Kevin Smith Pays Tribute to Flash TV Series: “I’ve Got Great Wonderful Memories”

In the latest episode of his Fat Man Beyond podcast, filmmaker and geek icon Kevin Smith praised the nine-season run of Berlanti Productions’ The Flash, which wrapped up last month on The CW. Pointing out that Grant Gustin’s Flash finished his run just in time to pass the proverbial baton to Ezra MIller’s version on the big screen, Smith said that he met people during his time working on The Flash who are still friends of his to this day, and who he still regularly works with. He praised the series, and noticed that the final episode paid a subtle homage to Smith’s own season two episode “The Runaway Dinosaur.”

Besides The Flash, Smith’s well-documented love for the Arrowverse resulted in him directing episodes of Supergirl. While he joked that Gustin “deserves better” than being in a Kevin Smith movie after nine years telling Flash stories in Vancouver, Smith has brought in Supergirl stars Melissa Benoist, Chris Wood, and Jesse Rath for cameos in some of those same movies.

“The Arrowverse f—ing ended. It’s over,” Smith said in the podcast. “I’m not going to say it’s never happening again because in this best of all possible worlds, everything f—ing comes back. Michael Keaton is back as Batman, so if that’s the case, you may indeed one day see Grant Gustin as The Flash again, and the Arrowverse may breathe again. But they did end. After nine seasons, [The Flash] went out. They referenced the episode that I made with the great Zack Stentz. He wrote the script called ‘The Runaway Dinosaur.’ At one point, Barry’s talking to his baby and they showed the little baby book of The Runaway Dinosaur. I’ve got great, wonderful memories of working on The Flash. I’ve got great, wonderful memories of working on The Flash. I’ve got great, wonderful memories watching it. You don’t even have to remember it; there’s videos of me online watching the finale of season one, crying like a f—ing child because it’s so beautiful. And I aggregated from fans to working on that f—ing show. I got to meet my heroes in real life and help tell their story back in seasons 2 and 3. All great things come to an end, and that came to an end.”

You can see the full episode of Fat Man Beyond below.

“We salute the Berlanti-verse, which for a while there was doing the Lord’s work,” Smith added. “We now live in a world where ‘multiverse’ is a cinematic term and we’re goin to see from what I’ve heard in the new Flash movie some amazing shit involving movies that never even happened, they’re going to reference as Flash races across time, but I’ll never f—ingforget seeing Flash run and catching a glimpse of the Flash museum. That was f—ingmind-bending to me. I’ll never forget Tom Cavanagh as Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, sitting in his cell, telling him ‘So run, Barry. Run.’ Show had such wonderful f—ingmoments and episodes and it came to an end, so congratulations to all my Flash friends in front of the camera and behind the camera. The folks who made him run in every episode over and over again, we salute you. You did the Lord’s work. Now, rest easy, speedsters.”