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The Flash: Shadowhunters Star Jon Cor Joins Season 7 in Chilling Role
The Flash executive producer Eric Wallace doesn't plan on making the seventh season of the long-running The CW series easy on Barry Allen (Grant Gustin). Following up on word that The Scarlet Speedster would be facing off against Mirror Master Eva McCulloch (Efrat Dor) and the "even more powerful and devastating threat on Central City" that gets unleashed and that Barry would finally go toe-to-toe with the real Godspeed, TVLine is reporting that Jon Cor (Shadowhunters) has joined the season's "big bad" line-up- cast in the recurring guest star role of Mark Stevens aka Chillblaine.
In the description obtained, Cor's Mark Stevens is a charismatic bad boy scientist obsessed with cryogenic technology. But when he's not breaking into corporate safes, he's busy breaking hearts with his irresistible charm and roguish style. Armed with his own cold weapons, he'll become a new thorn in the side of Team Flash as Chillblaine. For those not familiar with the comics, Chillblaine was the on-again, off-again villain Golden Glider aka Lisa Snart (though Peyton List is not expected to reprise the role).
Wallace explained heading into the season's production how the series will handle being without Hartley Sawyer (Ralph Dibney aka Elongated Man), who was fired from The CW's long-running Arrowverse series after a number of tweets from Sawyer's past came to light that contained misogynist, homophobic, and racist language. First, the obvious question: is this the last we'll see of Ralph Dibney aka Elongated Man? Wallace admits that the character will be taking "a bit of a rest for a while," but viewers shouldn't assume that means he's gone for good. While Wallace chalks up the ability to bring him back as "the beauty of comic book stories and superhero stories," it sounds like his stretching abilities will come into play to cast a new actor.
"The beauty of comic book stories and superhero stories are the conventions that heroes come and go, but they never fade away and they never disappear entirely. So we're going to treat it like we would if we were writing a comic book graphic novel. We're giving the Elongated Man a bit of a rest for a while. But we will leave the door open," Wallace revealed. "Who knows what the future could bring. It is unknown. But I'm not saying by any means that it's the end of the character, in fact, quite the opposite. We just don't know when he will return, or in what form he will return. And that's the beauty of comic book stories. It keeps it fresh."
In fact, it sounds like that's exactly how Wallace and the creative team will still be able to have Elongated Man involved at the beginning of the seventh season (a must considering the role he plays in one of the major sixth season cliffhangers) without needing Sawyer: "In order to wrap that up, which we're going to do at the top of season 7, Ralph has to be part of that. Now thank goodness, Ralph is a guy who can change faces and his appearance in many ways. Without giving any spoilers away, there are a couple of ways that we can have Elongated Man still appear in at least one episode this season to wrap that storyline up, that gets us what we need and still allows fans to say goodbye to the character, at least for the indefinite future."
Wallace didn't hold back during the interview, also revealing that not having Elongated Man around did impact a major Season 7 storyline: "There was a whole storyline that involved Ralph with another character, in particular, going off on a two-hander journey — a season-long [arc] that would have involved a whole bunch of twists and turns that would have played into the season's big bad, which I don't want to spoil. And yeah, we can't do that anymore," Wallace explained. But what's Ralph's loss will be another character's gain: "We pulled the Elongated Man out of this particular storyline, and the storyline became so much stronger because now it's focused on the other character, [who] I don't want to reveal because it's a surprise. For that other character, it became a much more of an emotional journey. And this other character I'm referring to is one of our series regulars, so it's going to be very exciting. That particular character now gets to go somewhere that we never imagined they would until many seasons down the line, but we just pulled that up. So I think it's going to be really fun. And it was a good way to, like I said, make an awkward situation into a great opportunity that ends up making Team Flash as a whole, stronger."