Movies - TV
How The Flash Went From The Best Superhero Show On TV To A Total Disaster
By SANDY SCHAEFER
When the CW’s “The Flash” premiered, it was a breath of fresh air, exploring the sillier aspects of the comic book source material compared to its grittier predecessor “Arrow.” It paved the way for other Arrowverse series to experiment with tone and style and brought some genuinely ridiculous moments, but “The Flash” suffered from a stark drop-off in quality following Season 2.
The first season thrived with its villain-of-the-week formula blended with the hero’s origin story, explaining that the sudden flood of meta-human criminals was due to the particle accelerator explosion. This system worked well into the second season with new threats and allies introduced, but Season 3’s reliance on this blueprint reveals the model’s issues.
Along with the show’s attempt to loosely adapt the “Flashpoint” comic storyline in a grittier fashion, the repetitive villain-of-the-week formula failed to evolve with the rest of the show. Season 6’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” should have brought the series to a close, as it was hinted for years that The Flash would disappear after a mysterious future “Crisis,” but the hero survived.
After that, the series kept going but felt directionless with no clear endgame, as the tension that had been building up had been lost, and several of the series’ actors left for various reasons. Though the show may have lost its magic and the formula has become stale, “The Flash” will return in 2023 for the 9th and final season.