Showrunner Eric Wallace on the Series’ More Female-Driven Stories

Season 7 of The CW’s The Flash is a bit unique when compared to previous seasons of the Arrowverse series. While the show is still centered around its titular hero, the larger Team Flash has played a larger role and even within that, there have been more stories that center on and are driven by the show’s female character. Allegra Garcia (Kayla Compton), Cecile Horton (Danielle Nicolet), and Frost (Danielle Panabaker) have each had episodes centered around their stories while Iris West Allen (Candice Patton) has been an increasingly more central character as well and it’s not something that’s happened by chance.

Speaking with Insider about the overall more diverse stories being told on The Flash, series showrunner Eric Wallace explained that telling stories that don’t reflect the real world is unacceptable to him as a storyteller, and that means more female-driven stories.

“Last time I checked 51% of the population of the planet was female,” Wallace said. “That means any story must reflect that world. And if it does not, you are not only doing a disservice to your audience, you’re just being inaccurate, factually. And I don’t accept that as a storyteller.”

Wallace also explained that the groundwork for those stories came with the creation of Team Citizen. Wallace said that when he pitched the concept, he wanted the characters to have their own stories independent of The Flash.

“They were like, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘I’m not sure, but I know it’s all women, all kick-ass, all doing their own thing, and it has nothing to do with The Flash unless their stories collide,” Wallace said. Team Citizen would ultimately lay the groundwork for Iris’s journey in the Mirrorverse story for the second half of Season 6 (with that journey being concluded during the first few episodes of Season 7 due to COVID-19.)

And even though one of the original members of Team Citizen, Kamila (Victoria Park) is no longer in Central City as she and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) moved on earlier this season, the show’s female characters are still having a chance to shine. Next week’s “P.O.W.” may be focused on the Godspeed War and John Diggle (David Ramsey) arriving to help, but the episode synopsis also notes that Allegra’s continued story with her cousin Esperanza/Ultraviolet (Alexa Baraja Plante) will also be a major component of the episode.

The Flash airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on The CW.

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