The Flash: SPOILER’S Fate Revealed in “Hear No Evil”

At the end of Season 8 of The Flash, Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) was determined to bring back her sister after Frost essentially sacrificed herself to save the world from Deathstorm. However, while Caitlin went into the CRC pod, it wasn’t Caitlin or Frost who came out and in the Season 9 premiere, this new person came face to face with Barry (Grant Gustin). This week, we finally officially meet the newcomer — as well as find out what her arrival means for Caitlin.

Warning: spoilers for this week’s episode of The Flash, “Hear No Evil”, beyond this point.

Straight out of the gate, the episode introduces both Team Flash and the viewer to Snow. It turns out that Snow is something of a “blank slate” — meaning that she has no memories at all, and she is just learning who she is. However, Mark (Jon Cor) also has some distressing news about what that means for Caitlin. It would seem that Caitlin is dead. Like Frost, she just exists as neural DNA and that to bring Caitlin back, Mark needs Team Flash’s help to essentially reverse the process that created Snow.

It turns out that’s not exactly the truth, however. Mark is actually trying to bring back both Caitlin and Frost, but there’s more complications beyond that. Turns out that, at one point, Thomas Snow tried to reverse what he did, but there was no way to do so that wouldn’t kill either Caitlin or Frost. Team Flash comes to realize that the only way to bring back anyone is that they will have to choose between Caitlin, Frost, and the brand new Snow. The team decides to put it to a vote as to who they should bring back and the vote is cast in Frost’s favor, but ultimately, Barry realizes that the choice should be Snow’s and, in the end, Snow chooses herself and gives herself a proper name. Snow chooses the name Khione, Frost’s original name given to her by Thomas.

Khione choosing herself means that both Caitlin and Frost are truly gone. For Panabaker, saying goodbye to Caitlin was a bit of a surprise, but she’s also enjoying playing Khione as well.

“The idea that someone else would be coming out of the CRC was something that Eric had pitched sort of at the end of season eight when it became finalized that we were going to do a season nine,” Panabaker said. “The end of season eight was always meant to be Caitlin doing whatever it took to get Frost back. And then with the idea of taking it another season, Eric’s idea was to have a different character come out of the CRC. At the time, I did not know that that also would mean that that was the death of Caitlin. But as always, I’m excited for the challenge of creating a new character on this show.”

She continued, “I think the intention, or the hope was that there would be seasons nine and ten of The Flash. So, the idea of playing Khione, I didn’t know that that was only after Caitlin had died, and I wasn’t sure how many episodes that would be, and I didn’t know that would be that this would be the end of the series. These revelations are sort of coming one after another and I think all I could do was process them one at a time. Obviously really excited to get to play another character and get to explore another character, that’s a real gift on a show that’s been running for nine years, that I’ve gotten to do so much and try and play so much on this show. Obviously sad to say goodbye to Caitlin because that was how everything on The Flash started for me was with her. Not only on The Flash, but in this Berlanti-verse, this Arrowverse.”

The Flash airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.