Is Carlos Valdes leaving ‘The Flash?’
Rumors are rife that Carlos Valdes is leaving The Flash at the end of Season 5. According to We Got This Covered, Valdes is taking a break from Team Flash to pursue other endeavors. To be fair, he has been a main character and season regular for five seasons now, from the very beginning, he is absolutely deserving of a break.
Cisco Ramon is such an important character in The Flash, that it is hard to imagine the series without him. His character sets the tone, the comedy, the pop-culture references and helps make the show current and fresh. His character also has some of the darkest and scariest moments, such as when confronted by Reverse Flash or when vibing ominous upcoming threats.
Ramon is one of the few characters who provides clarity and brings the show back to earth (sometimes literally) by being highly relatable and yet a hugely likable character. If he leaves, it will be a loss to the show as Carlos Valdes is such a brilliant actor and plays the different sides to Cisco with such a great personality.
However, it is understandable why now might be the best time to leave for Valdes. First, his character doesn’t have any major arcs of his own, other than his issues with the dark matter in his hands recently and wanting to lose his powers, wanting to find himself a cure. His character is more supporting these issues, rather than dealing with personal matters directly. These are issues that could be applied to any character rather than distinctly Cisco. These are also issues that if they are solved for the character, will take away one of his key contributions to Team Flash going forward, and make the character’s possibilities more restricted, by removing his meta powers. Of course, he could still be the science and tech guy in the chair, like Felicity Smoak but this would also retract from Iris’ role.
Secondly, most of the character’s personal stories have been resolved and already covered. We’ve seen Cisco’s struggles with love with different relationships. We know Cisco’s family and his struggled past with them. We know the majority of Cisco’s history and there aren’t that many gaps left to fill. If you compare this to characters like Caitlin Snow, Ralph Dibney or even Iris West-Allen, there are much more opportunities to expand upon these characters back stories.
If Valdes wanted to leave the show, leaving when most of his character’s story arcs are neatly tied up seems like a good time to go. It’s also been widely reported that if his character is written out, he will be given a soft exit in order to allow Valdes to rejoin the cast as and when he likes. This is great news for the fans, as means, we are not so much losing our well-loved Sci-Fi-Obsessed Cisco that we’ve come to love, but merely saying goodbye for a short duration. He will be back, at some point at least.
It is worth noting that The Flash also makes a habit of bringing actors back and so does the rest of the Arrowverse. Tom Cavanagh’s character has ‘left’ so many times and been constantly reincarnated. Caity Lotz left Arrow to be resurrected and rejoin the Legends a little while later. Katie Cassidy’s character was killed only to return as her Earth-2 doppelgänger. Michael Rowe as Deadshot, Chris Wood as Mon-El, and not forgetting Wentworth Miller frequently returning as various versions of Leonard Snart. I don’t believe this is the end of Cisco at all, rather if it is confirmed that he is leaving, Valdes probably wishes to try his hands at other things and have a change of scene, and I can’t say I blame him. So let’s try and get over the heartbreak and devastation at this possible news and instead look forward to working out how he might be written out and in what format he could return in the future.
