especially in the first episode of the new season.

So yeah, it’s been a lot of fun playing new colors, but there’s also a challenge to it because we have the muscle memory of having played these characters and these dynamics these past two years. It takes more work and more effort to come up with something completely new.

The Flash returns for its third season on October 4 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.