The Flash Showrunners Reveal Alternate Ending Ideas Involving Crisis, Negative Forces, and More

The Flash TV show saw Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen make his final run, as he once again faced some of his fellow speedster rogues such as the Reverse Flash, Zoom, Savitar, Godspeed and the new Cobalt Blue.

After defeating them, his wife Iris West-Allen won a Pulitzer prize for her journalistic work, while also giving birth to their daughter, Nora. Along with that, The Flash teased the presence of other hero speedsters from the comics such as Max Mercury, Jesse Chambers and Avery Ho.

However, things could have been very different for the character, especially if Grant Gustin had his way. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actor revealed that he had loved the fan-favorite ending of Barry becoming the lightning bolt that gave him his powers. “It was a fan theory I saw online about Barry sacrificing himself to the Speed Force and becoming the lightning bolt that struck him in this full circle moment,” he said. However, showrunner Eric Wallace struck down the idea, as he preferred Barry and Iris having a happy ending, instead of having a hero’s death like Oliver Queen did in the Arrow TV series.

Wallace himself had an alternate idea of continuing the Negative Forces storyline the show introduced in Season 8. However, with The Flash ending with Season 9, he didn’t get the required Season 10 to set up the storyline. “We didn’t get it quite as I wanted but the Negative Forces storyline would’ve been far, far bigger,” he noted. Moreover, he also teased the final season to have a crossover based on DC’s Blackest Night storyline.

Former showrunner Todd Helbing also had ideas for The Flash’s ending, while working from Season 2-5. Prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, Helbing wanted the show to end on the now famous “Flash vanishes in Crisis” newspaper headline becoming a reality. Similarly, he also had the idea of Barry becoming the lightning bolt that gave him his powers. “