As a show, The Flash started off very strong, and as a spin-off, it more than achieved its purpose by kicking off the CW's still-growing TV superhero universe. Since it spawned from Arrow - a show known for its dark and gritty aesthetic - a lighter, more fun take on superhero TV in that world seemed like a refreshing idea. Embracing the silliness and ridiculousness of the comics helped the first two seasons of The Flash craft a very different identity from its network counterparts. Unfortunately, the chinks in the armour have become more apparent as the show has gone on. The first season was a fantastic ride, but the second season felt like a re-tread in many ways. The show was losing speed (no pun intended), and what it needed to do was focus in on its strengths and keep the story moving forward with them at the forefront.
Season 3 appears to be the breaking point for CW superhero shows. The Flash didn't exactly fall off the rails, but this season simply feels mediocre. The characters and acting aren't taken to any new levels, the effects ranged from impressive to unimpressive, and the writing was as average as it possibly could have been. The fact that the show chose to tell what is essentially the same story as the past two seasons didn't help, which only makes me wonder if the writers have any other stories to tell. Every subsequent season after the first has been telling a progressively less interesting version of the story in season 1.
The Flash failed to recapture its magic this season because there was an extreme lack of forward momentum. The season presents its central conflict very early on, the villain was established very early on, but it leaves the series without much room to progress. Essentially, Barry (Grant Gustin) and his team have to find a way to stop Savitar from killing Iris (Candice Patton), after Barry is briefly transported to the future. Story-wise, the season doesn't go off on any tangents except for two episodes; everything is directly related to trying to stop Savitar. Eventually, hearing the characters discuss that conflict and that motivation gets old, especially considering the length of the season at twenty-three episodes.
A big problem with the meandering pace lies with the villain. Savitar - despite being yet another speedster villain - is a fairly big departure from what The Flash has done in the past. He is a large, imposing, impossibly-fast monster. The all-CGI design takes away the sense of tactility and humanity, and he seemed to be like the perfect final speedster challenge for Barry. But Savitar so rarely shows up, and when he does, it's only briefly. He spends so much of his time going on and on about how powerful he is, and while he is one step ahead of the heroes (that saying is getting really old at this point), he seems to always be one step behind his goal. The cherry on top of the mediocrity sundae that is Savitar is the ultimate revelation of his identity, which took twenty episodes to reveal and ended up being the most obvious option. What a waste.
Another issue comes from the fact that so many characters have developed powers that it no longer feels special. Considering how many speedsters are running around Central City now - with their speed being measured in comparison to Barry - Barry calling himself "the fastest man alive" is a bit presumptuous. Instead of introducing new powers, the same powers were reinforced over and over again. And with so many of our main characters having superpowers - and with Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) and Jessie Quick (Violett Beane) running around with Barry - it's hard to make any threat believable. At this point, there's no reason why there should be absolutely no crime in Central City, since Barry can run fast enough to break time and Cisco (Carlos Valdes) can see through dimensions.
Every season, the show finds a unique aspect of the world to tackle. In the last season, it was Earth-2, which showed off alternate versions of characters that we know and love. But this season, they dealt with the future, which was a very misjudged move. While seeing the futures of characters is interesting as a one-off idea, it doesn't carry that emotional punch that it needs to. Seeing how a character ends up doesn't inform us much about that character, because we know that things will change and that that specific future won't come to pass. The time travel logic was also convoluted and nonsensical, so there wasn't any logical through-line to connect with. Essentially, the logic of the show on every level functioned however a specific episode needed it to.
The internal structure of episodes feels so routine now. The story of every episode felt more and more generic; the B story was some kind of emotional conflict between two characters that was resolved in a total screen time of about ten minutes. Because the overarching story was progressing at such a slow rate, it just felt more and more generic as the season went on. I managed to stay on-board to the end, but unless season 4 goes in a completely different direction, I don't know if the show can even do anything else. Now that we've covered villains that are linked to Barry's past, present, and future, it's time to move on.
What made this season so frustrating is that the potential was there, and it was completely ignored. The last season ended with the creation of the Flashpoint timeline, but rather than explore that story and have some fun with it, it's resolved in the first episode of season three. When Barry returns, it's established that a lot of things have changed with the characters, but all of those conflicts are resolved in a few episodes. From that point on, we just followed the Savitar story, which got consistently less interesting as the season went on. Because the season has so many episodes to it, the story felt extremely drawn-out, and by the time Savitar's identity was revealed, there was nowhere left for it to go. And that doesn't even cover the finale, which was just as ridiculous, insulting, and infuriating as the worst of the Arrow finales.
The Flash still has some interesting aspects to it; the characters are still fun, the action is well-executed, and there are some good ideas being integrated into the story. The show just feels generic at this point, either feeling too repetitive or just mediocre. I hope that they decide to shake up the formula next season, because while it's almost impossible for the show to be "too silly", the silliness is getting a bit stale. Really, that's much worse than being bad, because at least there's some entertainment to be found in a terrible show. But boring nonsense isn't the same thing, and that's what made up the majority of this season. There's lots of potential and lots of talent involved in this show, so I'm not giving up yet. I just hope they delve into some new ideas in the future, because the story they've been telling for the last three years is just tired now.
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