Last night saw The Flash making a speedy return for Season 2, as we caught up with “The Man Who Saved Central City,” and learned what really went down in May’s cliffhanger finale. The premiere came with an heavy (if expected) cost however, one producers might have a slight bit of hope to offer on.

You’re warned of full spoilers for last night’s Flash premiere, but where it seems The CW cavalierly revealed a new Firestorm in the works, we finally learned what took Robbie Amell’s Ronnie Raymond out of the equation, and months ahead of Legends of Tomorrow. Flashbacks from last night’s Season 2 premiere saw a fused Ronnie and Dr. Stein working in tandem with Barry to close the singularity over Central City, but when the dust settled, Barry could only retrieve Dr. Stein (Victor Garber) from the chaotic swirl of energy.

And as much as Ronnie’s apparent “death” hung over the premiere, we’ll soon meet Franz Drameh’s Jay Jackson, who ends up fused with Dr. Stein to carry on the Firestore name through 2016's Legends of Tomorrow. That isn’t to say that Ronnie might never return, what with The Flash buttering its bread with time-travel, parallel worlds and psychic gorillas, and producer Andrew Kreisberg spoke to several outlets on Ronnie’s ultimate fate, as well as the decision behind it. Via EW:

Well, you’re never really dead when you’re on The Flash, a TV show where there are universes and time travel. He was, in fact, killed in that moment, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve seen the last of Robbie Amell on this show. Certainly, Greg [Berlanti], Robbie and I all hope to work together on The Flash again.

Part of the decision was Robbie’s burgeoning film career. He’s on his way to being a very big star, which he completely deserves both professionally and personally. We didn’t want to stand in the way of that. As always, sometimes those tough decisions yield the best storytelling because obviously Ronnie’s death has a major impact on all the characters, Barry, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker), Professor Stein.

It also gave us a lot of our storytelling as we move forward. Everyone knows there’s a second spin-off coming with Legends of Tomorrow. They know the Firestorm legacy is far from over, so it just gave us a lot of rich storytelling to pursue.

And Variety, on the possibility of alternate Ronnie:

Yeah, that’s part of the fun of Earth-2 and introducing the concept of Doppelgangers and that’s part of what we’ll be exploring this season. […] So obviously, the multiverse is a huge part of the DC Comics universe and it felt right to tackle it. And as we always do with “Arrow” and “Flash,” we laid the seeds of season two towards the end of season one, so creating the singularity and the breach and seeing Jay Garrick’s helmet were all portents of what was to come, and we’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

Getting to see who’s over there and who’s not, and getting to see some of our actors getting to portray different versions of their characters, that’s really the fun of when you look at the great sci-fi shows like “Star Trek” and “Doctor Who,” when they go into the mirror world. Not everybody will have a sharp Van Dyke to signify that they’re evil. [Laughs.]

In the meantime, Barry will get to know his mirror universe Flash in Jay Garrick, both learning new tricks and preparing for the threat of Zoom, but did Ronnie’s ultimate end offer a surprising twist for The Flash Season 2 premiere? How might the character return, particularly with a new Firestorm on the horizon?

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