THE FLASH
Running to stand still
In its third season, The Flash is now so formulaic you half expect Cisco to write its algorithm in marker pen on Star Labs’ trusty wipeboard. New Big Bad’s an evil speedster? Check. New version of Harrison Wells? Check. Time travel paradoxes? Check. People storming out of Star Labs’ operations room followed by someone else going, “I’ll talk to them”? Check.
All of which should make The Flash a major switch-off. Instead, it’s as strong as ever. Because The Flash seems to be honing its formula into that Holy Grail of episodic drama: keep giving the audience the same thing, but just different enough so that they don’t moan, “I preferred this when…”
Season three did hit an early, worrying bump, mind you. Season two’s cliffhanger led into “Flashpoint” – billed as a major gamechanging episode, with Barry creating a new timeline by preventing his mum’s death. Instead, the reset button was hit by the end of the season premiere, with only a few minor lingering changes (Caitlin is a meta! Cisco’s brother died! Barry has a new office buddy who hates him!). More mystifying still, the writers seemed to quickly tire of an ongoing plotline about metas from the Flashpoint timeline turning up, and replaced it with an arc plot about changing the future to prevent Iris’s death at the hand of “God of Speed” Savitar. There are hints in the latest episodes (at the time of writing we’re up to 14) that the series might return to the fallout from Flashpoint, but its effect has been nowhere near as impactful as you’d expect.
There’s still loads to enjoy. That new Wells – a self-promoting irritant from Earth-19 – is huge fun to watch, while Harry Potter’s Tom Felton has (after a rocky start as a B-list supervillain) proven to be an excellent addition as socially-inept metahuman expert Julian Albert. Wally, now the fully-fledged and endlessly enthusiastic Kid-Flash, has (unexpectedly after his moany, whingey introduction) turned out to be a massive bonus to the show too. And the wonderfully pulpy two-part Grodd story – with its massive speedster vs killer gorilla arena battle – proves The Flash can do small-screen comic book action like no other show.
The Flash, then: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” in TV form. Dave Golder