The Flash said farewell to one of its original cast members in its most recent episode. 7×12 “Good-Bye Vibrations” saw Carlos Valdes make his final regular appearance on the long-running DC TV series after starring as Cisco Ramon since the very beginning. Cisco’s exit didn’t come as a huge surprise, seeing as he’s taken a bit of a backseat for a while now, and also because the character moving away from Central City had been set up in previous weeks, but it was still an emotional outing.
Though promos threatened that Cisco could die, thankfully this turned out to be just a case of false advertising. After defeating a new version of Rainbow Raider, he was able to move forward with his plan to leave to start a fresh life with girlfriend Kamilla (Victoria Park) in Star City, where he’ll be taking a job with A.R.G.U.S. But before he went, he spent one last night hanging out with his best pals – Barry (Grant Gustin), Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) and Joe (Jesse L. Martin).
Cisco gave each of them a parting gift – one of his patented graphic tees – before the OG Team Flash had some fun singing “Poker Face” together, a reference to a joke from The Flash pilot. As character goodbyes go, then, it was a pretty low-key affair, but Valdes thinks it was the “perfect sendoff” for a light-hearted person like Cisco. As he explained in an interview reflecting on the episode with ComicBook.com:
“I thought it was the perfect sendoff for Cisco because Cisco obviously, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is kind of part of why we love Cisco so much because he’s always able to imbue the right amount of levity in the right kind of situation,” Valdes said. “So it’s not something that’s like super poignant or anything like that, and yet at the same time, we recognize that these silly shirts have carried tremendous emotional weight for Cisco, and his friends and family understand that. So yeah, I think it was the perfect sendoff for Cisco.”
The good news is that this definitely isn’t the last time we’ll see S.T.A.R. Labs’ resident genius engineer in the show. We know that Valdes will shortly return for the landmark 150th episode in a few weeks and will then do so again in the season 7 finale. However, this is still the end of an era as the original cast begins to break apart, calling into question how long the series has left to go.
The Flash continues next Tuesday, June 15th on The CW.
Published: Jun 9, 2021 03:44 pm