THE FLASH SEASON 1 - IS IT FALL YET?

SEASON ONE SPOILERS FOR THE FLASH FOLLOW


Prior to last year, I had only a vague knowledge of the DC superhero called The Flash.  I'm sure I saw him on cartoons when I was a kid and I did watch the 1990 live-action TV series when it was on.  So, I went into the CW TV show with a fresh perspective, having never even seen Arrow, the show from which it is spun off.  I starting watching with the premiere last fall and it has quick become one of my must-watch shows.

Despite the veneer of CW-ness (a lot of blandly attractive young people in the cast) and occasional lapses into stupidity, the Flash has been a consistently solid show and just concluded its first season with a jaw-dropping finale.  That is quite a feat considering how long it takes most shows to find their footing (I'm looking at you Agents of SHIELD).  In it's first season The Flash has been apologetically fun, warm, and has embraced it bonkers comic book source material enthusiastically.  I like to describe it as having some of the feel of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies with it's young dorky hero and its not-too-serious tone.

Perhaps what has really elevated the show has been its gradually pulling the curtain back on a deep mythology both with its overarching season one antagonist, the temporally-displaced Reverse Flash and its hints at a larger universe of "Speed Force" using heroes and villains and the promise of a larger multiverse with potentially interesting spins on existing characters.  What I never knew about the Flash as a hero was his penchant for time-travel universe hopping which gives the show a really fun sci-fi angle that other superhero shows don't have.  Time travel and superheroes?  Yes, please.

The whole Reverse Flash storyline has been masterfully plotted and teased from the pilot on.  Even the handful of mediocre episodes have been saved by some tantalizing beat of this larger story. Kudos to Tom Cavanagh for his excellent portrayal of Dr. Harrison Wells/Eobard Thawne who is at once nurturing and malicious.  Despite his apparent villainy and his hatred of future Barry, Wells has a clear affection and pride for his team.  The show has done something really interesting with this character and made him much more than the one-dimensional villain he could have been.

In the second half of the season and the finale, time travel and alternate realities have played a big part of The Flash and the first season has ended on kind of an uncertain cliffhanger with a couple of main characters apparently dead, Central City about to be destroyed by a wormhole possibly due to a nasty temporal paradox.  Barry Allen seems to be on his way into this wormhole and who knows where he will end up?

The good thing is that The Flash seems to be hinting at a bigger multiverse with alternate versions of existing characters. In the finale Barry uses the speed force to travel back in time and sees some intriguing visions of familiar characters in unfamiliar circumstances.  Perhaps most interesting is that a costume piece from another version of The Flash-the original Jay Garrick 1940's incarnation of the character-comes flying out of the initial wormhole which indicates that there are other versions of The Flash out there.

Another interesting thing is the show's relationship to the 1990 Flash show.  This modern series has gone out of its way to refer back to its predecessor despite the fact that the original show was only on for a season and has largely been forgotten. This is primarily done by casting the actor who played the 1990 flash as Barry Allen's imprisoned father, Henry Allen.  More interestingly both Amanda Pays and Mark Hamil reprise their same roles from the previous show, making that show almost an alternate universe to the new show.  The show even utilized photos and costumes from Mark Hamil's Trickster character directly from the 1990 show.  It would be very interesting to see this explored in a future episode.

There's another major character to have assumed the role of The Flash and his name is Wally West. Many people noted that in the new show Barry's foster father and foster sister have the surname West in the new show.  It makes me wonder if we will see an alternate timeline where maybe Joe West is the one imprisoned and his child-in this continuity a boy named Wally-becomes the Flash.

With a show like the Flash, the possibilities are endless.  I mean, this show literally has a psychic gorilla in it.  I'm looking forward to seeing where things go in the new season.