The Flash series finale first look: Exclusive photos

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Grant Gustin and John Wesley Shipp in series finale

Grant Gustin as The Flash and John Wesley shipp as Jay Garrick on 'The Flash'. Bettina Strauss/The CW

Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) gets a helping hand from the Golden Age Flash Jay Garrick (John Wesley Shipp) one last time in the series finale. "I never would've anticipated in 1991, when I swore I'd never get into another superhero suit, that I would have it end that way, in the last season, saying goodbye to Henry Allen and then Jay Garrick, both in and out of the suit," Shipp tells EW. "I tried to thank Grant, but then my voice cracked. And that's when he came over and gave me a big hug. And that said everything that needed to be said."

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Grant Gustin and Candice Patton in series finale

Grant Gustin and Candice Patton on 'The Flash'. Bettina Strauss/The CW

After meeting Barry and Iris' (Candice Patton) adult daughter Nora (Jessica Parker Kennedy) from the future in previous seasons, she's finally making her debut as a baby in the finale. "It felt like the time to introduce Iris' pregnancy and to meet Nora for the first time as a baby," Gustin says. "It felt like we had reached the conclusion."

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Teddy Sears, Karan Oberoi, and Tom Cavanagh in series finale

Teddy Sears, Karan Oberoi, and Tom Cavanagh in 'The Flash' series finale. Bettina Strauss/The CW

Quite a few familiar faces return in the series finale — and that's not good for Team Flash. All of Barry's most formidable foes are back, including Teddy Sears as Zoom, Karan Oberoi as Godspeed, and Tom Cavanagh as Reverse-Flash. "The last day I did, there was blood and glass and destruction and things blowing up — it's a good way to go out," Cavanagh says. "It seems appropriate."

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Grant Gustin, Danielle Panabaker, Danielle Nicolet, Kayla Compton, Brandon McKnight, and Jon Cor in series finale

Grant Gustin, Danielle Panabaker, Danielle Nicolet, Kayla Compton, Brandon McKnight, and Jon Cor in 'The Flash' series finale. Bettina Strauss/The CW

Gustin was surprised by how he felt filming the last scenes of The Flash. "I thought it would be more complicated for me, emotionally. I thought I'd have more of a struggle," he says. "And I wasn't emotional. I was almost feeling guilty, like, 'Why am I not crying more every day like everybody is?' I'm a very sensitive person and very honest about my emotions, but I think it just spoke to how it was time for it to end and I was ready."

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Grant Gustin and Jesse L. Martin in season 1

Filming Jesse L. Martin's final scene is when the tears starting flowing on set. "That was sad," Danielle Panabaker says. "That was a moment where I was like, 'Oh, it'll never be like this again.'"

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Grant Gustin in season 1

Gustin was surprised at how much he'll miss wearing Barry Allen's superhero costume — even the early season 1 version, as seen here in this never-before-seen shot from the beginning of the series. "The suit is tough to work in, but it was never lost on me that a superhero suit was made for me to put on, and I got to go to work and do that," he says.

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Grant Gustin and Candice Patton in season 1

Showrunner Eric Wallace promises that Barry and Iris are getting their happy ending in the series finale — they've come a long way since this behind-the-scenes shot from the first season. "These two wacky kids have got to reconnect. They've got to start a family. They've got to rekindle their love," he says. "There is one really wild twist in the last hour because I couldn't resist, that I can't wait for people to see, that really puts Barry and Iris through the ringer, but it's all a happy ending."

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Danielle Panabaker in season 1

"The show ends on a hopeful note," Panabaker, photographed here in her earliest Killer Frost costume, says. "There was always this sincerity to the show, and I do give a lot of credit to Grant for that, for his performance, and to the writing for really making Barry Allen feel like a real human who could see the world becoming a better place. That was something that really resonated with audiences, and it's how it ends."

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The Flash's helmet in season 1

"When it came to the greater Arrowverse, the scale of it was something that was really lost on me for the majority of the run," Gustin says. "It's something I won't fully understand or appreciate for years and years and years, to see what the impact that [executive producers] Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim and all of these guys were able to have on the TV landscape. It was unlike anything that had ever been attempted in television."

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Tom Cavanagh in season 1

"There's only a few that pulled a decade of duty, and I'm not one of them," Cavanagh says, shown here as his original season 1 character Eobard Thawne (disguised as Dr. Harrison Wells). "I left after five or six years — trying not to overstay your welcome. But in my case, because I'm the Reverse-Flash, I've got to stir the pot and destroy Central City now and again, so it was incredibly wonderful to be invited back over the course of season 6, 7, 8, and now 9. It made that, in many ways, an ideal situation. I didn't have to overstay my welcome, but also I got to come back and play with my pals now and again."

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Grant Gustin in season 1

"To get to do a show as long as we got to do it, and to get to end on our own terms, to know going into the season, for the writers to be able to know where they're going with the story and how they want to wrap it up, it's pretty special," Gustin says. "We're pretty lucky."

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Grant Gustin and Candice Patton in season 1

"It's the end of an era and it's really quite a badge of honor that we made it the longest of the shows and that we get to wrap up an era and put a nice tidy bow on it," Patton says. "It's really surreal that the whole Arrowverse is over, but it was a good run."