The CW. The Arrowverse. The Flash. Arrow. Legends of Tomorrow. I miss it. All of it.
My younger brother is watching The Flash for the very first time, and I’m a little jealous of him. I wish I were able to do the same. Although this actually hasn’t stopped me from doing a fresh re-run again.
Every single time it’s brought up, I miss the time it used to be a thing every week. I also sometimes wake up to realise just how much potential this show had. It’s a show that had a golden age, but a steep decline at the end.
The show had the perfect beginning. Barry Allen was introduced into Arrow’s season 2 as a soft pilot to the show, and with Grant Gustin cast as the character, it all felt like it came together brilliantly. The pilot worked wonders as it really did showcase how much The CW was cooking at the time. It also balanced the shows out. Arrow had a dark tone, whereas The Flash generally operated in a much lighter sense. I mean, we literally got THE FLASH as a TV show. It doesn’t get better than that.
Seasons 1, 2, and 3 were peak Arrowverse. We had some of the best villains on TV. Reverse-Flash, Zoom, Savitar. They all had perfect placements. People will still scoff at Savitar, but I absolutely loved him. These villains weren’t the same as those we got in later seasons. They genuinely felt like a threat to Barry. I will still never forget staying up until the early hours of the morning to watch Zoom break Barry’s back. It truly felt like Barry had no way to even combat such a threat.
It shows just how perfectly the writers developed the show in the early days. It wasn’t just the villains that they smashed the writing for. We had the Wells variants throughout these golden age seasons. From the first season’s variants throughout, they typically got better and became an important aspect of the show. It felt like the writers truly cared about how the show fared throughout. We got Joe West, who was just epic and arguably the best TV dad ever.
Development was an important factor. Things didn’t stagnate much in the early days. Cisco is proof that when you focus on a character and make it count, you can create something special. The show never quite felt the same after he left, and that’s a testament to how well he was developed over the years.
More importantly, the show had heart. Barry and Joe. Barry and Iris (early days). Cisco and Caitlin. Team Flash actually felt like a family. The emotional side of this is one of the reasons why people stayed invested. It had a sense that could tug on your heartstrings well. Arrow did the exact same thing in the early days.
Then, somewhere, something changed. I’m not saying it went from great to awful in a moment, but cracks did start to show. Season 4 really showcased that. The supporting cast became increasingly important, while Barry himself often felt like he needed an emotional speech before every major moment. The stakes became inconsistent, and there were times when The Flash no longer felt like the focus of his own show.
The series also faced challenges behind the scenes. Hartley Sawyer had a rocky start as Ralph Dibny, but by the time he found his footing, he had become one of the show’s strongest characters. His dismissal following the resurfacing of old tweets forced the writers to change direction once again, and it felt like the show lost one of the few newer characters that audiences had genuinely connected with.
People often blame the villains. I don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to sit here and say they were great because, in reality, they weren’t. The problem was the overall writing of the show. Cicada could’ve been much better. The Thinker needed more on the back of it. They also made the poor move to switch to 2 major villains per season. Again, this isn’t the villain’s fault at times. The Arrowverse often had lengthy seasons and made it work in the beginning.
Perhaps the biggest issue with The Flash in later seasons was that Barry Allen often stopped feeling like The Flash. This was a man who could move faster than sound, faster than light, and eventually faster than time itself. Yet week after week, villains would escape situations they realistically shouldn’t have survived.
Every major confrontation seemed to follow a familiar pattern. Barry would need a pep talk, spend half the episode trying to reason with the villain, and somehow find himself struggling against threats that should never have been able to keep up with him in the first place. The Flash in the comics is famously overpowered, and while I understand that a TV show needs genuine threats to create drama, there were too many moments where Barry felt weaker than he should have.
The most frustrating part is that the show had already proven it could handle Barry’s powers properly. Reverse-Flash, Zoom, and Savitar all felt dangerous because they could genuinely match or exceed Barry’s speed. Later villains often lacked that same credibility, forcing the writers to make Barry less effective rather than making the threat stronger.
We talk about Team Flash. In the beginning? Perfect. Towards the end? Crowded.
Allegra never felt like a character the show truly knew what to do with. Chester was introduced as a spiritual successor to Cisco, but the chemistry and development simply weren’t the same. Cecile’s abilities also expanded far beyond what felt necessary, to the point where she often became more important to storylines than characters viewers had spent years investing in.
The issue wasn’t necessarily the characters themselves. It was the amount of time dedicated to them. There were episodes where Barry Allen felt like a supporting character in his own show, while newer additions received storylines that rarely led anywhere meaningful. By the final seasons, Team Flash no longer felt like a close-knit family supporting Barry. Instead, it felt like a collection of characters all fighting for the spotlight at the same time.
Unfortunately, the final season never managed to recapture the magic of the early years. Ironically, some of the strongest episodes were the ones that looked backwards rather than forwards. While there were moments of nostalgia and fan service, it often felt like a reminder of how far the show had drifted from what made it special in the first place.
If The Flash had always been average, nobody would still be talking about it. The reason fans remain passionate is that they remember just how good it once was. We talk a lot about the negatives, but it is because of how strong the opening seasons were that the show is still widely popular today. If you watch the final season and then watch the first one again, it feels comforting. It feels like home… because it is.
My younger brother is watching The Flash for the first time. He doesn’t know what’s coming next. He hasn’t experienced the highs, the lows, the twists, or the frustrations. Part of me is jealous because he gets to experience those early seasons for the first time. The other part of me is grateful that I got to experience them at all. The Flash may have become one of the most frustrating superhero shows I’ve ever watched, but at its best, it was also one of the greatest. That’s why, years later, I still find myself hitting play on Episode 1.
