Inside The Flash's Barry Allen Channeling the Entire Council of Wells: 'One of Grant's Concerns Was...'

When The Flash‘s Season 7 opener called upon Barry Allen to channel Nash, H.R. and the entire Council of Wells, series star Grant Gustin ran-Barry-ran into un petit problème.

First, to succinctly set the stage: In an effort to fuel the Artificial Speed Force, Allegra used her meta powers to funnel the multiversal particles residing within Nash Wells into a fusion sphere. But when Allegra was unable to contain the volatile energy source, the resulting blast transferred the particles — and in turn the essence of every Wells ever — into an unwitting Barry.

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When Barry came to, he spoke French/accented English as detective Sherloque Wells, before segueing into a veritable cavalcade of every other Harrison doppelganger, including forever-drumming H.R., the wand-waving Wells the Gray, gruff Harry and others.

Unlike a sizeable chunk of the Season 7 premiere (which was actually the first of several unfinished Season 6 episodes), “Those scenes were actually shot before the pandemic,” showrunner Eric Wallace tells TVLine. And while the EP was not on-set for Gustin’s very funny, tour de force turn, he and his star did talk in advance about all that mimicking costar Tom Cavanagh would entail.

“One of Grant’s big concerns was, ‘Eric, I don’t know how to speak French, and Sherloque has a French accent. I just don’t know about about this…,'” Wallace recalls with a chuckle. “I said, ‘Grant, you can do this. You got this. You will knock this out of the park. I know how talented you are, you are going to study this character and the end result will be magic.’ And he said, ‘OK, thanks.'”

And as it turned out with the finished product, “I was right! The end result was magic,” Wallace happily reports. “I don’t know if Grant studied Tom or it was simply from years of working with Tom, but it’s one of my favorite scenes in the history of the series, and certainly in my tenure of being a showrunner” since Season 6.

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