Arrow's "The Man Under the Hood" To Feature Killer Frost, Vibe

Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow -- better known to DC Comics fans as Vibe and Killer Frost -- will appear in the upcoming nineteenth episode of Arrow, according to Executive Producer Marc Guggenheim. The episode will be written by Geoff Johns, Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti, the team behind The Flash's pilot. The episode, titled "The Man Under the Hood," will tie into the upcoming TV adaptation of DC Comics's The Flash, and will star cast members from that show's pilot, including Danielle Panabaker as Snow and Carlos Valdes as Ramon. The title of the episode had not been released until this weekend, when Guggenheim tweeted it ahead of a gathering of reporters today in Burbank to screen the next two episodes, titled "Suicide Squad" and "Birds of Prey." It was at the screening and subsequent Q&A that Guggenheim confirmed the Flash news, which had leaked over the weekend on Reddit.

"The reason I've been holding off on tweeting the title page for Nineteen is Nineteen is co-written by Geoff Johns, Andrew Kreisberg, and Greg Berlanti -- the team behind the The Flash -- and I felt like if I tweeted that, the jig would be up," Guggenheim said. "Little did I know the jig would get out itself." The original plan was to film a backdoor pilot in Episode 20 of Arrow but with the network high on the project and big ratings for Barry Allen's Arrow appearances, the producers elected to film a regular pilot directed by David Nutter instead, presumably with an eye toward a quick series pickup like Arrow got. It seems that there will nevertheless be at least one episode that introduces Barry's cast. "Danielle Panabaker who plays Caitlin and Carlos Valdes who plays Cisco, two members of S.T.A.R. Labs who are part of the regular cast of The Flash, do make an important appearance in Episode 19 of Arrow," he continued. "This was something that really came about because obviously Barry is in a coma at the end of Episode 9. That pretty much made it impossible for Barry to appear in Episode 19, 20, pick an episode ofArrow, because he's got to stay in a coma until October of next year!...Whenever people would ask 'is Barry going to show up on the show?' I'd be like, 'he's in a coma! What do you want?' One of our writers had a great pitch for bringing in a couple of the S.T.A.R. Labs characters, Cisco and Caitlin, and even though the circumstances of that pitch changed, the idea of bringing in those characters really, really appealed to us, because it allowed us to honor our original intention that we had at the beginning of the year, which is doing something Flash-related around episode 19 or 20." When they were cast, Ramon was described as "a mechanical engineering genius and the youngest member of the team of scientists at STAR Labs. Born into a lower-income family, Cisco's brains and talent helped him reach his potential. He is loyal and eager and provides the comic relief in contrast to his stiff co-workers. Best part: He is as much of a comic book fanboy as Barry." Snow is a highly intelligent bioengineering expert who lost her fiancé during an explosion at S.T.A.R. Labs (seen in Arrow and likely to be the source of many superhumans' powers, like the asteroid strike in Smallville). In the comics, Snow eventually becomes Killer Frost, a villain with ice-based powers. She has connections to H.I.V.E., an organization that's been referenced in Arrow, and is most closely associated with the hero Firestorm, whose stepmother in the comics was Felicity Smoak, a regular character on Arrow.