How season 4 of The Flash revitalized the series
By Shah Shahid
The Flash has become one of The CW’s most watched shows. With Season 3, the show’s repetitive nature reared its ugly head, however, Season 4’s unique direction ended up saving the series from becoming victim to its own formula.
The Flash is one of the many shows on The CW inspired by DC Comics characters. While Arrow is the darker and dramatic show of the lot, The Flash works for totally different reasons. It’s fresh, fun and always invokes a light-hearted vibe through its characters, while still providing the heavy emotional stakes needed.
While every show hits a period of dull-ness, it’s how the writers overcome that to keep the series going that makes all the difference. And I’m glad to say that The Flash has definitely overcome it’s stumbling block, and if they keep going on this path, it can continue being one of TV’s most interesting superhero shows.
Let’s take a look and see how Season 4 of The Flash separated itself from the previous seasons and gave us some cool and interesting storylines, and tease a lot more to come!
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The seasons that came before
My biggest complaint about The Flash at the end of Season 3, was its (by then) extremely repetitive formula, that almost always played out as follows.
Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) spends the entire season dealing with something traumatizing and personal (mother’s death, fathers’ death). The season’s big baddie is another speedster, with a secret identity. (Reverse Flash, Zoom, Savitar) The Flash then spends the season trying to get faster than the bad speedster to defeat him. The identity of the speedster is almost always revealed a few episodes before the season finale. The season finale ends on a cliffhanger that threatens world ending consequences. (Singularity, Flashpoint, Speed Force destruction)
This was the formula that became all too apparent, causing me to threaten to abandon The Flash if it had continued. However, I’m glad that Season 4 kept it fresh and completely abandoned its own formula. (for the most part)
No more bad speedsters!
Season 4 of The Flash saw a big baddie that was more of an intellectual threat, than an agile physical one. And also a new threat that existed in the present world, and not one that had anything to do with Barry’s past. Season 4 as a whole stayed in the present, and didn’t try to make connections with anyone’s past actions or mistakes, making the season refreshing and easier for newer audiences to get into as well.
With The Thinker (Neil Sandilands) being a villain that was smarter than anyone else on Team Flash, the stories allowed all the characters, especially the brain trust of Team Flash, some great challenges to overcome. Such as Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) struggling with not being the smartest person anymore, and taking action that made things worse, only to recover with a better outlook on life.
New Heroes!
With the progression of the comic book based series, there also seemed to be a rush to introduce new heroes and characters that became powered superheroes in the show. Before we could even get to know a character, it felt that they were given powers and suited up beside Flash every week. Season 3 struggled with this dynamic, with the introduction of Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) as Kid Flash, Cisco (Carlos Valdes) becoming Vibe, Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) revealing herself as Killer Frost, and seemingly all of Team Flash becoming superheroes.
Season 4 course corrects that right away as Wally is sent off to ‘find himself’. A new element is introduced as Caitlin and Killer Frost are defined as two separate identities sharing the same body, which provided some great comic relief, and allowed Caitlin’s character more development throughout the season, and possibly into Season 5.
Although Season 4 is not without the introduction of a new hero, as DC Comics character Ralph Dibny (Hartley Sawyer) is introduced and eventually joins Team Flash, complete with powers and his own superhero suit. However, the transition from supporting character to regular cast member, and superhero is one that occurs wonderfully and slowly through the season.
Related Story: The Flash season 4 finale recap
The introduction of Dibny, and his alter ego Elongated Man, provides a lot of story in Season 4, as Flash becomes his mentor and has to teach him how to be a hero. Dibny’s own arc is that of a redemption story of a down and out former Police officer, to that of a selfless and prevailing superhero. But it was all done subtly, so as to not seem forced or sudden.
Happy Ending
The ending of Season 4 was the most happiest season finale that we’ve gotten in The Flash series so far. As mentioned before, almost every season finale thus far has been a doom and gloom cliffhanger. While Season 4 ended on a note of optimism and can truly be considered a happy ending.
The main bad guy was defeated. No ominous or self-sacrificing cost was paid to do so. The characters all got together to have a celebratory party by the end. Wally even reappeared. All was good.
Although The season finale was not without its own cliffhanger, as the future daughter of Barry and Iris appeared (as she has a few times through the season) and exposed herself as being from the future. But that reveal can be seen more of a button scene, than a cliffhanger, as it appropriately teases the next season.
Teasing Season 5
Season 4 also does a great job of sprinkling in elements of story that don’t directly get resolved in season 4 itself. Most notable of these comes from Harrison Wells and Caitlin Snow.
When Harrison Wells loses his intellect in a failed attempt to get smarter, he ends up spouting some nonsense words that are recognized as the same string of phrases Barry uttered fresh from his escape from the Speed Force. He also noted symbols that were similar to that of Barry’s, and more strangely, similar to the ones scribbled by Barry & Iris’ future daughter. Even though this version of Wells has seemingly left the regular cast, it remains to be seen how his mutterings and Barry’s connects to the future daughter and this weird language.
There is also a moment in Season 4 where Caitlin loses the Killer Frost persona, and tries to bring her back. Her attempts lead her to a traumatized and repressed memory where it’s apparent that the Killer Frost power did not manifest within Caitlin due to the Particle Accelerator explosion, as was the case with every other meta human including Barry. The memory implied that the Killer Frost abilities were within her even at a young age. This is further exasperated as a psychic Cecile reveals something to Caitlin in the last episode, which she noticeably dismisses to the rest of Team Flash.
Next: When does season 5 of The Flash premiere?
These vague plot threads that have been introduced, but never resolved, give me hope that Season 5 will deal with these new arcs in new and interesting ways. The Flash has definitely redeemed itself in my eyes, with a Season 4 that was fresh, interesting and not at all repetitive of its own formula.
Season 5 of The Flash will premiere in Fall 2018.
What did you think about Season 4 of The Flash?