‘The Flash’: Tom Cavanagh On Returning As Reverse-Flash For A Finale Rendezvous & His Hopes For A Spinoff

SPOILER ALERT! This post contains spoilers from the series finale of The CW‘s The Flash.

Reverse-Flash returned to Central City for the final installment of The CW series’ four-part finale on Sunday, bringing the series full circle as The Flash faced off against his original nemesis once more.

Tom Cavanagh told Deadline he’d been expecting to don the yellow suit to help close out the series, as he and executive producer Greg Berlanti had plotted the moment since the series’ early days.

“The understanding was always like, Joker needs Batman,” Cavanagh said. “So [the end] will look a lot the way we came in with Reverse-Flash there.”

And that’s exactly how the series did end, with Reverse-Flash joining Zoom, Savitar and Godspeed to help Eddie Thawne (as the new avatar for the Negative Speed Force) destroy Barry Allen and his legacy. Cavanagh called it a “privilege” to be back on set for The Flash, but he’s hoping it won’t be the last time he ever puts on that striking yellow suit.

“There’s always room for a Reverse-Flash spin off,” he teased.

Cavanagh spoke with Deadline more about returning as Reverse-Flash, his tenure on the series, and his ideas to keep the Arrowverse alive.

DEADLINE: Tell me about receiving the call to return one last time as Reverse-Flash.

TOM CAVANAGH: I always knew it would happen. [The show] started out Flash versus Reverse-Flash for the whole Season 1. I think it was some of the best, taut script writing that we encountered on The Flash. Season 1 was just very much driven and in a strange way, simple is sometimes better in television. There wasn’t a lot of extra adornment necessary… I think we all benefited from it and once we’d done it, Greg and I had done a few shows already together and they hadn’t really lasted. That’s quite more often the norm than a series that runs nine years. So, we don’t go into things like this anticipating. I think we had some wiggle room with the success of Arrow, but nothing is promised. We didn’t really know what to expect. I think Greg and I, having been canceled after one season on one show and after three on another, you’re hyper aware that the sword of Damocles is always kind of dangling over you. To have a successful first season and be invited back, the awareness was quickly like, ‘Well, we can’t do that again.’ We can’t do Flash versus Reverse-Flash, and Reverse Flash was the reason I had signed on to the show. And so I was kind of like, ‘Well, thank you. All the best. Wishing nothing but success.’ But then Greg had the idea of coming up with different [characters]. I created a number of them on this run. But the understanding was always like, Joker needs Batman. So [the end] will look a lot the way we came in with Reverse-Flash there. So I was always aware that, as per what Greg and I sort of agreed on at the beginning, that’s how it would play out. 

DEADLINE: So it was a full circle moment for you.

CAVANAGH: The nice thing about playing the main villain is the departure is never really final. Even to this day, if you watch the finale, you’re well aware that a blast like that wouldn’t kill the Reverse-Flash. So there’s always room for a Reverse-Flash spin off, which I’m more than willing to don that cool and elegant yellow suit once again and tell the Reverse-Flash spinoff story.

DEADLINE: That’d be a fun spinoff. Have you discussed that with Greg?

CAVANAGH: I pitched Greg [Berlanti]… this idea that was like, ‘Look at him as one of those Dragons of Yore that are impenetrable but for one weakness that is a scale and that is the vulnerability. What if Reverse-Flash fell for some paramore on Earth and that created the obstacle for him getting back, because much against his will, he’d fallen in love.’ That’s a human story. You can’t really tell that complicated of a Reverse-Flash story on a television show called The Flash, because you have to serve The Flash. As a cast member, I’ve always been more than willing and ready to do that, but now that The Flash is done, there’s always room to explore that story. So, you never know. 

DEADLINE: Well, the best villains are the ones who don’t lose that shred of humanity. 

CAVANAGH: That is exactly right. You literally hit the nail on the head. If you’re just some nefarious, evil No Good Nick and you’re twirling your mustache, there’s no depth to that character. If you have a reason, a raison d’etre as they say, where you want to achieve something that isn’t evil — at least it’s not evil in your eyes. Like Reverse-Flash wants to get home or Reverse-Flash has fallen in love. There’s no doubt at all that Thawne is up to no good, but there’s a reason for it. And not only that, he’s not devoid of charisma. He enjoys burning the heck out of Central City. He delights in his machinations, and it gives him a level of panache, because he’s a full fledged and hopefully well rounded character. If he were just the bad guy, it wouldn’t be as appealing. It seems that the viewers tend to understand that and for that, I’m grateful. Totally.

DEADLINE: So tell me about those final days on set. What were they like?

CAVANAGH: I think that that question is better posed to people that stayed for the length of it, like Candice Patton and Grant Gustin, because I imagine their emotional level was no doubt off the charts. It felt very intense, nonetheless, even for someone like me, who departed three years earlier. [Former] showrunner Todd Helbing may have put it best. Around the mid run, he was like, ‘Look, these people invite us into their homes for a full hour every week. Can you imagine? And it’s our duty and our responsibility — and as the showrunner, he was saying I feel that burden to — not let that hour down in their eyes. Obviously, we’re not always going to succeed. But the idea was, we wanted that viewership to know that we were always trying to tell the best story that we could. So I think when you invest that kind of effort, whether it goes one year or six years or nine years, it’s going to be emotional when you’re not telling the story anymore. I think that was probably where a lot of the members of the cast were coming from and the crew. You bond so much. I think the viewership sees what happens on camera, but that’s a small amount of the day. So much of the day is the off camera stuff and you bond with people, you laugh with people, you spend nights in the rain with people, you go through all these adventures together and saying goodbye is always hard.

DEADLINE: What is your favorite part about playing the “bad guy,” so to speak?

CAVANAGH: There’s a number of things. I was blessed by the talents of the costume designer Kate Main, who designed the suits for us for so many years. If you saw Season 7 or Season 8, where I was in the black suit as Negative Flash, it was like a tour de force. They spent so many hours cutting and stitching and measuring and then you put the thing on…and it fit like a glove. They just did such a beyond spectacular job, and looking good on camera, you’re gonna get so much of the credit and none of the credit is due to you. It’s due to these people who spend countless hours putting that thing together. It costs thousands and thousands of dollars, and you’re the beneficiary. Then, the action that you do in this is twitch the stunt women and the stunt men — I’ve always felt like that’s been a massive highlight of doing a superhero show, is being part of the stunt team. The amount of thrilling hours and preparation and work that goes into making some spectacle look like it’s spontaneous and being privy and part of that stunt group is something that I will always consider a privilege. 

DEADLINE: Until we hear about that Reverse-Flash spinoff, what are you going to miss about the Arrowverse?

CAVANAGH: I don’t know that I will miss much, and that’s not to say that I’m not grateful and appreciative. It’s just that when you’ve done a number of shows, they’re circles that you complete and then you carry them with you. It’s like, you’d never want Scrubs to end or Ed or Love Monkey or Trust Me or all those shows that I’ve done in the past I’ve adored being a part of and whether it was a minute or 10 minutes or 10 years. I don’t know that you’re ever ready to say, ‘Okay, that’s it. I’m glad it’s over.’ My mantra has always been to proceed from gratitude. And so it’s less of a case of missing something, and much more a case of being grateful for having been a part of the multiverse.