It was also surprising to go to this week’s episode of SparkleDeath Falls testified that the Flash team delivered a blow that could be the most shocking and difficult of all. Last week, it was confirmed that the episode would see the death of a major character and even before that, showrunner Eric Wallace promised that the events in Season 8 would change Team Flash forever. This change came in the fight against Deathstorm as the team’s efforts to stop the deadly entity came at a high cost. Now, series star Danielle Banabaker has broken the Flash’s heavy loss in the episode and talked about their next move. Warning: There will be spoilers for Death Falls after this point.
In “Death Falls,” Team Flash turns Frost into Hell Frost so she can fight the Deathstorm, and this transformation gives her the ability to face him and defeat him as well. Of course, it’s a plan that doesn’t necessarily go smoothly. Deathstorm tries to get into Frost’s head and convince her that she’s not real. More specifically, tell her that she is nothing but a copy of the real Caitlin and as a result she has no feelings of her own. Because of that, she is not a real person and never will be. This almost prevents Frost from turning, but eventually she realizes that it doesn’t mean her pain and grief isn’t real, just that she buried everything so deeply because she loves her sister so much. After dealing with her fear of losing Caitlin, transformation works, making Frost the perfect weapon against the Deathstorm. And it works: Hell Frost defeats Deathstorm and Caitlin is rescued, but it doesn’t end well for Frost. Frost dies after her fight with Death Storm despite Caitlin’s best efforts to save her.
According to Panabaker, Frost’s death is something she knew before heading into Season 8 and that the fan-favorite character’s demise was something she wanted him to have some actual oomph, something that should be more than a “fake exit”.
“This was actually something Eric advised me last summer,” Banabaker said. “I think by the time we were wrapping up season seven, he was coming up with ideas for season eight. My biggest fear was that I didn’t want it to be fake. I wanted it to be real death. It just doesn’t seem fair that this should be such an inconvenience. So, I knew the whole season.”
Panabaker also said she was pleased with how things handled the story. She explained that she felt the writers did a good job of giving Frost a full story and getting a lot of things done before the end was important.
“Knowing that the book is coming, the book has done a good job of fleshing out Frost’s story all the way to the end of the road for her,” Banabaker said. “And that gives different weight to all the different episodes and moments before that. The fact that she’s in a relatively mature and healthy relationship with Mark looks a little different when you realize it’s her last episode and the fact that she was able to find some solutions in terms of her relationship with her mother, I think that’s important also “.
Frost’s approach to her identity—the question of whether it was really her own—was also important.
“I think this has been her biggest struggle and I think it’s really nice to see her come on her own and become the hero who saves the situation,” she added.
For Caitlin and the rest of Team Flash, Frost’s death will be something everyone will have a hard time dealing with as the season goes on.
“I think this is going to be a real challenge for Caitlin,” Banabaker said. “She hadn’t had a partner in the romantic or platonic sense in years and I think Frost really filled that void. And despite the fact that their relationship, which wasn’t perfect, that she loved, Frost was her partner in just about every sense and loss of that person, sister and friend. All of that, I think, would be devastating for her and I’m not sure how she will recover.”
“It’s a huge loss for them,” Banabaker said of the Flash team. “Last year when I left Cisco, that was a loss, but he came back and it was a different kind of gold, but not forever. Frost is gone forever, and I think it would take a minute for Team Flash to find a foothold.”
Sparkle It airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.
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