Rebooting a Hero: The Story Behind ‘The Flash’s’ New, Diverse Firestorm

However, while Jax seems like a candidate to merge with Stein to become Firestorm, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) has a few notable reservations.

The episode is described as follows: “Barry and the team look for another Firestorm match for Dr. Stein (Victor Garber)”.

The Flash executive producer Andrew Kreisberg had high praise for Panabaker, saying, “I thought she was wonderful in this episode”.

This Tuesday on “The Flash”, the team work to find Ronnie’s replacement in hopes of saving Professor Stein, whose health is deteriorating without a Firestorm counterpart – so get ready to meet the new Firestorm! Plus: The name Henry Hewitt should ring a bell for comic book fans as the alter ego of Tokamak, a famous Firestorm villain. Obviously, Robbie and the character that we created for our Ronnie was obviously an engineer and was more mature and has a girlfriend. “So the second Firestorm is somebody who is just in his early 20s and somebody who was radically different from this Firestorm”. Barry was just as reluctant to work with Jay as Joe West (Jesse L. Martin) was unwilling to partner up with Patty. What’s your take on the new Firestorm? “To essentially throw all that away and become a superhero is a very daunting thing, and a responsibility that he’s not sure he can handle”. But we still don’t see that many black superheroes. The Flash will be introducing African-American actor Franz Drameh as the new half of Firestorm.

“I can appreciate you feeling like this is suddenly the right time for you to want me in your life, but that does not mean it is the right time for me”, says Iris. If people say, ‘It’s not like that in the comics!’ Well, comic books reinvent their characters a lot. That’s what, I think, keeps people watching – that connection, and they do that really well on “Legends” as they do on the other shows, and that’s what keeps me interested, frankly. They do different things with them all the time.

It won’t just be the character pool that changes, either — fans can also expect a shift in tone. The least spoilery spoiler alert ahead: Drameh was long-ago tapped to star in the Arrow-Flash spin-off DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, so it should come as no surprise that he’ll be the next Firestorm – he’s even wearing the Firestorm matrix in the photo above.

Off-screen and on-screen, Jax will add a healthy dose of reality to the whole superhero situation. “He’s not super smart, he’s not familiar with the science world”. It’s going to be refreshing to see how a character like that reacts, because he does react how I would react in that situation.

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.