8 Ways To Fix The Flash In Season 4

Let's just come out and say it: The Flash isn't quite what it used to be. Back in season 1, the show quickly rose to be many fans' favourite superhero TV series around due to its sense of fun and wholehearted embrace of comic book goodness. Somewhere along the line since then, however, The Flash has lost its way. Don't get us wrong, there's still much to enjoy about the show, but it is missing the spark that made it truly great in its debut year. With the season 3 finale right around the corner, now's as good a time as any to take a look towards the future and ask just what can the showrunners can do to improve in season 4. We've given it some considerable thought and have come up with eight suggestions which we think would solve many of the big issues that are currently weighing the series down, from the better use of certain characters to a shift in the show's tone and narrative focus. Take a look at what we suggest The CW does with The Flash next year and as always, if you have any thoughts of your own on the matter, be sure to drop us a comment in the usual place. 8) Give Us The Rogues As I said in the introduction, one of The Flash's strengths is that it's never really shied away from its comic book origins. Over the seasons, we've had man-sharks, a city full of telepathic gorillas and other sights you never thought you would see brought to life on screen. One area of the comic books that The Flash has bungled, though, is the Rogues. In the source material, the Scarlet Speedster's regular enemies form a team called the Rogues, something that has been a stalwart of the character's mythos for decades now. While the show has teased the team, and given us supervillain partnerships now and then like Mirror Master and The Top, Weather Wizard and The Trickster and, most notably, Captain Cold and Heatwave, we've never got a full-on team-up. To be three seasons into The Flash and not have had a proper version of the Rogues yet is bizarre, so we can only hope that the team is finally established next season. To be fair, this is something that would be there for the hardcore fans rather than to fix a wider issue with the show, but it would solve something that's been annoying us for years. 7) Give Iris Something To Do The Flash has never really worked out what to do with Iris West as an individual character. As often happens with 'love interests,' Iris is mostly used as the object of Barry's affections rather the protagonist of her own storylines. Admittedly, the show has tried to give her something to do, like her career as a journalist at Central City Picture News. That was a fairly important part of season 2 but, somewhere along the line, the writers got bored of that plot and Iris' day job has hardly been mentioned in season 3. The second half of this season promised to fix this, however, as the narrative thrust was all about Team Flash trying to prevent Savitar from killing Iris in the future. It could have brought the character to the centre of the show, but instead, she's been pushed into the background more than ever. It also doesn't help that we're 100% sure that Iris won't die, seeing as her and Barry are clearly the show's 'endgame' couple. Caitlin Snow also used to suffer from this as well, as Danielle Panabaker's character was rarely given much to do. Thankfully, season 3 finally dealt with her dramatic transformation into Killer Frost. Next season, it should be Iris' turn to receive an interesting storyline which doesn't position her as the damsel in distress. 6) Trim Down Team Flash Another thing that really made us love The Flash in season 1 was the STAR Labs gang. Cisco Ramone, Caitlin Snow, Harrison Wells and Joe West were a brilliant quartet of characters to root for as they aided Barry Allen in his heroics. Naturally, as shows do, a few more characters were added into the mix to keep things fresh as it continued. Here we are at the end of season 3, however, and the group has almost gotten to be too big to handle. Nowadays, the STAR Labs gang also includes Wally West, Julian Albert and H.R. Wells, with occasional allies including Jesse Quick, Jay Garrick and Harry Wells. Also in the know are Joe's girlfriend Cecile and physicist Tracy Brand. The upshot of having such a large band of characters to keep track of is that many of them end up being shortchanged. One of the worst hit characters is Wally West AKA Kid Flash. In the comics, Wally is a fan favourite, but it feels like we've hardly got to know him on the show. For instance, his romance with Jesse Quick has hardly received any attention at all. We're not suggesting a Walking Dead/Game of Thrones-esque massacre of the supporting cast, of course, but just that a few of these characters be written out of The Flash over a period of time in order to get back to the well-rounded, tight-knit team of old. 5) Stop. Keeping. Secrets! Keeping secrets is part and parcel of superhero fiction, but The Flash has a bizarre obsession with characters withholding information from their friends that goes beyond the norm. The STAR Labs gang has kept so many secrets from each other over the past three years that we've lost count and by this point, it's sigh-inducing when it happens again. What's annoying is that season 3 has flip-flopped on the matter. Sometimes the truth has come out either immediately or pretty quickly - Barry witnessing Iris' fate - while other times it has been frustrating as ever - Caitlin keeping her ice powers a secret for episodes on end. By this point, it just makes the characters look dumb for not trusting their friends and it comes across as fairly lazy writing: a rote, cheap way of creating drama and tension. The trope was actually lamp-shaded in a recent episode, when Killer Frost mocked the gang for always keeping so many secrets. The fact that the writers have started to make jokes about it does suggest that they're aware that it's gone on too long and are planning to dial the trope down next season. 4) Move Away From Speedsters Every week, we hear Barry Allen tell us in The Flash's intro that he is "the Fastest Man Alive." It's a catchy tagline, sure, but actually, it's hardly true anymore. Over the seasons, so many speedsters have been introduced that Barry is more like the seventh or eighth fastest man alive. On the villainous side, there's been Reverse-Flash, Zoom, Savitar, Rival, Trajectory, etc. Of the good guys, we've had Kid Flash, Jesse Quick, Jay Garrick... The list goes on. This problem isn't unique to The Flash, of course, as it's actually a wider issue with the Arrowverse. Arrow is full of archers, just as Supergirl is full of super-powered beings and vigilantes. Still, the problem seems bigger with The Flash as the character has a very specific power set which should make him special. For season 4, it would be nice if some of Barry's uniqueness was returned to him. Just adjust the focus of the show away from its current emphasis on speedsters and have Barry gain some allies with different powers and fight some Big Bads with new abilities. Speaking of which... 3) Enough With The Mystery Villains So far, each season of The Flash has had a very clear formula. A new evil speedster comes to town and terrorizes Central City (well, sort of. They generally turn up and threaten people a lot but don't really do anything). There's then a big mystery as Team Flash try to find out who's under the mask. Then, in a shocking twist, it turns out to be one of the members of the team. This worked great the first time around, of course, as the reveal that Harrison Wells was really Reverse-Flash was an excellent one as it really hit the team hard. Subsequent seasons have tried to repeat the trick, though, and it hasn't quite landed since. Season 3's problem was that it kept the mystery going for too long and many fans had already worked out what the surprise was going to be. Going forwards, let's hope that The Flash dispenses with the 'mystery villain' plotline in favour of a fresh approach to the Big Bad. The likes of Deathstroke or Damien Darhk over on Arrow prove you don't need to keep the villain's face hidden to make them an entertaining antagonist. 2) Let Barry Be A Hero It sounds like a stupid question, but is Barry Allen really much of a hero? Yes, we see Barry dispatch the villain-of-the-week all the time. When it comes to the season-long story arcs, however, Barry's role is usually more ambiguous. For instance, it wasn't Barry who stopped Reverse-Flash and saved Central City at the end of season 1, but rather Eddie Thawne and Robbie Raymond. Season 2 did see Barry beat Zoom in a race to save the Multiverse, but even that success has now been dampened by the fact that he used a Time Remnant to do it - which season 3 has revealed are shadow versions of Barry who resent how the Flash uses them. Ah, season 3. The whole season has been about breaking down Barry's role as a hero: first he ruined many of his friends' lives with Flashpoint and now it's been revealed that he is Savitar, or rather, it's one of his Time Remnants. While this is an interesting storyline, by this point we just want Barry to be portrayed as a true hero, without the added baggage that he's actually the cause of his own problems. 1) Lighten Up The biggest problem with season 3 of The Flash has to be its increasingly glum tone. A knock-on effect of Barry being the cause of all his own problems this year - not to mention the ongoing trauma of the deaths of his parents - has caused him to become a much more brooding character. It's not just him, though. Even generally funny characters like Cisco have had some depressing story arcs (his brief hatred of Barry for 'killing' his brother Dante). Episodes like "Duet" - the musical crossover with Supergirl - and recent comedic memory-loss episode "Cause and Effect" have been two of the most fun to watch of this year due to their lighthearted tone. It's not that we think the show should cut back on the drama, just that the writers should remember that, first and foremost, The Flash should be a real treat to watch. Again, season 1 understood this best as the general fun of watching the Flash save the city was nicely counterbalanced, rather than undercut, by the darker, more emotional stuff (the tragedy of Barry's mother's death at the hands of Reverse-Flash). If Barry manages to save Iris at the end of this season, then hopefully we could be in for a brighter, more fun-loving Barry Allen, which should have a knock-on effect for the ethos of the entire show. Fingers crossed that the fun gets put back into The Flash in season 4.