Opinion: The Flash is Slowly Becoming My Least Favorite Arrowverse Show
One of my all-time favorite superheroes is The Flash. I’ve got Flash posters, apparel, hell even a Flash tattoo. I find his rogues gallery to be one of the most unique and interesting, right up there next to Batman’s, and Barry Allen to be a compelling and relatable character. The CW show The Flash has always been my favorite of the Arrowverse shows because of this. Season 6 so far has made me slowly start to hate the show though.
What made the early seasons of The Flash so damn good was its quirky writing and its emphasis on the villain-of-the-week plot lines. Especially after coming off of two years of the over-broodiness of Arrow, The Flash was a breath of fresh air. The Flash in general is a very lighthearted character that, despite all of the tragedy and heartbreak he endures, is able to keep his head up and keep going, no matter what life seems to throw at him. Somehow the show seems to have forgotten this along the way.
We’ve seen Barry on the show go through a lot. Hell, watching his yet-to-be-born daughter erased from the timeline alone would be enough to send anyone over the edge. But through all of this Barry had persisted and come out the other side a stronger, more competent hero. He knew that countless people were counting on him to swoop in and save the day, stopping whatever hair-brained scheme the new villain dujour had concocted. It seems though that the looming Crisis at the start of Season 6 has finally broken the Scarlet Speedster.
Going into Crisis Barry is aware that he will not survive the ordeal. This point is made painfully clear in just about every episode of this season so far. But instead of this person who’s supposed to be able to keep his head up and try to find a way to prevent this from happening, what we’ve seen is a Barry who is just rolling over and accepting his fate. The entire atmosphere of the show this season has just been brought down to Arrow levels of broodiness, something that contradicts who Barry fundamentally is as a character.
This will probably be published on the site after Crisis on Infinite Earths has concluded, which at the time of writing is set to begin this very night, so we’ll see if the show can redirect the character post-Crisis. I desperately want them to rekindle that magic that made the show so special when it first started. After the threat of Crisis is done, and with Bloodwork having been stopped prior to Crisis, this seems like it would be the perfect time to go back to their roots and have the team protecting Central City from the post-Crisis nuts that will almost certainly be present.