WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Flash Season 7, Episode 18, "Heart of the Matter, Part 2," which aired Tuesday on The CW.
The ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic forced The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace and his team to scale down their plans for Season 7 -- but if anything, that only made the season more difficult.
"I’d say the reduced order [18 episodes] was probably the biggest challenge, because we had a much larger, more involved story to tell in Season 7 that we had to truncate down, essentially," Wallace told TVLine. "And that was a result of having not just a shorter season because of COVID, but also the last three episodes of last year ended up being in this season. Suddenly we found ourselves having to do three things instead of two, which required a lot of story juggling. We got through it, but I’d say that was a pretty darn big challenge."
The Flash Season 7, as Wallace mentioned, kicked off by wrapping up Season 6's Mirrorverse storyline over its first three episodes, then tackling its own distinct narrative. According to Wallace, those episodes were "bigger and wilder" before being scaled back in response to the protocols put in place for filming throughout the pandemic. "Oh, and we also had some cast issues, because of the mental challenge of [the COVID-19 pandemic]," he added. "It was definitely the most challenging season of television I have ever been through -- and ever hope to go through."
In order to work around the limitations on how many actors could be on-set at a time, Season 7 divided up its cast, giving characters like Joe West and Allegra Garcia individual subplots that took them away from the rest of Team Flash. On the upside, Wallace pointed out this "allowed some of the other side characters to shine for a full episode." Similarly, Wallace said he and his crew wound up having to do "so many wonderful, clever things" to realize "The One With The Nineties," a Groundhog Day-style episode that finds Cisco Ramon and Chester P. Runk stuck in a time loop in the year 1998.
Following the Season 7 finale, Wallace teased there are many dangling story threads that need addressing when The Flash returns, including Iris West-Allen's time sickness. He also hyped the five-episode event planned for the start of Season 8, saying it will have "that same feeling as a crossover, even though it’s not a crossover."
The Flash Season 8 is scheduled to premiere Nov. 16 on The CW.
Source: TVLine