The Flash's Next Season Will Feature the Secret Origin of THAT Newspaper

CBR

By Ian Cardona

Published Aug 30, 2018

It's been revealed that Season 5 of The Flash will feature the origin of The Central City Citizen newspaper, which was first glimpsed in the pilot.

In the very first episode of The CW's The Flash, viewers were introduced to a long-running mystery that still, to this day, has not been addressed. In Eobard Thawne's time vault, there was the holographic image from a newspaper called The Central City Citizen -- a newspaper that doesn't exist yet. Not only did the article on the front page reveal that, in 2024, Barry Allen's heroic alter ego disappears in a Crisis-level event, closer inspection showed that the article was written by Iris West-Allen.

Now, it's been a long and complicated road for Barry Allen and Iris West, but after many ups, downs, time-traveling menaces and multiversal murderers, the two characters finally got married in Season 4 of the series. Therefore, Iris West is now, officially, Iris West-Allen -- which brings us a little closer to the prophecy on the newspaper coming true. And now, it appears as if Season 5 of The Flash will finally reveal the secret origin of The Central City Citizen.

In an interview with TVLine, The Flash showrunner Todd Helbing was asked if Iris' upcoming storyline would build towards that future. Helbing confirmed that Iris is "going to do more journalism [in Season 5] than we’ve seen in quite a while, which is fun — to get Iris out on the streets again." And how does that feed into the Central City Citizen? "The whole idea is that we want to slowly build [her blog] into the Citizen, and she’s running this paper that we’ve seen since Day 1," the showrunner revealed.

In the comic books, Iris West is an accomplished reporter. However, on the television series, it's been a slow buildup to having Iris reach her comic book destiny. The character started her blog back in Season 1. It was called The Streak Lives, and it dealt with the mysterious presence of The Flash, whose heroics were not yet public. Then, after abandoning it for a while, Iris would resume working on the second iteration of her blog, Saved By The Flash. In the Season 4 episode "Run, Iris, Run," Iris West decided to embrace her path as a journalist once more, and she started by resurrecting her blog.

Now that her course is set, it looks like Saved By The Flash will become something much, much greater -- and it will all begin in Season 5 of The Flash.

Returning Tuesday, Oct. 9, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, The Flash stars Grant Gustin, Candice Patton, Carlos Valdes, Danielle Panabaker, Tom Cavanaugh, Jesse L. Martin, Danielle Nicolet, Hartley Sawyer and Jessica Parker Kennedy.