After Nine Seasons, The Flash’s Run Is Finally Over
Photo Courtesy of The CW
It’s hard not to resent a show that goes on for too long.
While it’s increasingly rare for anything that isn’t a procedural drama to make it past four or five seasons, The Flash has managed to close out its almost decade-long run with a nine-season stint on The CW. The post-Smallville DC franchise that took up most of the space on the network may have been launched off the back of Arrow, but The Flash was inarguably the true heart and soul of the operation. Lighter in tone than its predecessor and more willing to lean into the fun of its source material, Barry Allen and the many, many, members of Team Flash gave us some of the best that the Arrowverse had to offer, and its early seasons were defining comic book TV. It was never without flaws though, and like any show that flies past its peak, the series finale was bittersweet—undoubtedly welcome, but not here soon enough.
When Grant Gustin first appeared as Barry Allen during Arrow’s second season in 2013, there was no way to predict that he would be headlining what would become the CW’s number-one series for six years. Looking back, the first season seems so simple: Barry becomes a speedster after being covered in chemicals, struck by lightning, and hit by a wave of radiation from a particle accelerator explosion. He’s stuck in a coma for nine months and comes out of it having to balance his job as a CSI, his new role as a vigilante hero, and keeping his identity secret from the general public—and most importantly, from his childhood best friend he’s been in love with forever, Iris West. There are metahuman villains of the week, the menacing presence of the Reverse Flash and his unwavering mission to make Barry’s life as miserable as possible, and the Arrowverse’s very first crossover episode. It may seem small now, but the series also pioneered racial diversity with the casting of Candice Patton as Iris, something that inarguably opened the door for more castings in the same vein like Mehcad Brooks as Jimmy Olsen, Anna Diop as Starfire, and a laundry list of other race-swapped castings outside of the DC universe that has only increased over the years.
The first season of The Flash was hardly perfect, but it was fun and full of potential, not only for itself but for the shows that would eventually use it as a springboard. Where Arrow had tried to set itself as gritty and real, The Flash let in some of the light that was missing. Still, as the series went on, it deteriorated like most others do. Ironically, the things that made it so good led to its sharp dip in quality during the later seasons. The show’s willingness to delve into the comics for storylines and new characters pushed certain storylines past the point of ridiculousness. Barry’s mission to prevent Iris’s murder at the hands of Savitar had the show playing with the rules of time travel, but it also created a paradox where Iris had to die so that a time remnant of Barry could somehow split off from him and become so angry about failing to save Iris that he would eventually become Savitar and start the loop all over again. If that made your brain short-circuit, it also made mine implode while I watched it, and somehow implode again trying to figure out how to explain the situation efficiently.
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