History YMMV / TheFlash2014

* FirstInstallmentWins: The first season is considered by most as the best of the entire series, due to how fresh it felt in setting up The Flash as a hero while slowly unveiling a confusing MythArc into something that felt mostly plausible by the end. This is exaggerated as seasons two and three are viewed as some of the weaker seasons for trying to copy much of the beats of the first season, while making less and less sense (although the reception of season two has softened over time). The tendency to [[ArcFatigue stall the reveal of the mysteries excessively with the pretext of being shocking]], weaker second halves, and the excessive use of absurd plots and {{Filler}} to justify a long season BigBad have been common points of contention. Posterior seasons are mostly seen as mediocre at best, though still fluctuate well below season one.

* FirstInstallmentWins: The first season is still considered by many as the show's best season by Season 5. While subsequent seasons have their fans, they are firmly balanced out by the critics. While the second season was VindicatedByHistory, part of the fandom still sees it as inferior to the first one. Posterior seasons are mostly seen as mediocre at best. The tendency to [[ArcFatigue stall the reveal of the mysteries excessively with the pretext of being shocking]], weaker second halves, and the excessive use of absurd plots and {{Filler}} to justify a long season BigBad have been common points of contention.

* [[WhatAnIdiot/TheFlash2014 What An Idiot!]]

*** Season 3 is guilty of this as well. The BigBad is a [[MysteriousPast mysterious]], [[TheDreaded dreaded]] overwhelmingly powerful being of legend, who is only heard of through stories and doesn't officially become the main threat until halfway through. The hero [[WhatTheHellHero comes under fire from others for questionable choices and big mistakes]] and starts going through [[HurtingHero the most grief he has ever experienced]]. A fair portion of the season is dedicated to trying to save the life of an important female in the hero's life, which is ultimately connected to the villain wanting to forcibly make the hero turn into said villain through way of this tragedy. Before the season ends the hero departs the team, with his teammates forced to protect the city without him.

* GrowingTheBeard:
** While many praised the show from the start for being LighterAndSofter (or rather, balancing levity and seriousness better) than [[Film/TheDarkKnightTrilogy recent]] [[Film/ManOfSteel DC live-action]] [[Series/{{Arrow}} fare]], it was also criticized early on for having a MonsterOfTheWeek setup with mostly lackluster main villains, some of whom [[RoguesGalleryTransplant weren't even linked with the Flash]] in the comics. But this lessened once major enemies like the Reverse-Flash (the overall BigBad), Captain Cold, and Gorilla Grodd, not to mention the hero Firestorm, started showing up or having more time devoted to them, showing a stronger sense of plot.
** The crossover with ''Arrow'' also helped reinforce that there is a [[SharedUniverse shared]] live-action DC Universe for the first time, [[Franchise/DCExtendedUniverse beating the DC movies to it]]. On a similar note, the character-building involved with Firestorm has been speculated as possibly being a [[PoorlyDisguisedPilot backdoor pilot]] due to how strong it was. Indeed, the character is one of several appearing in the next spin-off, ''Series/LegendsOfTomorrow''.

* MemeticMutation: ''The Cecile / The Virtue'' [[note]]Cecile's ever increasing screen-time, powers and her suddene journey to being a costumed superhero have led to jokes from the fandom that she had usurped Barry's position as the main protagonist of the series and it should be named after her.[[/note]]

** Iris and Barry being, essentially, foster siblings. Putting TheyChangedItNowItSucks aside due to the changes from the comics, but for some fans the NotBloodSiblings angle isn't too much of an issue since Barry was established as being into Iris since ''before'' he was taken in by the Wests, and see it as a typical ChildhoodFriendRomance. Others however note that Barry considers Joe West to be his dad and Wally West to be his brother, so its not as if Barry doesn't consider himself part of the West family, and so by every other metric she's his foster sister, which makes it a very squicky attraction. Strangely, ''Iris'' is usually the one who gets blamed for this, despite Barry being the one who carried a torch for her for a ''decade''.

* [[{{Woobie}}/TheFlash2014 The Woobie]]

* [[{{Woobie]]/TheFlash2014 The Woobie]]

* [[TheWoobie/TheFlash2014 The Woobie]]

* TheWoobie: Has it's [[Woobie/TheFlash2014 own page]].

** The show’s {{Anvilicious}} stance on ThouShaltNotKill. Some fans don’t mind it due to the fact that this is a superhero show and this stuff is to be expected, while others think that every time Team Flash tries to invoke the no-killing rule, it doesn’t work because a), most members members of Team Flash have either killed or tried to kill someone before, so they all come across as self-righteous hypocrites who can’r claim the moral high ground, and b), letting villains live often ends up resulting in more deaths in the future that could’ve been avoided if the heroes had just killed the villains instead. So the moral doesn’t really hold much water when letting the villain live just results in more people dying anyway.

** The fact that Reverse-Flash was frequently referred to as "The Man in Yellow", led to him be compared to [[Literature/CuriousGeorge The Man with the Yellow Hat]]. Made even funnier by the fact that he's associated with a gorilla, who got dubbed "Curious Grodd".

*** And to come full circle, in season 9 of ''The Flash'' her character becomes Khione, a FriendToAllLivingThings who seems to be particularly attuned to plants, much like her character in ''Sky High''.

* TheScrappy: Red Death is seen as yet another disappointing and bland BigBad. Already serving as ''another'' speedster villain in a series that's absolutely teeming to the brim with them, she completely fails to be intimidating like villains such as Reverse Flash and Zoom, with her lines coming across as [[{{Narm}} overly edgy]] and her [[VillainousBreakdown rage-filled breakdowns]] being hard to take seriously, with many feeling that her actress Javicia Leslie, who otherwise did a decent job as [[Series/{{Batwoman}} Ryan Wilder/Batwoman]], gave a poor performance.

** Cecile Horton. Initially starting off as an EnsembleDarkHorse after her brief appearance in Season 1, she quickly became divisive after becoming a meta herself and joining Team Flash. Her fans defended her for being a strong female supporting character who gives happiness to Joe and isn't afraid to either call out Barry when she thinks he's wrong or to support him when he's down. Others criticized her for her immoral use of her psychic powers was quite a heavy point of contention, with her reading minds without consent. However opinions on steadily dropped with each passing season, where she got given more and more focus and importance to the plot, leading to criticism of her being a SpotlightStealingSquad who was constantly given PlotDevice powers to resolve the plot. Eventually it got to the point where she was labelled as a CreatorsPet who was shilled as an irreplaceable powerhouse of Team Flash and took the attention away from Barry himself, with many mockingly referring to the later seasons of the show as "The Cecile".
** Mark Blaine/Chillblaine. He seemingly only existed at first to be eye candy for Frost. The show tried to give him some depth and show that he's not all bad, but many viewers found him too crude and/or sexist, and then he ended up betraying Frost just when it seemed like she was ready to get with him. Many feel that he gets even worse throughout Seasons 8 and 9, to the point where it's hard to feel any sympathy for him at all. Additionally, it seems like he was supposed to be a replacement for Captain Cold (as a somewhat-reformed ice-themed ex-villain), but Chillblaine lacks Cold's sophistication, deadpan snark, moral complexity, and sense of honor, leaving him a much flatter character audiences are supposed to sympathize with despite not having his first heroic moment until partway through Season 9. He seems to finally have gotten some degree of RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap after properly pulling a HeelFaceTurn to become a heroic member of Team Flash.

** Thawne, mostly because he [[JokerImmunity just won't go away]]. Some argue this is as it should be since he's Flash's oldest and most dangerous foe; others are simply tired of him popping up again and again no matter how definitely he was killed the last time around.

* TheScrappy: Mirror Monarch is often viewed as a rather uninteresting BigBad, with her motivations feeling more than a little convoluted and confusing and her arc [[ArcFatigue going on for too long]] and requiring the characters to hold the IdiotBall for her to move on with her plans. It doesn't help that the final fight against her was [[AntiClimaxBoss widely considered underwhelming]].

* TheScrappy: Red Death is seen as yet another disappointing and bland BigBad. Already serving as ''another'' speedster villain in a series that's absolutely teeming to the brim with them, she completely fails to be intimidating like villains such as Reverse Flash and Zoom, with her lines coming across as [[{{Narm}} overly edgy]] and her VillainousBreakdown{s} being hard to take seriously, with many feeling that her actress Creator/JaviciaLeslie, who otherwise did a decent job as [[Series/{{Batwoman}} Ryan Wilder/Batwoman]], gave a poor performance.

* TheScrappy: Red Death is seen as yet another disappointing and bland BigBad. Already serving as ''another'' speedster villain in a series that's absolutely teeming to the brim with them, she completely fails to be intimidating like villains such as Reverse Flash and Zoom, with her lines coming across as [[{{Narm}} overly edgy]] and her VillainousBreakdown[s] being hard to take seriously, with many feeling that her actress Creator/JaviciaLeslie, who otherwise did a decent job as [[Series/{{Batwoman}} Ryan Wilder/Batwoman]], gave a poor performance.

* TheScrappy: Red Death is seen as yet another disappointing and bland BigBad. Already serving as ''another'' speedster villain in a series that's absolutely teeming to the brim with them, she completely fails to be intimidating like villains such as Reverse Flash and Zoom, with her lines coming across as [[{{Narm}} overly edgy]] and her VillainousBreakdowns being hard to take seriously, with many feeling that her actress Creator/JaviciaLeslie, who otherwise did a decent job as [[Series/{{Batwoman}} Ryan Wilder/Batwoman]], gave a poor performance.

** Gorilla Grodd. His first appearance was one of the best scenes in the series up to that point. The buildup to a full appearance by Grodd has been driving the fandom absolutely ''crazy''.

** A part of the fandom is tired of the idea of Tom Cavanagh having LoadsAndLoadsOfRoles as Harrison Wells doppelgangers, since for them the trick has outstayed its welcome. In particular, having a new Wells OnceASeason has become tiresome, since the major Harrison Wells characters tend to have the same plots and finally lose relevance at the next season, often coming across as attempts to give Tom Cavanagh something to do. It gets particularly bad after Season 3. While H.R. was ''very'' different to Harry, who in turn was very different to Earth-1 Harrison, Sherloque and Nash end up coming across as being pretty much the same as Harry, albeit being a detective/archaeologist instead of a scientist.

** Apparently, Cecile's powers can reach ''across time'' now, just when that's most useful. Also, in the final episode, she [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands inexplicably]] starts to ''fly''.

* CreatorsPet: By Seasons 8 and 9, some fans feel like Cecile and Allegra have [[SpotlightStealingSquad overtaken the focus]] despite being among the least popular of the regular cast due to the former reading her team's minds without their consent despite refusing to do so with her clients and being perceived as having overtaken the plot from her formerly supporting character as a lawyer and [[CharacterShilling shilled by the characters]], while the latter is regularly percieved as rather bland but excessively focused on.

** On a smaller scale, Barry/Caitlin/Cisco as well for fans who love their TrueCompanions relationship. YMMV here as well, as not an insignificant number of Cisco fans have pointed out that "Snowbarrisco" fan edits are simply Snowbarry moments with Cisco in the back as a supportive cheerleader, and a way of Snowbarry fans excluding Iris without being called racist. As a result, those fans tend to be wary of the pairing. Nevertheless, they're popular for fans who love that their bond emphasises the ScienceHero and {{Adorkable}} nature of their characters.

* ReplacementScrappy: While not hated per se, in fact both are somewhat liked, both Allegra and Chester had this to contended with after being unfavorably compared to the giant personalities of both Cisco and Wells, which they essentially took over for, with a lot of people commenting that the two coming off as boring and second-rate copies of the previous characters.

** Cecile Horton fell into this hard after becoming a meta and joining Team Flash. Her haters lambasted her for being a SpotlightStealingSquad who always ends up with her powers being the PlotDevice used to solve the problems, especially in later seasons where she keeps getting more powerful and more involved. Additionally, while most fictional psychics on the side of good respect MindOverManners, Cecile, constantly uses her telepathy and empathy on others without their consent. However, her fans defend her as a strong female supporting character who gives happiness to Joe and isn't afraid to either call out Barry when she thinks he's wrong or to support him when he's down. It got worse with each passing season where Cecile continues gaining more powers and is made out to be the irreplaceable powerhouse of TeamFlash, with many, accusing her of being a CreatorsPet and SpotlightStealingSquad that takes the attention away from Barry himself.

** Chillblaine. He seemingly only existed at first to be eye candy for Frost. The show tried to give him some depth and show that he's not all bad, but many viewers found him too crude and/or sexist, and then he ended up betraying Frost just when it seemed like she was ready to get with him. Many feel that he gets even worse throughout Seasons 8 and 9, to the point where it's hard to feel any sympathy for him at all. Additionally, it seems like he was supposed to be a replacement for Captain Cold (as a somewhat-reformed ice-themed ex-villain), but Chillblaine lacks Cold's sophistication, deadpan snark, moral complexity, and sense of honor, leaving him a much flatter character audiences are supposed to sympathize with despite not having his first heroic moment until partway through Season 9.