What Are The Writers Doing With Barry This Season? | CW’s The Flash

By Jeremy Carden

Let me start off by saying that I am a fan of CW’s The Flash series. However, Season 4 has gotten a lot of complaints from fans. Season 3 had a knack for stirring up the fanbase because of how long it took for them to reveal to identity of Savitar.

Season 4 has been a bag of trail mix for most viewers, and that is the nicest way that I could describe this season. From Iris leading Team Flash and using the phrase “WE are The Flash” to their being too many cooks in the kitchen (referring to the number of metas on Team Flash that it seems ridiculous that they couldn’t easily overcome any meta-of-the-week threat that comes their way in a matter of minutes), I have seen a new complaint every Tuesday that a new episodes airs.

The sad part about this routine is that most of the complaints this season are valid. For this post, I want to focus on one character rather than most of the problems littered throughout this season.

Barry Allen is the victim of my latest “rant” when it comes to The Flash!

True, a lot of fans will often complain about Barry’s speed being highly inconsistent or how he should be beyond any speedster at this point after being trapped in the Speed Force between Seasons 3 and 4.

However, I am not here to talk about The Flash and his powers. I want to focus on Barry Allen the person.

If you ask me, I am not even sure if the writers even know what to do with Barry this season. In a lot of ways, he seems to be more of an obstacle than a help to Team Flash.

Yes, I have been hard on Iris West-Allen from the start of this season. However, I cannot sit here and not act like Barry hasn’t been causing trouble within the team.

I think that it was made clear even during the opening episodes of this season that there would be a parallel between the relationships of Barry/Iris and The Thinker/Mechanic.

Each episode we see Devoe and Barry acting very cold, calculating and distant to those around them. However, we see the difference in their lifestyles because Barry has a support system comprised of friends and family that are not afraid to tell him that he is wrong (which has been quite a lot this season). Devoe has his wife to be that support for him, but he does not choose to listen to her even when she is 100% correct about something.

To be honest, I think we saw this side of Barry back in Season 3 after seeing the possible future of Iris being killed by Savitar. Not that I would want anyone to go through this punishment, but I suggest going back and watching a few episodes during the second half of that season.

There were plenty of times when Barry was a complete asshole (especially to Wally) because his main objective was keeping Iris safe at all cost; even at the expense of his team.

To be honest, he really reminded me of Rip Hunter from Legends of Tomorrow. His mission stands above everything and everyone else. It doesn’t matter who he must throw under the bus to achieve his goal. Heck, Rip almost got Jefferson killed near the end of Legends Season 1 when they were on their way back to the Vanishing Point with Vandal Savage in the holding cell.

What really annoys me about Barry is the fact that the writers have really been driving home the point that he would make a terrible team leader.

Is this being done just to support their reasoning for making Iris the leader in his absence?

Honestly, we saw that Barry was not the greatest teacher for speedsters back in Season 3. He wasn’t talking his time when teaching Jesse in the early episodes of that season, and he was rushing Wally because he wanted him to be the one to save Iris from Savitar.

Remember when he froze at the control panel when Iris was trapped under a piece of debris while trying to put out a fire after gaining Barry’s speed? Another example of him being an incompetent teacher to other speedsters.

In Season 4, I feel like he is dumbed down just for the sake of the story. Yes, the comic book version of Barry is very intelligent and can think incredibly fast. I understand that the CW version of Barry is not at that level yet. I am not even sure if he will ever reach that level of skill on the show because any problem that Central City faces would only need Barry and not Team Flash.

However, that does not mean that the writers need to diminish his intelligence so much that he is next to useless.

In previous seasons, we have seen Barry made decisions based on his emotions alone. This has led to some very big mistakes that have cost Barry, Team Flash and the city (sometimes even more than just Central City) a lot. Flashpoint is obviously the biggest consequence of his choices, but there are more that are scattered throughout this series.

One of the biggest things about Barry that has annoyed me this season is that he has a serious lack of patience for anyone who decides to not go with the plan that he comes up with. This is very relevant to his partnership with Ralph this season.

Yes, I will admit that he was not the nicest hero to ever join Team Flash. The episode with him making nonstop jokes to substitute for his fear was very annoying. For some reason Barry has been written to have a very short fuse this season. Especially when it comes to anyone challenging his authority.

It really rubbed me the wrong way to see Barry like this. In the most recent episode, he is trying to mend the cracks in Cisco’s relationship with Gypsy. Was I the only one that thought about Boy Meets World during this episode?

For anyone born in the 90s, you should know this show well just as the younger generation grew up with Girl Meets World.

Cory Matthews had a knack for sticking his nose in places that it did not belong. He would always try to help put his best friend Shawn back together with his girlfriend Angela whenever they were having relationship troubles.

Yes, it was annoying to see how Cory acted. However, his motives were to help his friends for the sake of helping his friends.

In Barry’s case, he was only pushing Cisco and Gypsy back together because the team was holding on by a thread. Basically, Barry wanted the relationship to heal as soon as possible just so Cisco could get his head in the game because The Thinker is still out there as a major threat.

How much would you want to bet that if Barry was going through a rough patch with Iris that he would be mopping around like someone shot his puppy? You know he would not want to be pushed back into the lab or his home to talk with Iris in the same fashion that he literally pushed Gypsy from Jitters to S.T.A.R. Labs!

It makes my head spin to see how the writers are making Barry act like such a jerk this season!

Again, I see that they are trying to demonstrate how Devoe and Barry can act like they are the same person. Both are driven when it comes to accomplishing a goal, and that can make them isolate those around them. What separates them is that Barry (sometimes) listens to the people around him when they call him out for his nonsense.

Some of my favorites scenes this season were when Ralph would challenge Barry because he had some legitimate points. I remember when he called out Barry for being so fast, but still allowing their target to escape because he was too worried about bystanders getting caught in the crossfire. However, the episode wrote it so Ralph was wrong and realized where Barry was coming from.

The one fight these two had that I really couldn’t stand was Barry refusing to listen to Ralph about how they should improvise in order to stop The Thinker.

If you ask me, thinking outside of the box seems to be the most effective way of countering Devoe because he claims to have thought about every possible outcome that Barry and the others could think of.

Barry did it once and it worked! Remember when Barry was trapped in Devoe’s pocket dimension? He was inside of that cage that no meta abilities could escape from. Did he escape? Not really…

To trick Devoe into thinking he had escaped, The Flash vibrated his body at such a high speed that it appeared as if he was invisible. This made Devoe deactivate the cage and Barry ran out of there!

How did he accomplish this? By thinking outside of the box! If it worked at such a critical moment for him, why was he so against it when it comes to Ralph?

I could continue this post, but I think this is a good stopping point. What do you think about Season 4 Barry Allen? Do you feel the same way I feel about his character?

Keep in mind that I did not even mention the Speed Force language that he was writing everywhere in Episode 1. It seemed like the story forgot about that plot point as quickly as Barry did by the end of the episode!

Though we did see “Coffee shop girl” writing similar symbols in her journal…

I hope that the writers can turn things around by the end of this season and improve on the writing in Season 5.

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Why Doesn’t Team Flash Kill The Thinker? | CW’s The Flash

By Jeremy Carden

This post is related to one of the most emotional episodes of Season 4. “Lose Yourself” certainly was an episode that had me feeling all types of emotions. Sadly, I was more annoyed than depressed over Ralph’s death at the hands of Devoe.

Alright, I know that different superheroes have their own rules about killing villains.

However, there has to be a point where the consideration of crossing that line needs to be addressed for the sake of the greater good.

No joke, I did enjoy that particular episode of The Flash. I believe it was one of this season’s better episodes. It was cool to see Joe and Iris get victories in their fights. I didn’t even mind Iris too much in that episode.

Heck, I think this is the sort of Iris we should have been seeing all season!

But my main gripe about the episode (as with most episodes this season) is Barry Allen.

A majority of episodes this season have felt sort of rinse-and-repeat in terms of them finding a bus-meta, saying they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent Thinker from stealing their bodies, they fail and then mope at the end of the episode due to their failure.

Yes, Ralph can be, has been and was an overall tool (just to use the nicest word that I could think of to describe him). However, he was a lovable tool when the script didn’t have him being overly annoying, selfish or afraid.

Seriously, there was a lack of consistency with his character this season. I feel like there were at least three or four episodes about Ralph overcoming fear or his own selfishness for the sake of becoming a hero.

He made a valid point about taking out Devoe FOR GOOD and by ANY means necessary.

True, it could be chalked up to him being afraid for his life (because he has every right to be), but I hate how Barry shot him down every chance he got in the episode because Ralph wasn’t following the guidelines of “Mr. and Mrs. Star Labs.”

Funny how Barry is more than willing to beat down his “friends” and “teammates” to keep them in line, but doesn’t show that same kind of gusto when it comes to defeating his enemy.

Now, I’m not saying that anyone who litters or ignores a stop sign deserves to be skewered by Killer Frost, breached to a deserted planet by Vibe or get the “Reverse Flash treatment” through the heart…

However, at what point is enough enough?

How many metas (and just regular people for that matter) have to die IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES before you decide that it is time to “cross that line” to prevent the enemy from hurting people?

At the end of the season, if the entire planet is on the line because of Devoe’s “enlightenment device” then I don’t want to hear Barry and the others crying about the fate of the world or how they’re not going to fail because they LET things get to level of danger. All of it boils down to them not doing what needed to be done while they still had the chance.

 

That is why I didn’t care about Barry and the others being sad because the blood of ALL of the pipeline metas and Ralph are on their hands as much as Devoe’s.

Going back to what I mentioned above about Iris, I still feel like she was not that annoying in “Losing Yourself.” However, there was one piece of dialogue between her and Ralph that didn’t sit too well with me.

 

I love how Iris talked to Ralph about not killing the person that wants to kill him. She started off on common ground because she DOES know what kind of situation Ralph is in right now.

For the second half of Season 3, the main focus of Team Flash was to prevent Savitar from killing Iris. She had to deal with the fact that she was possibly living on a ticking clock because everything Team Flash tried ended up failing (until HR sacrificed himself).

Here in Season 4, the focus of Team Flash is to prevent Thinker from killing the bus-metas (including Ralph). However, history repeats itself because Thinker is 20+ steps ahead of everything the team can think of. Similar to Savitar, who was a Barry that had lived through everything present Barry had meaning that he would be aware of any tactic that Team Flash thought of if Barry was there to know about it. 

So, I agree that Iris can relate to where Ralph was at that point in the season.

However, her saying that killing isn’t the tough call but the wrong one…

Eh, hard for her to be the person to say that since she was the one who pulled the trigger leading to Savitar’s death.

How’s that for the pot calling the kettle black?

Also, wasn’t Iris firing at The Mechanic with lethal shots during their showdown in S.T.A.R Labs? If it wasn’t for her blocking the shots with her blade, then I doubt she would have survived!

I believe Barry mentioned that he knew what Ralph was going through as well. In the sense of wanting to kill his enemy, I could see that being true. He fought the urge to kill Zoom and Reverse Flash at different points in the series.

However, I don’t think he can relate with Ralph when it comes to someone wanting to take his life.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think ANY of the major villains on The Flash have wanted Barry dead. For the most part, they all wanted or needed him alive for their own master plans:

• Reverse Flash needed Barry’s speed in order to get back to his own time.
• Zoom needed Barry’s speed in order to save his life, and then his speed in order to fuel the device he wanted to use to destroy every multiverse aside from Earth-1.
• Savitar needed Barry alive to ensure his own existence. It was the death of Iris that mattered to him.
• Devoe needed Barry released from the Speed Force to create the bus-metas. Then needed him out of the way to not interfere in his plans, and in the episode “Therefor She Is” we learned that he has an even bigger need for Barry in the near future. However, he will kill The Flash once that plan is finished; most likely referring to the Enlightenment.

So, I don’t think Barry can say that he knows what it is like to be on the run (no pun intended) for his life as Ralph was this season.

 

It just made me cringe throughout the episode when Barry kept preaching about how they don’t cross that line when it has been crossed SEVERAL times in previous seasons by members of Team Flash.

• Joe killed Weather Wizard’s brother at the end of the very first episode of The Flash, and then “Flashpoint Joe” killed The Rival. In both scenarios, Barry had defeated them by stopping their cyclones that would have brought major destruction to Central City. Then after assuming the battle was over, the bad guys tried to strike when Barry was vulnerable. Joe shot them in the back to protect Barry and that was that!
• Iris did the same thing when she shot Savitar in the back (killing him) because Barry had his back turned after defeating him. That could be called poetic justice since Savitar stabbed her in the back resulting in her death in the future that Barry saw earlier that season. However, death is still death!
• Barry killed two of the Earth-2 doppelgangers during the opening episodes of Season 2! I believe he trapped Atom Smasher in a container where the radiation killed him, and then he killed the “Sandman” after learning how to use his lightning bolt technique from “Jay Garrick.”

Guys, I’m just naming a few deaths that Team Flash caused off the top of my head. Sad to say, but I think there may have been a few that I missed.

Let’s be honest, if Devoe was about to kill Barry and Iris had to make the call; she would have killed him. Just as she did with Savitar when he was about to strike Barry when his back was turned.

Heck, I could see Iris looking at Mechanic dead in the face before killing Devoe saying; “You asked me how far was I willing to go to save my husband…” *pulls trigger* “….that’s how far….” all because she loves her man along with demonstrating the strength of their love.

No questions asked if that murder took place, but if one of the other team members wants to kill then it’s a problem????? Heck, remember when Iris stopped Killer Frost from killing Amunet Black after she crashed her bachelorette party?

Season 3 Caitlin/Killer Frost was right when she told Barry, “But why would you care? You got Iris. You got your happy ending. Everyone else be damned.”

All of Team Flash can fall by the wayside, but as long as Mr. and Mrs. Star Labs are alive and well…everyone else be damned.

Thoughts?

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Why Do Fans Hate Iris West?| CW’s The Flash

 

by Jeremy Carden

Believe it or not, but I do not actually hate Iris. The title of this post may suggest otherwise, but I just do not care for how the writers have been treating her over the past couple of seasons on The Flash.

I feel that she was nothing more than a plot device last season when Barry’s life revolved around saving her life from Savitar.

Season 4 is not off to a great start so far because it seems that every episode has at least one Iris West scene that has rubbed fans the wrong way.

In the video below, I go into my full thoughts on why this character has been getting so much hate from the Flash fanbase, and how the writers can turn things around this season!

I feel like there is so much more that could be done with her as a character. I find it ironic that Wally West was highly underutilized as a hero once Barry came out of the Speed Force. As a result, he has left the show (temporarily).

Instead of properly utilizing Iris, she has been given a more ‘important role’ as a character. However, this has caused her to act out of character for the most part so far this season.

Seriously, eloping in a church that has just finished a funeral? I cannot believe she was giving Barry crap last season for getting engaged in order to change the future to save her life from Savitar!

One of the biggest things has been the line about how Barry is not the Flash, but “we are the Flash…” Believe it or not, but I think this line is proper because Barry has been going on and on about how there is no Flash without Iris.

One of the best (worst) things is that even though Iris has done a lot of things that have ticked off fans, I will say that we have been able to get some great memes online after each episode!

Do you hate Iris or have you become numb to her character on the show? 

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