The Flash series finale has now come and gone, and OG Team Flash member Cisco Ramon did not put in one final, crowd-pleasing encore.
Original cast member Carlos Valdes, who exited the Arrowverse series after Season 7, had told TVLine back in January, “I can’t imagine a scenario” where Cisco doesn’t to some degree figure into the Arrowverse series’ final run.
But with only seven weeks of filming left at that point, it was not meant to be. And another of TVLine readers’ Top 6 wishes for the final season bit the dust.
Valdes would later explain to EW.com, “I did consider” returning for the series finale, but “there was no way to make it happen with regards to my schedule and just all the different creative ventures and life circumstances that I was trying to juggle at that time.”
Missing out on the series’ swan song “was really heartbreaking to me,” Valdes said, “because I thought, if I decided to step away from the show [after Season 7], at the very least I have to be there for the finale to … really honor the full circle-ness of it.”
The Flash front man Grant Gustin told TVLine it “was really weird” to not have Valdes back, even for one final appearance.
“Carlos and I talk a lot,” Gustin shared during his visit to TVLine’s New York office, “but he lives here, he’s doing a show here, and I guess it wasn’t possible to get him back for the last season.
“That was one of the weirder parts of it being the final season,” Gustin reiterated. “We got Tom [Cavanagh/Eobard Thawne] back [for the finale], and Jesse [L. Martin/Joe] is back but not in the same capacity,” having stepped down as a series regular to star in NBC’s The Irrational. “It was so weird that Tom, Jesse and Carlos weren’t there for every day of what we were doing, because they were such staples of my experience on The Flash.”
Were you sad to not see The Flash‘s Cisco one last time?
This story originally appeared on TVLine