We’re still awaiting a casting announcement for Dr. Barry Allen, who’ll recur on Arrow this season to begin telling the Flash’s origin story — and possibly set a spin-off series in motion for The CW. But we can report that it will happen soon, after checking in with Arrow exec producer Andrew Kreisberg today. “We’ll have to have somebody by Sept. 30, which is when we start shooting [his first] episode. So there is that timeline,” he says. “But it’s been a really exciting process just getting to meet so many fantastic actors and seeing the enthusiasm that so many people around town have for the character. It’s just amazing — I have pictures of myself at age 4 holding a Flash and a Superman doll. That I’m sitting here writing the Flash and Green Arrow now, it’s more than my little nerd heart can bear sometimes.”

In a conference call with reporters at the end of July, Kreisberg said he anticipated Dr. Barry Allen appearing in three season 2 episodes written by himself, EP Greg Berlanti, and Geoff Johns, chief creative officer of DC Entertainment. “Despite the fact that he’s got superpowers, I think there’s something really relatable about Barry — of all the big seven of the Justice League. He got his powers by accident. He isn’t a God, he isn’t an alien, he wasn’t seeking this out,” Kreisberg said then, explaining why they chose the Flash as the focus of the possible spin-off. “These powers came to him and his reactions to that feel very human and grounded…. Oliver Queen [Stephen Amell] is a very dark and tortured soul and Barry is not. I think it will be fun to see these two characters together because they have distinctly different world views.”