Julian’s Absence From ‘The Flash’ Season 4 Explained

The Flash‘s fourth season is officially here, and fans get an explanation for Julian’s absence from Team Flash early on.

Mild spoilers for The Flash‘s season four premiere, ‘The Flash Reborn’, below.

Early in tonight’s episode, Joe (Jesse L. Martin) tells Iris (Candice Patton) that they’ve been short staffed at the crime lab “ever since Julian moved back to London” with the implication that with Barry’s absence getting harder to explain they are going to have to replace Barry.

The explanation that Julian (Tom Felton) essentially went home after the events of last season makes good on what the show’s co-executive producer Todd Helbing revealed to fans last month in that that the character’s absence would a mystery explained early on.

“You’ll see pretty quickly — there’s a reason why he’s no longer with the team,” Helbing explained.

Julian simply moving back to England also keeps the door open for the character to return in the future as he is still on good terms with Team Flash.

“There’s always the chance that we can see anybody on this show return.” Helbing added. “We’ve had a lot of characters come and go for various reasons, and I don’t think this will be any different.”

Though we now know where Julian went after Barry entered the Speed Force last season his reason why hasn’t been directly addressed, though thanks to Danielle Panabaker we can guess that at least part of his motivation may be the fizzling out of his relationship with her character, Caitlin Snow/Killer Frost.

“Here’s the one thing I will say about Caitlin’s relationship with Julian last year — I think he was more into her than she was into him.” Panabaker explained earlier this summer. “She was dealing with so much personal stuff, so much turmoil, as she was learning about her powers. So, I think it’s a loss for the show and for Team Flash, but I don’t know that Caitlin feels Julian’s absence as deeply as she felt, for example, [her late fiancé] Ronnie’s absence.”

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c, on The CW.