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.
