Why Flash Stopped Giving Caitlin Love Interests (& Focused On Killer Frost)

Over the course of six seasons, The Flash slowly came to focus Caitlin Snow’s storylines around her Killer Frost persona rather than her love life. This was apparently the result of the writers responding to actress Danielle Panabeker’s growing dissatisfaction with her role and fan jokes about the show’s writing becoming predictable after the first three seasons.

Dr. Caitlin Snow was introduced into the Arrowverse in the season 2 Arrow episode “The Man Under The Hood,” as a STAR Labs employee who was clearing out the inventory of their Starling City site when it was burglarized by Deathstroke. She was later brought into The Flash series and revealed to be the medical doctor who had cared for Barry Allen while he spent nine months in a coma after being struck by lightning on the night the STAR Labs particle accelerator exploded. Beyond helping Barry to master his super-speed powers and protect Central City from the rising threat posed by metahuman criminals, Caitlin’s story in season 1 largely centered around her mourning her fiancee Ronnie Raymond, who apparently died in the particle accelerator explosion, then her searching for him after it became clear that Ronnie was the mysterious “Burning Man” seen around Central City. The two married in The Flash‘s season 1 finale but their happiness was short-lived, as Ronnie sacrificed himself in The Flash‘s season 2 premiere to close a wormhole that threatened the world.

After that, the series seemed to become obsessed with pairing Caitlin off with various male members of the supporting cast. Barely six months had passed in-universe before the widowed Caitlin began dating a man who presented himself to Team Flash as Jay Garrick; a scientist and super-speedster who claimed to be The Flash of a parallel Earth. He was later revealed to be the villain Zoom in disguise. Season 3 saw Caitlin becoming romantically entangled with Dr. Julian Albert: a new CSI with the Central City Police Department and rival of Barry Allen, who was, unbeknownst to everyone including himself, the villain Doctor Alchemy. It became such a cliche that when it was revealed that The Flash season 4 would introduce the Elongated Man Ralph Dibny into the show, fans joked about how long it would take before Caitlin and Ralph became involved.

Reportedly, the writers were considering having Ralph and Caitlin become an item in season 4, but the idea was dismissed when actress Danielle Panabaker put her foot down and said she didn’t want to do another romance-based storyline. After three years, Panabaker had become sick of her character seemingly falling for every single man with a brain that she met. Thankfully, the events of The Flash season 3 and Barry’s creation of the Flashpoint reality opened up an entirely new avenue for the writers to explore with Caitlin’s character, as she acquired the heat-draining superpowers of her Earth-2 counterpart. This led to Caitlin also discovering a second persona sharing her body, Killer Frost, who ultimately became known as simply Frost.

The following seasons of The Flash came to focus more and more on Frost, as Caitlin tried to find peace with her other half. Season 4 saw Caitlin coping with the consequences of finding employment with crime boss Amunet Black as part of an effort to control her Frost persona, though the two eventually agreed to work together as a team. Caitlin and Frost continued to develop their powers in season 5, as they searched for their missing father, whom they discovered had faked his death. Frost received even more development in season 6, as she began trying to build a life for herself independent of Caitlin’s, hiring Ralph Dibny as a life coach to help her figure out who she really was apart from a ice-powered superhero. Panabaker was pleased by the change to Caitlin’s character — and for the opportunity to portray another character, saying it was nice “not to be defined by a man” and that the shift in focus was “a nice change for Caitlin, I think.”

About The Author

Matt Morrison
(1835 Articles Published)

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Matt Morrison has been writing about comics since before the word
“blogging” was coined. He got his start writing for the
legendary DC Comics digital fanzine Fanzing,
before receiving his own column, The Mount. Since then he has gone on
to write for over a dozen websites, including 411
Mania, Comics
Nexus and The Cult of Nobody. He holds both an MS in Information
Science from the University of North Texas and a BFA from the
University of Texas at Arlington. Known as a font of comic book
history trivia, he has delivered lectures on the history of American
Comic Books, Japanese Manga, Doctor Who, and Cosplay at over a dozen conventions
and served as an Expert In-Residence for a course on Graphic Novels
for Librarians at the University of North Texas. In addition to his
work for Screen Rant, Matt is currently the Editor In Chief of
Kabooooom.com and writes reviews for No
Flying, No Tights – a graphic literature and anime review site
aimed at teachers and librarians. He also maintains a personal blog –
My Geeky Geeky Ways –
which hosts his extensive episode guide for the television series
making up The Arrowverse as well as his
comedic Let’s Play videos. What little spare time he has is
devoted towards acting, role-playing, movie-riffing and sarcasm. You
can follow his adventures on Twitter, @GeekyGeekyWays.

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