YMMV / The Flash (2014)

• Base-Breaking Character
• Narm
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character
• The Woobie

General

• Abandon Shipping: Snowbarry (Barry and Caitlin) was a Fan-Preferred Couple for Season 1, but its popularity diminished when Ronnie appeared and Barry and Iris were goaded towards becoming the Official Couple. While still having a sizeable group, they are a Vocal Minority now.
• Actor Shipping:
  • Some have paired Grant Gustin (Barry) with Candice Patton (Iris), and the pairing is called "Grandice".
  • Meanwhile, there is also "Granielle" (Grant Gustin and Danielle Panabaker)
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is the Speed Force a Big Good with Blue-and-Orange Morality or is it secretly evil merely pretending to be benevolent? To wit, it turned a blind eye to the havoc caused by Thawne, Zoom, and Savitar watching them murder dozens of innocent people — and in Thawne's case extensive time meddling. Yet it believes Barry going back to save Nora from being killed by Thawne is a sin more terrible than Thawne actually rewriting time by murdering her in the first place (though it's also possible that it was responsible for him losing his speed after killing Nora), and when Barry comes to his senses and resets the timeline, it uses its power to make life hell for Barry's friends and family in the new timeline just to punish Barry.
• Alternate Self Shipping: It's not uncommon to find The Flash (2014) fanworks or edits shipping Caitlin Snow with her Earth-2 doppelganger Killer Frost. At least, it's usually the Earth-2 doppelganger...
• Arc Fatigue: Over the course of four seasons, Caitlin Snow's transformation into Killer Frost has been messy and contradictory. In Season 2, she was supposedly not a metahuman (with Killer Frost only existing on Earth-2), but then in season 3 Flashpoint purportedly turned her into Killer Frost, but this still presented a problem as Killer Frost was evil for no apparent reason. The show repeatedly emphasised that once she turned full "Frost", there would be no going back, only to undo that at the end of the season. After returning to Team Flash in Season 4, Killer Frost is established as being a split personality and both sides lack the memories of the other's actions, but that wasn't the case before. In the episode "Think Fast" and in Season 5 it's revealed that Killer Frost was part of Caitlin even as a child, making it the third time they've rebooted the character. Although this explanation has been definitive and has not changed since then, many fans were already tired of the constant rigmarole surrounding her powers and origin story.
• Ass Pull: More than one.
  • A major reason for the above Arc Fatigue; after becoming Killer Frost in season 3, with no explanation for how beyond "Flashpoint", the writers clearly began coming up with her story on the fly. The reason why she turns evil from her powers wasn't explained but was treated as an absolute fact (even though no other known meta changed their morality just based on their powers), causing her to go on a rampage trying to get a cure, without explaining why she needed one, before later losing herself to the power and joining Savitar. At the end of the season it seemed she'd mellowed out and was now something 'in between' Caitlin and Killer Frost, but the next time we see her she's suddenly gained Dissociative Identity Disorder, which wasn't how she appeared beforehand, and from there we later learn this was a childhood condition we just never knew about. Add in that the way they'd portray the disorder with heavy Hollywood psychology and very little accuracy towards the condition, even the way it personified would change depending on the episode and plot needs.
  • Not counting time travels to the Season 1 arc, every one of Thawne's appearances after Season 3 amounts to this. For the first Crisis crossover, his use of being in the Wells persona barely got a Hand Wave (this is presumed to extend to Season 5's 2049 setting). It goes downhill from there.
• Audience-Coloring Adaptation: Because the show is more mainstream, casual audiences are more aware of this series and its canon than they are the comics. The show's take on Zoom and Jesse Quick, for instance, are now far more well-known than the original versions. It's also popularised the idea that Barry Allen is the Flash, and Jay Garrick and Wally West are all but forgotten, especially as Barry took his place in the series' take on many of Wally's stories.
• Awesome Music: The main theme of this series gives you the imagination of running at super speed, getting fun while doing so and doing badass actions.
• Badass Decay:
  • Barry himself falls into this hard in later seasons, where it seems like he can't do anything without the help of his team and is prone to making extremely impulsive and reckless decisions that just make things worse.
  • Thawne, who was initially faster than Barry and was easily his biggest threat. However, thanks to Barry's growth and other more powerful villains taking the stage, he's now the slower one of the two and tends to take a backseat to bigger threats. Slightly lessened however in that it doesn't mean he's much less of a threat, as he's still capable of coming up with complex schemes to ruin Barry's life and always comes back more vicious and determined than ever.
• Broken Base:
  • The sheer number of speedsters that show up throughout the show (Jay Garrick, Wally West, Zoom, Thawne, Jesse Quick, Trajectory, The Rival, Savitar, Accelerated Man, XS, Godspeed, Impulse, Fast Track). Most people, especially comic fans, are happy to see the Flash Family on screen, and think that having more than one speedster in the show makes sense since this is a show about a character with super-speed both learning from and teaching to some of those other characters. However, some people think that the more speedsters featured in the show, the less special it makes Barry. It doesn't help that three seasons in a row have had a speedster as the Big Bad. A few people also wish that since there are so many speedsters, it would be nice to see more people with other powers that are the same, such as Gypsy and her father having the same powers as Cisco.
  • Iris and Barry being, essentially, foster siblings. Putting They Changed It, Now It Sucks! aside due to the changes from the comics, but for some fans the Not Blood Siblings 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 Childhood Friend Romance. 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 (not helped by the fact he moved in with her family at the age of eleven, so whatever pre-teen crush he had on her at the time doesn't translate well as the beginning of an adult relationship). 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.
  • The large amount of focus in later seasons on Iris's journalism. Some feel that it helps flesh out the character and give her a life outside of Team Flash. Others, however, feel that it takes away from the action scenes and lowers the overall quality of the superhero show which is meant to be about, well, superheroics.
  • Barry and Iris' relationship in general. Most fans will either find it incredibly adorable, or else a toxic, shallow relationship that constantly gets hyped by the showrunners despite Barry's much greater chemistry with a variety of other female characters such as Patty, Caitlin, and Kara. There's very little in between.
  • The show’s Anvilicious stance on Thou Shalt Not Kill. 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 whenever 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’t 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.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Barry Allen himself was originally very well-liked due to being an Adorkable All-Loving Hero who many felt was more likable and charming than the Arrowverse's main protagonist, Oliver Queen. However, he grew into one of the franchise's most polarizing characters due to suffering from Flanderization in later seasons, making him overly reliant on his team and prone to making reckless and questionable decisions, with the fanbase even mockingly referring to him as "Jobber Flash". Yet former fans begin to soften up to him again with the DCEU's version of Barry Allen being even more divisive in no small part due to Ezra Miller's performance (as well as controversies surrounding them), which led fans to renew praise on Grant Gustin's performance as the titular character, with some even hoping that he could replace Miller as the Flash in a future film.
  • Wally West was initially a very controversial addition to the main cast due to how radically different he was from his well-loved comic-book counterpart, particularly because of his Race Lift and being Iris' brother rather than her nephew. It also didn't help that he initially came across as quite Wangsty, up to the point of being Unintentionally Unsympathetic for some. However, thanks to him becoming more in-line with the source material, the writers' poor treatment of him making even his detractors upset, and the later addition of even more divisive characters, many began clamoring for Wally to make a return to the series as part of the main cast, with his former detractors feeling like he got too much hate early on.
• Complete Monster: Listed here.
• Creator's Pet: By Seasons 8 and 9, some fans feel like Cecile and Allegra have overtaken the focus despite being among the least popular of the regular cast. With Cecile being criticized for constantly being subjected to New Powers as the Plot Demands and having overtaken the plot from other cast members while being heavily shilled by the characters. For Allegra she is perceived as being rather bland and out-of-place on Team Flash, yet is still excessively focused on.
• Crossover Ship:
  • Barricity (Barry and Felicity) is quite a popular one.
  • Laurisco/Black Vibe (Cisco and Laurel) thanks to their brief interaction in "Who Is Harrison Wells?"
  • With the announcement of the March 2016 Supergirl crossover, Flash/Supergirl gained steam, especially once the episode aired and viewers saw how much chemistry existed between the two Endearingly Dorky, constantly upbeat and kind heroes.
  • Cisco and Felicity is pretty popular too, due to both being the adorkable Techno Wizard geeks and the comic reliefs on their respective teams. It's also viewed as a better ship than Olicity, which is considered very toxic on Arrow. The "Invasion!" crossover showing the two of them getting along well only further bolstered support for this ship.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Hartley Rathaway. That he was disowned by his parents for being gay and was betrayed by his surrogate father figure Eobard Thawne is enough for some viewers to look the other way at his evil doings. It helps that he started out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist (trying to expose and punish Thawne for deliberately endangering the city) and that he did go through a Heel–Face Turn in the comics (and subsequently became a major figure in the Flash mythos, making it all the more likely he'll do so here as well); he did so with "Flash Back" via Barry messing with the timestream.
  • Some people seem to think Eobard Thawne isn't quite as irredeemably evil as the show makes him out to be, mainly due to his interactions with the cast in Season 1. This is despite him having multiple Kick the Dog moments, being Evil Is Petty incarnate, mentioning to Barry that even if he saves him he'll just keep attempting to make his life a living hell, and being a Card-Carrying Jerkass who has no remorse for any of his actions in general. And any of the minor redeeming qualities the show seems to give him are subverted by the end of his plans.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Captain Cold might have gathered mixed opinions over his Adaptational Villainy, but the character himself is an undisputed fan favorite. He is regarded as an excellent nemesis to Barry, being a Magnificent Bastard, with his episodes being among some of the most well-written. He carries with him a degree of sophistication and finesse to his villainy, with his lines being very theatrical and delivered brilliantly by Wentworth Miller. In addition, his character is more complex than "commit crimes for the lulz or the evilz," and has something of a Friendly Enemy relationship with the Flash. Considering his popularity, it's no wonder he ended up as a main character on Legends of Tomorrow.
  • Linda Park has become one before she even appeared, simply because it was announced she was being played by Malese Jow. Technically she's The Other Darrin because Linda has had a brief cameo played by another actress, but still. She ended up proving popular enough some fans were hoping she'd avoid being a throw-away temporary love interest, leading to excitement when it was announced she'd return in Season 2, and excitement when Jow expressed interest in returning for the third. Even more so when she was revealed to be a metahuman on Earth-2, leaving some fans hoping the original gets powers as well.
  • Gorilla Grodd. His first appearance was one of the best scenes in the series up to that point.
  • Mark Mardon's Weather Wizard, proved to be one of the most popular minor Rogues. For a Monster of the Week he came the closest to having a Near-Villain Victory.
  • Likewise, the Trickster. Mark Hamill reprises the role after playing it twice before and completely steals the show with him channeling The Joker persona.
  • Add Pied Piper to the list of villains with a large following before they even appeared on the show. Being played by Andy Mientus helps, as many of his fans from Les Misérables, Spring Awakening, and Smash are willing to check out The Flash just to get more of Mientus.
  • Abra Kadabra. One of the few Rogues who is adapted faithfully, is a proper formidable opponent, and isn't treated as a throwaway Monster of the Week. Despite having a single episode appearance in Season Three, he was one of the most beloved characters to appear there. His return in Season Seven, giving him a sympathetic backstory and a Heel–Face Turn only sought to win over even more support from fans.
• Escapist Character: Barry Allen is a powerful hero due to his Super-Speed, which has multiple uses. He uses his powers to defeat bad guys, save people and save time in everyday tasks. He is also kind-hearted, attractive and a brilliant scientist who can survive without his powers due to his chemistry knowledge and his MacGyvering.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — the latest front in the DC vs. Marvel war. Especially since both shows air on the same night in consecutive time slots. Daredevil also joined the fray, but it's mostly the Arrow fanbase that picks fights with them.
  • With the DC Extended Universe because of differences in tone. Fans were quick to point out the pilot was more lighthearted compared to the Darker and Edgier DC movies. Comics writer Mark Waid praised the creators of The Flash for "remembering he ENJOYS HIS WORK", in contrast with the movies' Superman. This got worse when it was announced that a different actor would play the Flash in the movies, only two weeks after the TV series started. Ironically, the two actors who play the Flash are actually nothing but supportive to each other.
  • Fans of The Flash comics and fans of the TV series don't tend to get along too well. The show is initially adapting The Flash (2011) and The Flash (2016), which are controversial stories anyway among fans of the older stories, but subsequently it begins adapting older material, but the show is still using Barry Allen, when these stories were about Wally West. Besides playing into the Broken Base that exists between the two characters, it's seen as Adaptation Deviation by the latter for the heavy changes that come about changing the stories to fit around Barry, especially with the In Name Only treatment of Wally, Zoom, Jesse Quick, and several others. Combined with being an Audience-Coloring Adaptation, a lot of comic fans are unamused, especially when the show went into Seasonal Rot from the second season onward. Conversely, the show is still a Gateway Series and is one of the most watched shows on the CW, and so has a dedicated fandom who have not taken kindly to some of the criticism, which is often dismissed as just being They Changed It, Now It Sucks! whining, especially fans who are unsympathetic towards the treatment of Wally West by DC, which fuels a lot of the resentment.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Many fan videos are built on the premise of Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash battling Zoom.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The hidden room of Eobard Thawne is called "the Zoom Room of Doom [and Gloom]." Cisco later dubs it the "time vault."
  • Barry's multiple father figures are "Blackdad" or "Copdad" (Joe), "Jaildad" or "Flashdad" (Henry), and "(Shady/Evil) Science Dad" (Thawne).
  • "STAR-Kids" for the Flash's mostly-youthful support team at STAR Labs (with bonus points because Carlos Valdes, who plays Cisco, was a StarKid).
  • Wellsobard for Eobard Thawne disguised as "Dr. Wells," in order to differentiate him from the real Dr. Wells and the Earth-2 "Harry" Wells.
  • Zoom's lair is called Lian Zoom by some fans.
  • Goblin Rival for The Rival die to this version being In Name Only with a ridiculous costume that seems more akin to the Black Racer or the Green Goblin.
  • Savitron for Savitar, given his clear visual similarity to Megatron. A less common alternative is Megatron Jr.
  • Following the reveal of Savitar's identity, r/FlashTV and a few other forums quickly dubbed him Barritar (though the nickname was in use as early as March 2017).
  • SheVoe for DeVoe after he hijacks Hazard's body, and later Izzy's.
  • Marlize DeVoe is often called The Mechanic, because Word of God is that she is loosely based on the DC villain of the same name.
  • " Cicada II" is this in season 5, for the future, adult version of Grace Gibbons that takes over the Cicada mantle from her uncle. As of "Snow Pack", the characters In-Universe are using it as well.
  • To refer to Grace Gibbons becoming Cicada, she is called Shecada or Thiccada.
  • Nora has gotten the nickname "Reverse XS" after being corrupted by the Negative Speed Force and gaining Thawne's signature glowing eyes and red lightning.
• Fanon:
  • Due to Grant Gustin's previous role on Glee, many have presumed that Sebastian Smythe is one of the many alternate Barrys in The Multiverse.
  • A lot of fans like the idea of Cisco and/or Julian being bisexual.
• Genius Bonus: While the show has a tendency to Hand Wave many of the science fiction elements, the science explanations that they do give are typically accurate, with the correct usage of scientific terms. Those with a background in science are able to appreciate the research that the writers have done.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Everything about Thawne's relationship with the team becomes this once we find out he's just using Barry as a means of regaining his own powers. It gets worse when we find out the real Harrison Wells died ages ago, Thawne killed him and took his place.
  • In the pilot, Oliver gives an unsure Barry a Rousing Speech, telling his friend that Barry can inspire people in a way Oliver never could. All throughout Arrow's third season, Ra's al Ghul orchestrates a city-wide smear campaign against the Arrow to force Oliver to become his successor in the League of Assassins. By "The Fallen", Ra's even had Ollie in his clutches and tried to snuff out any signs of empathy or humanity within him, making him renounce his old life and take up the title "Al Sah-him," the heir to the Demon. Thankfully, it didn't stick and Season 4 sees Oliver taking the steps to become a symbol of hope for Star City in his civilian and vigilante personas.
  • Ralph's entire character arc about becoming a better person and moving away from his shady past becomes this when his actor, Hartley Sawyer, was fired after offensive tweets back from 2009 and 2014 resurfaced.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Plastique/Bette, due to Never Found the Body (albeit, given what happened to it, of course they didn't), and while we see their death, being a metahuman, coming back from something which should be fatal isn't that much of a stretch. There's also the character's noted history with the Suicide Squad (see below on that) leading to some thinking that they might turn up alive later.
  • General Eiling, last seen dragged away by Grodd after just a couple appearances despite being set up as the show's equivalent to Amanda Waller. It helps that Grodd would likely want to do far more than just kill him. Confirmed, as of "Grodd Lives".
  • No one actually believes that Eobard Thawne is truly gone. Not only are there some loose threads about his character (how he got his powers, why he hates Barry, and how he discovered his identity), but he's just too iconic to truly be gone. This did indeed come to pass as Thawne proved to be the most notorious case of Joker Immunity in the franchise, returning again and again by cheating non-existence.
  • Eddie could return since his body was swept into the timestream.
• He Really Can Act: Not that Tom Cavanagh was ever considered a "bad" actor, but before this show he was mostly known for goofy roles in Ed, Scrubs, and Yogi Bear. His performance as Eobard Thawne disguised as Harrison Wells received universal acclaim for his pure menace he exudes in every scene, without even mentioning the over a dozen other versions of Wells he's played since the show started, since the actor has been able to make them look like different people.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Right around the time the pilot leaked online, a video on the Nerdist website claimed to have obtained a clip...then pulled a Bait-and-Switch by showing a clip of the 1990 Flash fighting the Trickster, joking they were impressed the show was able to get Mark Hamill since he was likely really busy with the new Star Wars movie. A few weeks later, they revealed they really did get Hamill back to play the Trickster.
  • Oliver Queen, the Trope Namer for The Cape, advises Barry to become one.
  • "The Flash is Born" had a flashback with a kid Barry practicing boxing with Joe; the Gotham episode that aired the day before ("Harvey Dent") had a similar scene with kid Bruce and Alfred.
  • The "Did Flash run backwards twice?" meme becomes this in "Going Rogue" when Barry does try to run backwards on the treadmill and is promptly thrown into the wall.
  • In the first Flash series, Barry Allen gets Ship Tease with Tina McGee, one of Wally West's love interests (at the time). In this series, starting with "Crazy for You", Barry does it "again", when he starts going out with Linda Park, Wally's wife.
  • In Glee, Grant Gustin's character has a knack of throwing red slushies really fast, and a line from one of his songs is about the sky fell on him (and now Grant plays a character who was struck by lightning). Speaking of Gustin, in CSI: Miami he appeared in an episode called "Terminal Velocity". Additionally, he played twins in that episode.
  • In the Justice League cartoon, Lex Luthor, voiced by Clancy Brown, ultimately ended up killing Gorilla Grodd, whose last words were that he'd have his revenge. Here we have Clancy Brown playing General Eiling, who first experiments on Grodd and is later taken to the now very powered and very intelligent (and also very angry) Grodd by Reverse-Flash, thus technically giving Grodd a chance at revenge in two ways.
  • Danielle Panabaker's stint in Sky High (2005), namely;
    • Her character decided to date a pyrokinetic guy to make The Hero of said film (whom her character is in love with) jealous. And when her character finally ends up with The Hero, the pyrokinetic guy ends up with a female character with ice-based powers. Here, her character is in a relationship with Firestorm and her character is Killer Frost.
    • One of her enemies in that film has Super-Speed. Here she's an ally of the Flash.
    • Her Sky High character is a heroic Captain Ersatz of a well known female DC villain, whereas here she's playing an actual DC villain, but is also portrayed heroically.
    • The fact that the aforementioned pyrokinetic guy having almost the exact same build as Ronnie and the exact same hairstyle as Cisco.
    • And to come full circle, in season 9 of The Flash her character becomes Khione, a Friend to All Living Things who has plant-based powers, much like her character in Sky High.
  • Mark Mardon, the Weather Wizard, is played by Liam McIntyre. McIntyre played the titular Spartacus whose Red Baron is "The Bringer of Rain" (though it may be intentional).
  • James Jesse (Mark Hamill) references Breaking Bad in "Tricksters". In a script reading for The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker (originated by Hamill himself) was played by Aaron Paul.
    • In the same episode, James Jesse has a throwaway line about how when he was in his prime, "A day without casualties was like The Cubs winning the Pennant. It just never happened." Flash forward to 2016, and the Cubs win the World Series. You were saying, Trickster?
  • In The Mask of Zorro, Matt Letscher plays Harrison Love, a Historical Domain Character who was given Historical Villain Upgrade. Here, he plays a character who came from the future who killed and replaced a character from the past also named Harrison and deliberately portrayed him much amoral than what the person was supposed to be. Additionally, Zorro marked him twice; once with "Z" and the last one with "M." Letscher's character here is Eobard Thawne a.k.a. Professor Zoom.
  • Back when she was still on The Walking Dead, Emily Kinney's (Brie Larvan/The Bug-Eyed Bandit) character briefly dates a character played by Kyle Gallner, the actor who played Smallville's version of The Flash.
  • Katie Cassidy's (Laurel Lance/Black Canary) real life father, David Cassidy, played the Mirror Master in the 90s Flash series.
  • Back when his true identity is still a secret, some fans have speculated Wells to be Vandal Savage. They were eventually disproven (of course) but Savage was later billed to be the main villain of Legends of Tomorrow.
  • Speaking of which, Tom Cavanagh's stint as the titular Ed becomes a lot funnier if you re-watch it after watching this show. Specifically;
    • The fact that the name "Ed" can basically pass as a shortened version of "Eobard."
    • It was shown in the year 2000, the same year Eobard Thawne killed and replaced him.
    • The title character lives in Stuckeyville. Eobard Thawne is Trapped in the Past.
    • An episode in its second season, ironically and prophetically titled "Nice Guys Finish Last," has him helping a man named Barry and repeatedly encourages him by saying things like, "That guy is playin' you Barry, that guy is playing you!"
    • One of his first cases as Stuckeyville's "pro lane lawyer" is against a young man named Howard Pissle running around exposing the secrets behind the tricks of a locally famous magician. This exchange takes place when he has the kid on the stand in response to him questioning his integrity:
    Pissle: "No, sir, I do not think there is anything wrong with what I'm doing."
    Ed: "Nothing at all?"
    Pissle: "Nothing at all."
    Ed: "I see. Then why in the world do you wear a mask?"
    • In retrospect, Cisco is essentially a more endearing, less comically annoying version of Ed's second-in-command at his bowling alley, Phil Stubbs.
  • Tom Cavanagh was also a replacement Bobby Strong in the Broadway production of Urinetown, where one of his big solo numbers was called, "Run Freedom Run".
  • In the Season One finale, Dr. Stein is revealed to be an ordained rabbi. Victor Garber's first big movie role was Jesus in Godspell.
  • In the pilot, Oliver Queen advises Barry that he could be better than the Arrow. An oddly prophetic line, in light of the first season of The Flash being much better received by both fans and critics than the third season of Arrow which it aired alongside. Even later, The Flash as a whole would outlast Arrow by three years and 14 episodes, doubling down on this.
  • Hartley Rathaway/Pied Piper is a hard-of-hearing, gay, sarcastic smartass played by Andy Mientus, who went on to play Hanschen Rilow (same initials, too...), a sarcastic smartass in a relationship with another boy, in the Deaf West revival of Spring Awakening, which incorporated hard-of-hearing actors.
  • A couple of years earlier, Wentworth Miller teams up with his character's sister to take on a man who possesses near superhuman speed and known to Flash Step every attack. Flash forward to The Flash series and Captain Cold asks for his sister's help in taking on The Flash.
  • Grant Gustin and Jordan Fisher, playing father and son, were both known for their singing abilities prior to getting cast on The Flash and both got to show off their singing chops at least once on the show. In early 2024, both actors ended up on Broadway at the same time, with Grant making his debut in the musical adaptation of Water for Elephants and Jordan replacing Orpheus in Hadestown.
• Ho Yay:
  • Eddie's reaction to the Flash getting beat up by Captain Cold and Heatwave definitely seemed to be more than cop instinct.
  • Not to mention that Barry got flowers for Eddie then he wound up at the hospital.
  • Eddie enthusiastically hugs Barry after he's told that Barry is suffering some mental conditions that made him so forward from Iris (and caused Eddie to punch Barry).
  • In "The Trap", Eddie pulls Barry aside and shows him an engagement ring. It's meant to be for Iris, but out of context it looks like Eddie proposing to Barry.
  • In "Grodd Lives", Eobard taunts Eddie with the knowledge that Iris and Barry end up together. Amusingly, the way he phrases it is "Barry marries Iris...and not you."
  • Grant and Rick have certainly been fueling things.
  • The relationship between Hartley Rathaway and Eobard Thawne comes off as less paternal and more as a romantic relationship, making the present day Hartley Rathaway/Pied Piper come off a spurned lover towards Thawne. The fact that Hartley is openly gay certainly adds fuel to this...
  • The nature of Firestorm's powers can lead to this and is lampshaded numerous times In-Universe. When Ronnie and Prof. Stein were still learning that they're connected after being separated from each other after over a year of an unwanted Fusion Dance, the latter stated that "he's still inside Ronald" causing Cisco and Barry to laugh. During Ronnie and Caitlin's wedding, Stein volunteers to do the rights as he's a Rabbi. When Ronnie questions his legitimacy, Stein says "Let's not argue on our wedding day."
  • Meta, from the bloopers:
    Grant Gustin: (confronting the Pied Piper, forgets his line) Your eyes are beautiful. (releases Andy and pushes him away slightly) But we're not gonna kiss!
    Andy Mientus: (offscreen) Please?
  • Barry & Ralph's dynamic has its share of Ho Yay as they go from bitter rivals to a rather emotionally-charged friendship.
    Barry:(to Ralph) "I can be that person if you want. I will make it my personal mission to protect your heart."
• I Knew It!:
  • The man on fire who does not burn up mentioned by Iris in Episode 6 being Ronnie Raymond.
  • Quite a few people were able to guess that "Harrison Wells" is the Reverse-Flash before The Reveal in "The Man in the Yellow Suit" based upon various aspects of the character.
  • The fact that Flash was there when Reverse-Flash killed Nora Allen.
  • General Eiling being involved in the F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. project.
  • Mark Mardon still being alive.
  • General Eiling still being alive.
  • Many fans called Ronnie returning as Deathstorm before it was officially announced.
  • Black Siren's survival was correctly predicted by a number of fans. It helps that her actress, Teddy Sears, and the showrunners inadvertently spoiled it in cons (the latter two) and interviews (the former).
  • Henry Allen's death was (rightfully) predicted the moment he returns after Barry lost his powers to Zoom. Barry's Big "NO!" in the trailer for that episode essentially just sealed it.
  • Zoom being the real identity of "Jay Garrick," given the numerous clues throughout the season like his Earth-1 counterpart having the same name as Zoom's true identity in the comics, or his Adaptational Wimp nature.
  • The man in the iron mask was, as soon as he appeared, theorized to be the real Jay Garrick, which became more likely as we found out the truth behind Zoom. Then when Henry Allen revealed that 'Garrick' was his mother's maiden name, the already present theory that he was Henry Allen's doppelganger became so common it was assumed fact before it was revealed.
  • Fans who are familiar with the comics immediately predicted a Flashpoint storyline after the end of Season 2 in which Barry goes back in time to save his mother from the Reverse-Flash. Sure enough, they were right.
  • At the beginning of Season 3, after getting a similar twist twice in a row, people immediately suspected that Alchemy was secretly one of Barry's acquaintances. Julian was the biggest suspect, and alas, these suspicions were true. Considering who plays him and the character's first name ^note Alchemy's real name in the comics is Albert Desmond., it's not really a surprise. However, they were not expecting to find this out until the mid-season finale. Also, it turned out that Julian wasn't aware of this, as he was being controlled by Savitar.
  • Many had speculated that the villain of the Musical Episode was going to be the Music Meister from Batman: The Brave and the Bold, voiced by Neil Patrick Harris. The fandom was delighted to find out this theory was correct, though the role was played by someone else.
  • Many had speculated that Savitar is future version of Barry Allen, by interpreting his statement "I am the Future Flash" as Savitar literally saying he is a future version of Barry. More attentive fans also noticed how similar Savitar's general appearance was to that of the Future Flash introduced in the New 52 and pointed out the contrast between how Barry's nemesis was a self-proclaimed god when Barry was constantly told throughout the season that he wasn't a god. About half the fanbase had sided with this theory before it was finally confirmed in "I Know Who You Are." Furthermore, quite a few had speculated that Savitar was a time remnant of Barry Allen, which was confirmed in "Cause and Effect".
  • The theory that DeVoe would steal Ralph's body to recover his original likeness via Ralph's shape-shifting]] turned out to be true. This theory was made more popular because of Hartley Sawyer's travel to Argentina.
  • Speculations that Marlize would turn on Clifford DeVoe were right. It was also rightfully guessed that Marlize would support Team Flash against DeVoe's plan.
  • Quite a few fans predicted that Barry and DeVoe would have a Battle in the Center of the Mind in the finale, which turned out to be spot-on.
  • Regarding the identity of Mystery Girl, there were two main camps. Either she was the future daughter of Barry and Iris; Dawn Allen, OR she was the unborn baby girl of Joe and Cecile; who was likely a Gender Fliped Daniel West. The former turned out to be correct, although she had underwent an name change to Nora Allen (which some fans had also anticipated from the Speed Force induced absent-minded Barry saying "Nora shouldn't be here"). Some also speculated Mystery Girl was XS, which also turned out to be true...and then the Flash 100th episode has Eobard referring to her as "Dawn" meaning she is Dawn Allen after all but merely with a name change.
  • Fans had guessed that at the Season Finale Nora would be erased from existence. An image of Barry and Iris crying raised these suspicions.
  • While reading the description of "Kiss Kiss Breach Breach", fans guessed that Cynthia / Gypsy was killed off.
  • It was theorized that Thawne was inside Nash. He does in "Death of the Speed Force".
• Informed Wrongness: Barry has been chastised a few times by Iris for going into the Speed Force prison and leaving her at the end without regarding her in the Season 3 finale. However, since the Speed Force's collapsing storm would have been harmful for all the city, Barry entering there was a matter of life and death and the situation was too urgent to need a mutual spousal agreement.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Being a Spiritual Successor of the divisive Smallville, several elements that some feel are too similar have came under fire, such as Red Kryptonite and Bivolo's rage-inducing ability.
  • There's also some fans who feel the show follows the formula of Arrow too much:
    • For Season 1, there's the Fish out of Water-style origin, the Power Trio format for the hero, the love interest who helps the hero without knowing that their secret identity is a close friend in love with them, a love rival who they get along with but shares the name with a comic-book villain and, in both cases, serves as a Red Herring, a mysterious older figure who's got the same skills as the hero only better and is responsible for the death of their parent, and the revelation of their identity in the Christmas mid-season finale and how they had a hand in creating the hero to begin with, among other similarities. This has led to the show being a bit predictable for some.
    • This continues in Season 2. Already criticized because its big bad is something of a copycat of the previous one, but after that, it awkwardly morphs into a repeat of Arrow's second season, with the villain, who's stronger than the hero thanks to ingesting a drug that's warped his mind and made him stronger, knowing the hero's secret identity from the beginning, defeats them every time they fight, seemingly beats them for good towards the end, and then takes over the hero's town with an army of superhumans loyal to him. Nearing the end, the villain kills the hero's remaining parent which thoroughly breaks the hero. Meanwhile, a young, somewhat reckless man is introduced who's connected to the hero's family, who is, in the comics, the hero's sidekick and a founding Teen Titan and after being saved by them, tries to help them.
    • Season 3 is guilty of this as well. The Big Bad is a mysterious, 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 comes under fire from others for questionable choices and big mistakes and starts going through 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.
    • Even Season 4 became this with the reveal that the Big Bad is the Thinker, the first non-speedster to get this role, following Arrow's corresponding season which had Damien Darhk who was a sorcerer, a sharp departure from Arrow's previous antagonists. Much like Darhk he's showed off straight away in the first episode with no guesses to what he's like under a mask, which extends to the heroes knowing his real name and meeting him face-to-face. The hero returns from his leave of absence having changed greatly. Then not long afterwards, the hero's young sidekick leaves the team. The Hero also tries to get married this season, with complications. DeVoe further increases similarities to Darhk by showing he's a Visionary Villain and has a wife who is revealed to not only be aware of her husband's activities, but is an accomplice in his Evil Plan. Then there's repeated complaints from the fandom that one character was stealing all the attention at the expense of the rest of the cast, for Arrow it's Felicity while for The Flash it's Ralph Dibny. Finally, both Darhk and DeVoe's Evil Plan is revealed to be a biblical reference and works on a global scale, with Darhk's Genesis referencing the great flood that wiped out the Earth, while DeVoe's Enlightenment references God creating the Earth to begin with, where DeVoe even quotes passages from the Bible while doing so. Bonus points for when their plans get foiled, both of them suffer from Villainous Breakdowns and try to destroy the whole world along with themselves.
    • Season 6 for the most was quite drastically different to Arrow, at first. However a few similarities started springing up, namely have a Disc-One Final Boss as well as the heroes going up against a Nebulous Evil Organisation in the second half.
  • Viewers are starting to get REALLY sick of all the Big Bads being speedsters, with even Doctor Alchemy ending up nothing more than a brainwashed pawn of the super-fast Savitar. He's essentially a more powerful Zoom, who himself is basically an eviler and more powerful Reverse-Flash. The rest of Barry's non-speedster enemies have a much smaller presence due to being treated as weekly adversaries, disappearing for long stretches of time, and/or jumping ship to other series.
  • In Season 1, S.T.A.R. Labs was a welcome sight as it was the team's base, and thus where a lot of the brainstorming and plot happened. By the time Season 4 rolled around, however, fans and critics alike became sick of it, for various reasons:
    • The show's insistence that everything in the show must happen in S.T.A.R. Labs, rather than utilise the numerous other sets like Jitters, the police station, the newspaper and others, makes the show seem stale because all anyone ever does is stand around the basement until the fight happens - which still sometimes happen in S.T.A.R. Labs.
    • The characters interact with each other almost exclusively inside S.T.A.R. Labs, which decreases the audience's connection to the people of Central City and makes it hard to care that a villain wants to destroy the city because we never see them, especially as we all know there's no real, long-term danger to the main characters. It also makes it seem as if the characters live at the lab, and while Harry most likely does, the others do have homes of their own that it can be jarring to see during those few times when we actually see them there.
    • Instead of having Barry or Joe discover the main problem through the police or Iris through the newspaper, like in the earlier seasons, the team generally just finds out what's happening via computer, which many people have pointed out is visually boring and lazy. Any investigating that does happen is limited to one scene per episode that don't last very long, and season 4 even saw the writers have Iris quit her job and Barry leave his for most of the season. While Iris did it out of fear and to lead the team, and Singh was under mandate from the mayor to suspend Barry, many fans rolled their eyes at yet more excuses for the show to never leave the Lab.
    • Barry, Iris and Joe's lives and jobs outside of S.T.A.R. Labs have been sacrificed in favour of having everything happen there all the time, with the fact that Barry and Iris have most of the conversations there and Joe announcing and celebrating Cecile's pregnancy there, instead of home with his family, being just a couple of examples. Many have noticed that Barry and Iris spend more time as married couple there than they do in their own apartment. Furthermore, Harry visits Jesse offscreen, Caitlin has no life outside S.T.A.R. Labs, and almost the entirety of Cisco's relationship with Gypsy happens inside the Lab.
    • In earlier seasons it made sense for the show to spend so much time there and for Barry to be so clueless about his powers, as he was just starting out. However, during the fourth season Barry is as clueless as before and has actually regressed in intelligence, with viewers noticing that he was smarter while in prison but several episodes later Cisco and Caitlin had to explain his own powers to him. While the characters themselves are popular, many fans are resentful that Barry's intelligence and development is stifled so that Caitlin, Cisco and Harry teaching him how to do everything still makes sense, rather than giving them their own lives and stories outside the Lab, as it's clear to many that the Lab is only around to give those characters something to do.
    • There are at least five or six Team Flash members (and sometimes allies like Gypsy or Jay) against one villain. The problem is that Cisco and Caitlin are more often than not worfed and are limited to what Barry can do, as particularly seen when the team was dealing with Neil Borman's incontinence. This mechanic has removed credibility on the villains of the week, since a group of at least three powerful metahumans and three Badass Normals should be strong enough to easily stop the villain.
  • A part of the fandom is tired of the idea of Tom Cavanagh having multiple roles as Harrison Wells doppelgangers, since for them the trick has outstayed its welcome. In particular, having a new Wells Once a Season 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.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The only reason some fans are willing to stick around for later seasons is Tom Cavanagh's amazing performance as Reverse-Flash.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • Anyone noticed how many times Caitlin's name was listed on every Shipping trope in this page?. The list includes: Ronnie, Barry, Cisco, Hunter Zolomon, Julian Albert, Savitar, Captain Cold.
  • Barry might qualify as well: In two seasons he has had Iris, Felicity, Linda and Patty as canonical love interests but he also has been shipped with Caitlin, Oliver, Eddie, Captain Cold and Kara.
  • Hartley Rathaway qualifies. Despite only being in three episodes, he is frequently shipped with Thawne, Cisco, Barry, Axel Walker, Leonard Snart, Mick Rory, Mark Mardon, and Oliver Queen.
• Magnificent Bastard: Listed here.
• Memetic Loser: The protagonist himself, Barry Allen/The Flash, has gained this status in the fandom and jokingly referred to as "Jobber Flash" due to how he's far too reliant on his team, who do pep-talks or talk him through every step of the way. Its not helped that, rather than actually learn anything, most of the time Barry's just given more speed, but remains completely inept in actually using it.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Dammit, Barry!" — A Phrase Catcher used by people when calling out Barry for catching the Idiot Ball, which happens too often.
  • A popular trend on Reddit is to post this paparazzi photo of Grant Gustin with only the caption "Today" whenever a new episode is to premiere that day.
  • Many fans have also started blaming some controversial changes in other franchises (and even some real-life events that are unpopular with people in general) on Barry creating Flashpoint and beyond, complete with Thawne calling him out: "What have you done, Barry?!"
  • Trying to make sense of time remnants has become a meme itself, due to the severe lack of explanation provided by the show.
  • Godspeed will appear!^note a fandom joke that the speedster villain from the comics will show up as the villain for whatever season comes next, due to how the show's been over-reliant on speedster villains. He does indeed appear by Season Five!
• Misblamed: Everyone in-universe and out tends to blame Barry for pretty much every single change in the timeline, when Thawne, Savitar, Nora West-Allen, and the Legends (and very possibly other time travellers) are all constantly running around and usually screwing things up as well.
• More Popular Spin-Off: In its first season alone, this show surpassed Arrow for being the most watched CW show, its premiere earning the highest ratings in the history of the network. Arrow took some time to settle into its groove, and was often criticized for being excessively dark and drama-filled, not helped because of its Seasonal Rot then. The Flash received acclaim almost immediately for having a better balance between humor and drama, leading many critics and casual viewers to consider it to be the better show, even receiving a rare 100% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes for the second and fourth seasons, being listed in Rolling Stones as the 23rd greatest Sci-Fi show of all time. Alongside fellow 2014/2015 critically acclaimed premiers Jane the Virgin and iZombie, it has also formed a trifecta many people believe has led to a renaissance for the CW, finally reaching former The WB (ie. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Gilmore Girls, 7th Heaven and Smallville) quality-type programming, and is still viewed as The CW's flagship series, remaining the network's #1 rated series since its premier.
• Narm Charm: In general all of the narmier moments on the show just help to sell the show as what it is, an escapist fantasy comic book adaption, when compared to the likes of its dark and dreary rooted in reality big brother Arrow, and fans wouldn't have it any other way.
  • The romantic dialogue between Barry and Iris can reach almost Lucas levels of awkwardness, and yet the two remain as one of the more popular pairings currently on television due to the ability and chemistry that Grant and Candice have in selling the relationship.
  • The Reverse-Flash, when vibrating his face and using Glowing Eyes of Doom to hide his identity inexplicably makes him look a bit...porcine. Even more apparent when Matt Letcher is playing the character. However, his powers, his personality, his voice, and the overall "oh, shit" factor of his mere presence is usually more than intimidating enough to make up for it.
• Never Live It Down: Barry Allen is best remembered as someone who ruins the timeline with time travel, even if he did not travel in time that much, had no way of knowing just how far the Ripple Effect would spread, and has deemed it a Dangerous Forbidden Technique.
• Newer Than They Think:
  • While the character of Killer Frost initially debuted back in 1978, the Caitlin Snow incarnation of the character actually only first appeared in the comics in September 2013, i.e. only about 13 months before this series premiered and in fact only seven months before her first appearance in the Arrowverse in the Arrow episode "The Man Under The Hood".
  • People may be surprised to notice that earlier depictions of the Flash like in the 1990 series, Smallville or the DC Animated Universe don't generate lightning when he runs. This only started in the mid-1990s when writer Mark Waid introduced the Speed Force concept, which the show uses heavily as opposed to the others.
  • Barry's tragic backstory with his mother and father and Thawne, who killed/framed them only dates back to 2009 with Geoff Johns' The Flash: Rebirth, which reintroduced Barry after over two and a half decades of being dead. Not only is this show using it, the DCEU appears to be as well.
  • Flashpoint was only a comic storyline after the Geoff Johns reboot in 2011.
  • The Strength, Sage, and Still Force plus their plotline didn't appear in comics until 2018 with Flash War.
  • The Speed Force wasn't introduced as the reason for Barry's powers until late 1994.
• Once Original, Now Common: When the series debuted in season one, it was the first multi-season live-action superhero series that tried to be close to the comics and even fans of the comics who didn't love it begrudgingly agreed it at least tried to adapt comic elements that previous shows of this sort avoided, and its special effects were considered decent for seasonal television. However, a few years after it started, Netflix debuted Marvel adaptations like Daredevil (2015) and Jessica Jones(2015) that not only had a higher budget but were also more faithful to their source material. And later on, Marvel shows arrived on Disney+ that had budgets on the level of theatrical releases such as WandaVision while still staying true to the source material made this look nothing special in comparison in terms of a superhero comic-book adaptation.
• One True Threesome:
  • Barry/Iris/Eddie gathered a noticeable following that is prominent even today, after Eddie's death in Season One. The pairing was supported by the fact that it was obvious that Iris was in love with both Eddie and Barry (though oblivious, and later in denial with the latter), while Barry and Eddie, despite the slight jealousy over Iris (Barry for Eddie actually being with Iris, while Eddie for Iris being much closer to Barry even though she was dating him), grew to become close friends and shared a lot of Ho Yay together.
  • Following Eddie's death, Caitlin has generally taken the role of the third possible part in this triangle, as she is close to Iris and virtually all of her love interests after the death of her brief husband Ronnie have shown similarities to Barry.
  • On a smaller scale, Barry/Caitlin/Cisco as well for fans who love their True Companions 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 emphasizes the Science Hero and Adorkable nature of their characters.
• Replacement Scrappy: Chester and Allegra 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.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Vibe/Cisco Ramon provides a cross-media example. In the comics he was seen as a lame, faddish and ethnically stereotypical character, being a breakdancing Puerto Rican superhero with Totally Radical lingo. In the TV series, Cisco is one of its most beloved characters, though the difference in popularity may be because he was changed radically from the comic book version.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Some fans thought Eddie Thawne, a heroic cop who sacrificed himself to save his friends, would turn out to be the true identity of Savitar. Others hold out hope he'll come back as Cobalt Blue, the supervillain identity of his loose comics counterpart Malcolm. It's an odd case in that viewers hardly dislike Eddie, but wish more could have been done with his character. (It also carries over from season one when speculating what they might be getting at with him. It was thought that "Eddie Thawne" was a more down-to-earth version of the name "Eobard Thawne." Wells was definitely some kind of shady, but Eddie's name made it seemingly a Foregone Conclusion that he'd go dark side, become the Reverse Flash, and that's how his relationship with Iris would end so she could eventually become Barry's love interest per usual. We have a world where characters don't always stay dead, and plenty of other speedy villains from the comics to choose from...it was thought that maybe it could still happen.)
  • For a portion of the fanbase, but especially people that ship Barry with other women, Iris West gets a lot of this, being accused of being manipulative, abusive, and generally toxic, 'forcing herself' into the team despite not being a scientist, as well as accusations of her being useless and generally horrible. How much of this is down to Iris's race is debatable, but generally she gets a very unfair amount of hate from a Vocal Minority of the fanbase.
• Sacred Cow: The first season is held in extremely high regard by the fanbase as one of the best superhero TV show seasons ever. Although fans will accept any criticism of later seasons, Season 1 is off-limits.
• The Scrappy:
  • Cecile Horton. Initially starting off as an Ensemble Dark Horse 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 her 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 Spotlight-Stealing Squad who was constantly given Plot Device powers to resolve the plot. Eventually it got to the point where she was labelled as a Creator's Pet 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 Rescued from the Scrappy Heap after properly pulling a Heel–Face Turn to become a heroic member of Team Flash, although some feel like it's too little too late.
  • Kramer. She was brought in to replace Joe as Chief of the CCPD and go on an anti-meta warpath. This wasn't loved by fans, but at least it has some logical sense given how many bad guy metas there are. Then, halfway through the season, she's revealed to have a sordid past where her not-related brother slaughtered her whole military platoon, leaving just her alive, and suddenly the show expects fans to be super sympathetic to her cause. It's not helped that Kramer only barely interacts with anyone on the team except for Joe, so it almost feels as though she only existed to give Joe something to do since he couldn't contribute much to the A-Plot. Even worse, the last episode reveals she's a meta with the power to copy other meta powers, which was never alluded to, thus making her a complete hypocrite (though, admittedly, she does have a Jerkass Realization at the end). Plus it never contributes much other than saving Joe's life from one Godspeed clone. Yet she's still gonna be around for Season 8 and 9.
  • Godspeed. Besides the fact that he's only similar to his comic-book counterpart in appearance and powers, he comes off as overly generic and bland with next to no fleshing out of his character. It doesn’t help that he can come off as a very tired and overused retread of the whole "evil speedster who wants to become the god of speed" schtick, previously done before by Zoom and Savitar, who are rather large Base Breaking Characters themselves. Not to mention that, despite their faults, Zoom and Savitar were both visually impressive and had an element of mystery and implacable power about them which many feel Godspeed lacks.
• Ship Mates: Snowbarry shippers happen to get along rather well with Olicity shippers, in fact the two ships are often shipped by the same people. Many of these shippers were shipping Snowbarry before the show even started, in large part because it was perceived their dynamic would mirror Olicity (the female friend and Mission Control with the male lead).
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • When Linda Park became a recurring character on Season 1, she was paired with Wally even if he didn't appear at that point. Wally's arrival to the series on Season 2 made bigger the shipping hope although they never met. Of course, the two were Happily Married in the original comics. In the series, Linda was put in a Long Bus Trip and Wally transferred to the Legends, which diminishes the possibility of this pairing.
  • Many fans of the original Flash series pair Henry Allen and Dr. Tina McGee since their actors worked on that series as well. After Henry Allen's passing, fans inevitably started shipping Tina McGee with the real Jay Garrick instead (Jay is Henry's Alternate Self on Earth-3), for the very same reasons.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Overall, the show takes so many liberties from the comic canon, to the point Zoom, Wally, and Jesse Quick are In Name Only, Jay Garrick is Demoted to Extra, Barry Allen's scientific expertise is all but an Informed Attribute thanks giving him a team of scientists backing him up reducing his independence, and making Barry Younger and Hipper and taking aspects of Wally West especially. Season 2 onward in particular takes several arcs from Mark Waid and Geoff Johns' runs (both considered the best runs of the franchise), but makes massive changes to them (somewhat needed, as these were Wally West runs, and even with Barry taking Wally's youth and relationshipship troubles, doesn't change that his status quo in the show is very different than anything Wally ever had), which has notably pissed off a lot of fans.
  • The changes made to the Flash's costume from the comics have received some criticisms — namely that the Chest Insignia lacks the white centerpiece and that the character nicknamed the Scarlet Speedster isn't actually wearing his distinctive scarlet/bright red, but rather a darker maroon or burgundy. However, the final shot in the pilot reveals that in the future, the Flash will have a costume that has these alterations. Ironically, when they did make the suit look similar to its comic look in Season 5, many viewers had gotten so used to his previous suits that they didn't like the change.
  • The portrayal of Captain Cold as being more of a straight villain has received some criticism from those who prefer his Anti-Villain portrayal from the comics canon. However, it should be noted that Cold mainly became an Anti-Villain when Wally West was the Flash, not while fighting Barry. Conversely, when Cold does go through a Heel–Face Turn in Legends of Tomorrow, some fans felt it was undeserved given the extent of Snart's villainy previously (particularly him stabbing Barry in the back when the two have a brief truce).
  • As to be expected, there was some people who were befuddled by the show giving a Race Lift to the West Family, since Wally West has historically appeared as a red-headed Caucasian. The fact this lead to the New 52 giving Wally a Race Lift probably helps with that despite the other Wests being white in the comics, at least until the comics established the original and reboot Wally's as separate character. It's mostly Wally where this is controversial, Iris's race change being generally accepted and supported, but even there most Wally fans are more pissed at how extensively he's changed outside of his ethnicity (going from a Midwestern-born kid with Abusive Parents who became Barry and Iris's surrogate son, to Iris's long-lost brother and an inner-city kid with a completely different case of parental angst).
  • Pied Piper's weapon being sonic frequency-producing gloves rather than a pipe with sonics and hypnotic technology. It raises the question as to why he'd go by the name "Pied Piper," if he doesn't even use a pipe. There's also his lack of any Socialist leanings, which were a big part of his character in the comics but that might just be due to only appearing twice so far. The removal of his status as the Rogues' Token Good Teammate by making him just as villainous as the rest of them is also a point of contention with the character's fandom.
  • Doctor Light being a Composite Character between the villainous Arthur Light (a particularly detestable villain) and the heroic Kimiyo Hoshi (one of the few Asian female heroes who aren't stoic martial artists), resulting in a villainous female Doctor Light (albeit a sympathetic one), while when this was done in the New 52, it resulted in a sympathetic heroic male character. More so because she's also a Composite Character of Linda Park, being her Earth-2 counterpart, which is a particularly odd choice that feels like they only did so because Hoshi and Park were both Asian women (and even then, Linda is Korean and Hoshi is Japanese, making the decision reek of racism).
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Cecile using her powers to constantly invade other people's privacies is strangely almost never treated as wrong.
  • While very popular, some have pointed out that Caitlin gets way too much of a free pass for her actions in season 3, ostensibly because Killer Frost was a Superpowered Evil Side. Even regardless, to audiences with genuine mental problems, they find Caitlin's actions inexcusable, and using her mental problems as an excuse plays into harmful stereotypes.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Though the Arrowverse in general has gotten criticism for costuming, The Flash has some major issues across the show.
  • Putting aside colour choices and They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, the suits the speedsters wear do not look at all ideal for running in. The use of leather for most of the suits makes them look rather uncomfortable and restrictive, not to mention incredibly impractical for anyone who understands the fabrics^note leather gets very sweaty when worn during physical exercise, and will get stretched out the more someone moves in it, so realistically the outfits wouldn't last very long. This is mitigated once Barry switches to spandex and fabric outfit in season 5, but even after, Jay, Wally, and Nora continue to wear leather, and Jesse was still wearing it last time she was seen. There's also the fact it's the same aesthetic used for most of the Arrowverse cast, with the handwave that "Cisco designed it" just making it seem like Cisco is a very unimaginitve guy with a leather fetish.
    • On top of that, Jesse's costume suffers probably the heaviest They Changed It, Now It Sucks! due to the leather outfit and Adaptational Modesty, but even besides that, her domino mask looked very silly next to everyone else's cowls, and there's the fact that, in-universe, this is the suit Trajectory wore and died in. Jesse using it is comically gross. Not to mention the fact that Trajectory almost killed Jesse as well.
  • At least at first, Zoom's costume looked cool, since there was some ambiguity to if it even was a costume or if it was actually just how he looked. Once it becomes clear it is a costume, combined with seeing how much of Zoom's personality is an act he puts on, it makes the character just seem like a try-hard edgelord.
  • Savitar is probably the worst offender, because the Special Effects Failure of the mech suit armour he wears makes him just look like a very cheap Bayformers knock-off. His head even looks like Movie Megatron's.

Season One

• Accidental Innuendo: "The Trap" reveals that Thawne has spy cameras in everyone's homes, including one in Eddie and Iris's bedroom...(Eddie mentioned he and Iris used to be sexually active)
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Does Thawne really care for Cisco, Caitlin and Barry? Or is he just faking it all to move them like pawns? In "Out of Time", Thawne himself admits that it's some of both. At least that's how he feels about Cisco and Caitlin. His feelings for Barry are a little more...complicated.
  • When Captain Cold spared the Flash's life in "Going Rogue", was he really tricked by Cisco's fake cold gun? Did he suspect that Cisco was bluffing but felt like he couldn't take the risk? Or did he want the Flash to live so he would continue to have a Worthy Opponent? Continued when he doesn't kill a helpless Barry again in "Rogue Air" where he claims it's just so Barry will owe him a favor, but also could come off as realizing his crime spree is no fun without someone who might be able to beat him.
  • In respect to talking to (and flirting with) Iris as the Flash, is Barry taking the step he never took and is becoming more romantic and confident? Or is he a pathetic creep who's pining after a woman who already has a boyfriend and encouraging (instead of discouraging) Iris to continue writing about him?
  • Speaking of Iris, what about her dad and Barry's foster dad, Joe West? The show makes him out to be The Paragon but with keeping his daughter out of the loop and constantly putting down Eddie, you can't help but think he is a manipulative jerk who comes off as more of a Designated Hero.
  • When Thawne gives himself away by coaching Barry through phasing, was that a mistake? Or was it a deliberate "slip" to move his plans to the next stage? Either would be possible.
  • Was Iris trying to pull a Relationship Sabotage by telling Linda about his feelings for her, or was she genuinely trying to give Linda advice?
  • The Reverse-Flash deciding to immediately leave the moment Jay Garrick's helmet comes out of the portal. Did he believe the helmet belonged to the real Jay Garrick, or did he know that it actually belonged to Hunter Zolomon a.k.a. Zoom? Either interpretation gives him enough incentive to leave.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Deliberately invoked twice.
  • Prism/Roy G. Bivolo: After Barry was cured from the Hate Plague he caused, the Flash and the Arrow handle him entirely off-screen.
  • Weather Wizard/Mark Mardon: After accidentally traveling back in time roughly a day whilst trying to stop a tsunami Mardon was sending to Central City, Barry uses his knowledge of what was going to happen to apprehend him before Mardon could do anything he did in the first timeline.
• Arc Fatigue: Everyone's insistence on keeping Iris Locked Out of the Loop gets pretty tiresome as Barry becomes more and more casual about his secret, especially in light of the increasing number of people in the know. Especially considering she is literally the only main character to not know at this point, barring the Cosmic Retcon. "All Star Team-Up" and "Grodd Lives" lampshade both how ludicrous it is that Iris is the only one to not know the secret, and their weak justifications for lying to her.
• Ass Pull: Boy, Oliver, it sure is convenient that Ray, who knows next to nothing about how Barry's powers work and absolutely nothing about the Speed Force, was able to make power-be-gone arrows to cancel out Reverse-Flash's speed, so you could contribute and actually do the most damage in the fight against Reverse-Flash. It would've been a lot harder for you guys otherwise.
• Broken Base:
  • Borders on Ship-to-Ship Combat, but the Ship Tease between Barry and Caitlin has both fans and detractors, some adoring the idea of them as a couple and finding their moments together far more enjoyable than Barry and Iris, others finding it an unfortunate reminder to how much influence the Olicity ship had on Arrow (which has caused a lot of grief for those who didn't ship the pair), or just generally finding it awkwardly written and rather annoyingly cliché for the hero's female friend to develop feelings for him rather than remain platonic.
  • For comic fans, how much the show takes from Geoff Johns' Flash work and the New 52 Flash run. Johns is heavily involved in the show's writing and production, and a number of his additions to the franchise are very apparent (particularly Barry's mom's death and the situation with his father). However, Johns' contributions are highly controversial due to how it handled Barry's character (who became a Creator's Pet for Johns) at the expense of Wally West, so the fact these aspects are present in the show burns some fans while others enjoy the show all the same due to how well they handle the contributions.

• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • The stinger at the end of "Flash vs. Arrow" — Ronnie being alive as a fire-wielding metahuman — was not a surprise at all, even for those who don't read comic books, as fans figured out the twist given that they Never Found the Body.
  • The stinger that reveals who is ""The Man In the Yellow Suit": The guy we've known was evil from the very first episode turns out to be evil? What a twist! Subverted in that the real twist was that he was really Eobard Thawne and had killed the real Wells to take his place.
  • The revelation that one of the speedsters from the night Nora died was a time-traveling Barry. Given that time travel was established back in the pilot, most viewers had already guessed that even without being familiar with Flashpoint.
  • The Season One finale tells the audience that Cisco is a metahuman and Caitlin will eventually be one too because of their exposure to the particle accelerator. However, anybody who has read the comics or even read their characters on the internet was aware of where their characters would be heading the whole time.
• Cargo Ship:
  • Cisco is way too attached to Barry's suit.
  • Captain Cold is "intimately familiar" with his gun.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • In "Fast Enough", Barry refusing to let Eobard Thawne escape scot-free to the future, and then Eobard's death moments later by his ancestor's Heroic Suicide. Especially since this comes right after both Barry and the viewer have to heartbreakingly relive the murder of Nora Allen.
  • Several fans noted that as aggravating as Iris being Locked Out of the Loop for almost the whole first season was, it was worth it when she finally did learn the truth and was allowed to be just as angry about not being told as they were hoping for.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • The Reverse-Flash is frightening with his mode of vibrating himself and being a powerful menace.
  • The Trickster, with a dash of Crazy Is Cool as well.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Captain Cold, (no pun intended) just like in the comics, for his awesome lines.
  • Grodd gets the fans cheering every time he appears. In fact, the scene of him attacking two innocent sewer workers seems to have been thrown in specifically so we'll understand he's one of the bad guys.
  • The Reverse-Flash due to being a beloved Breakout Villain and a Fountain of Memes.
  • Pied Piper, because damn is the little bastard smart.
  • The Trickster is very entertaining with his funny remarks and his crazy ways to be a menace for a superpowered character.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Barry and Caitlin (Snowbarry) were a popular alternative to Westallen in season one. Dies out to the point of Vocal Minority after Caitlin marries Ronnie and has subsequent love interests in later seasons, and Barry and Iris become a couple.
  • Barry and Eddie were a popular ship for the Yaoi Fandom due to their huge amounts of Ho Yay.
• First Installment Wins: 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 Myth Arc into something that felt mostly plausible by the end. In contrast, Seasons 2 and 3 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 2 has softened over time). The tendency to 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 Big Bad have been common points of contention. Posterior seasons are mostly seen as mediocre at best, though still fluctuate well below season one.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • The Tom Cavanagh version of Reverse-Flash, spawning some of the most memorable quotes in the entire Arrowverse.
  • Grodd comes in at a close second, with his lines being frequently quoted, despite his limited appearance.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • The bad guy being a speedster involved with Team Flash starts from the very first episode. The first season at least teased the possibility that it might have been Eddie Thawne, though, and "Wells" had been a member of Team Flash since before Team Flash existed. The third season introduced a Decoy Antagonist in Alchemy, only to revert to form with Savitar.
  • The second and third seasons got flak for their Darker and Edgier tone, but Season One was not without its dark moments. Thawne brutally maims Barry, kills Barry's mom, Alt!Cisco, and Mason Bridge on-screen, and the season ends with the threat of the entire world being destroyed. However, while Season One may not be as goofy and light as people sometimes make it out to be, it did balance the comedy and the darkness better than Season Two and especially Season Three, which went for an all-out doom and gloom atmosphere.
  • From season 2 onward there's been criticism of the episodes, particularly the filler ones, often following a repetitive formula of having the badguy somehow beat Barry in their first fight, then during their rematch Barry is able to overcome them through the coaching of Team Flash. This was actually common enough during the first season that it was cited as a Common Knowledge trope that fans had to argue wasn't an every episode occurrence.
  • The criticized overuse of pep-talks has always been there from the beginning, but there Barry was a newbie vigilante.
  • Team Flash. This formula has created limitations on character development since its very application ^note Either one none of the characters get true development, or a character is developed at the expense of another, but at the beginning the teammates had their own lives and occupations. Now everyone is just centered on S.T.A.R. Labs and their work as a team.
• Growing the Beard:
  • While many praised the show from the start for being Lighter and Softer (or rather, balancing levity and seriousness better) than recent DC live-action fare, it was also criticized early on for having a Monster of the Week setup with mostly lackluster main villains, some of whom weren't even linked with the Flash in the comics. But this lessened once major enemies like the Reverse-Flash (the overall Big Bad), 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 shared live-action DC Universe for the first time, beating the DC movies to it. On a similar note, the character-building involved with Firestorm has been speculated as possibly being a backdoor pilot due to how strong it was. Indeed, the character is one of several appearing in the next spin-off, Legends of Tomorrow.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Seeing "Caitlin" (actually Everyman) fight Barry, and later at the Pipeline trying guilt Team Flash into releasing "her," would be a little more poignant when you consider Caitlin might potentially go down the route of a supervillain, as per her comic book counterpart Killer Frost.
  • In the pilot, Oliver gives Barry an uplifting speech about how "the lightning didn't strike him. It chose him." We later find out that Oliver is indeed correct, but there are much more sinister reasons behind it.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The episode "Rogue Air" features all of the Flash's super powered villains escaping from a prison bus and wandering into Central City to destroy it. The second season finale of Gotham ended on this exact same premise.
  • Oliver telling Barry to "Wear a mask" becomes very prescient following the Covid-19 pandemic. For bonus points, he's looking right at the camera when he says it.
  • DA Cecile Horton refusing to accept supernatural explanations for crimes at CCPD is pretty funny given that, in a few years, she'll be the one arguing on behalf of innocents like Allegra or Barry who were framed by metahumans.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Cisco's death. Less because fans think the writers wouldn't kill him, but because the same episode has Flash accidentally travel back in time and getting stuck several hours before Cisco's death. Not to mention that the trailers for the following episodes show Cisco being threatened by Leonard Snart and interacting with Laurel Lance.
• Love to Hate: The takers are the Reverse-Flash, the Rogues (Captain Cold especially), Gen. Eiling, Hartley Rathaway, and James Jesse.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "My name is Barry Allen and I'm the fastest man alive" has been used as a Mad Libs Catchphrase for everything in the form of "My name is X and I'm the Y-est Z alive." For example, "My name is Ray Palmer and I am the smallest man alive", "My name is Matt Murdock and I'm the blindest man alive" (after an error with IMDB switched around the shows' descriptions), "My name is Sonic and I'm the fastest hedgehog alive," "My name is Barry and I'm the most enraged rune dragon alive."
  • "Lightning gave me abs?", from the scene where Barry wakes up from his coma and discovers his powers have made him more physically fit.
  • "Run, Barry, RUN!" the reoccurring phrase first said by Eobard Thawne, before becoming a bit of a Phrase Catcher for Barry.
  • "Did Flash run backwards twice?", from the posters showing him running with a lightning bolt shaped speed trail, suggesting he just randomly decided to run backwards twice for some reason.
  • "Every episode of The Flash should end with Eobard Thawne getting up from his wheelchair and doing/revealing something unexpected," from the episodes where Thawne would stand up from his wheelchair and perform some sort of plot twisting-reveal while smirking menacingly.
  • The answer to absolutely anything? "Speed Force."
  • "IT WAS ME, BARRY!" ^ExplanationA carryover from the comic of taking the first Reverse-Flash's Evil Is Petty-fueled time travel shenanigans and exaggerating it to the point of him taking credit for every bad thing that ever happened in Barry's life, even if it does not make sense, with Reverse-Flash declaring "REMEMBER WHEN [bad thing]? IT WAS ME, BARRY, I WAS [something connected to the bad thing]!" Sadly the actual line never made it into Season One, but amusingly the show did go close with "it was him" and "it was you, Barry." Note that the Reverse-Flash never actually says this line in the comics, it's just a paraphrase of a long monologue. Two seasons later, Savitar would say "It was me all along."
  • Oliver's line from the team-up ("Barry, how can you have super speed and still not be on time?") has been used to mock his lateness for nearly everything.
  • The fact that Reverse-Flash was frequently referred to as "The Man in Yellow", led to him be compared to The Man with the Yellow Hat. Made even funnier by the fact that he's associated with a gorilla, who got dubbed "Curious Grodd◊".
  • "X is not like Y at all. Some would say it's the reverse."^ExplanationFrom the hologram Reverse-Flash's line in "The Man in Yellow" after getting captured in the containment field: "I'm not like the Flash at all. Some would say I'm the reverse."
  • "A speed mirage, if you will."^ExplanationThawne's ability to create mirage images of himself is used whenever anything in multiples show up.
  • "To me X has been Y for centuries."^ExplanationFrom Eobard Thawne's line to Cisco before killing him in "Out of Time" where Cisco discovers Thawne is not only the Reverse-Flash but a time traveler: "Forgive me, but to me, you've been dead for centuries."
  • "Not God, GRODD."
  • "Barry is so fast he ran himself back into the friend zone," after Barry time traveled back a day and negated Iris's Love Epiphany and The Big Damn Kiss.
  • Immediately after "Tricksters" aired, clips of the opening scene of said episode (the one where Future!Flash and Reverse-Flash are having a slugfest) were uploaded in YouTube and commented on by various users with the "My name is Eobard Thawne" Opening Narration similar to that of this show and Arrow.

• "Hi, I'm Ray!"
• While everyone agrees Eddie's death was completely heartbreaking to watch, many fans are now joking on how this could have all been fixed if he just got a vasectomy. Ralph Dibny states this at the beginning of Season 5.
• Speed Weed, co-executive producer and writer of later Arrow episodes, being likened to the Speed Force or an actual drug with various superspeed-related effects.
• "Grodd. Hate. BANANA!"
• "NANITES COURTESY OF RAY PALMER. THEY'RE DELIVERING A HIGH FREQUENCY PULSE THAT'S DISABLING YOUR SPEED. YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE RUNNING AROUND FOR QUITE A WHILE"^note Oliver's ridiculous Ass Pull line on how his Trick Arrow is able to conveniently disable Reverse-Flash is heavily quoted
• Theorizing the Reverse-Flash's identity to be a refrigerator or other extremely ridiculous object^note It originated from this reddit post before spawning a tonne of similar memes.
• "My goals are beyond that of your understanding."

• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm Charm:
  • Oliver's line in the pilot about the lightning bolt "choosing" Barry. Even if electricity isn't sentient, the whole scene is momentous enough with Oliver then telling Barry how he can be a different kind of hero from him and making the first ever Title Drop in the show, that it just works in context.
  • Barry's speech in Episode Two to the STAR Labs gang about how "they all got struck by that lightning" can be a little cringe-worthy to viewers, but Grant Gustin sounds earnest enough (and Barry is enough of a dork) to make it heartwarming enough to work.
  • The titular battle in "Flash vs. Arrow" is both cheesy and awesome, what with Oliver having to duck under Barry's super-fast punches.
  • From "The Man in the Yellow Suit," Reverse-Flash saying "Merry Christmas" in his otherwise terrifying Voice of the Legion should sound ridiculous, but being part of the big reveal that of the Reverse-Flash, and a definite Wham Line from the character saying it, it works perfectly, and even gets a Call-Back in Season Two.
  • James Jesse telling the new Trickster that he is his father. It comes right out of nowhere, serves little to no bearing on the plot and is never mentioned again. However, since it's Mark Hamill saying "I am your father" in a tone that makes it clear he's wanted to say that line for years (with very Star Wars-y music playing in the background, no less), the end result is gloriously cheesy.
  • Grodd speaking through General Eiling seems like it ought to be funny — after all, it's a middle-aged man talking like a gorilla and saying things like "Caitlin...good" and "Eiling...bad." As it turns out, though, Clancy Brown is such a seasoned voice actor that he actually manages to pull it off.
  • The lines "Why'd you kill my mother?" being replied with "Because I hate you" would seem absolutely childish if said by someone else but Tom Cavanagh manages to deliver it sounding completely genuine.
  • Nearly every line out of Pied Piper's mouth, especially when he uses chess metaphors. Helps that Andy Mientus' acting is awesomely magnetic.
• Nightmare Retardant: "Grodd...hate...banana!"
• Older Than They Think: Many feel that Barry seems somewhat younger than the Barry of the comics when he becomes the Flash. He is usually drawn to look older, like early to mid-30s, and in the fifth episode, he is stated to be 25 years old. Though the passage of time in the Silver Age comics was always wonky, modern stories such as "The Flash: Rebirth" establish the fact that Barry was a rookie CSI tech when he became the Flash, and so was in the early-to-mid 20s range at the time.
  • Later episodes reveal that, thanks to Reverse-Flash messing with the timeline, Barry has indeed become the Flash at a younger age than was originally the case.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Much like The Originals, the show has quite a talent for doing this with characters from its parent show. Ray and Laurel's guest spots were both better received than just about anything they've gotten up to on Arrow, as has Felicity's (who many fans had turned on due to the way her character developed).
  • Barry himself wasn't very popular among comics fans at the time the show premiered, due to having become a Creator's Pet who completely overshadowed the people to don the costume after him. This show portrayed him well enough that those fans were largely able to forget their feelings about comics Barry.
• The Scrappy: Roy G. Bivolo, one of the most generic villains to ever appear on the show with the least amount of character exploration. Even his codename "Rainbow Raider" doesn't make sense since the full extent of his powers don't get shown. In the comics he could induce all sorts of emotions in his victims with different colors, while here he only does anger. It doesn't help that he's just a Plot Device to get Flash and Arrow to fight each other.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • The battle between the Westallen and Snowbarry shippers started before the series even began. Westallen shippers tend to diss Snowbarry due to its non-canon status in the comics or in the series and accuse that fan pairing of having racist undertones, while many Snowbarry shippers loathe Iris, consider Caitlin to have better chemistry with Barry and have been critical of the Not Blood Siblings trope used with Barry and Iris.
  • There's also the previously established Baricity from Barry's initial appearances on Arrow.
  • Throw in SnowStorm (Caitlin and Ronnie) in the mix.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The end of the first episode, with The Reveal that "Dr. Wells" is not only not crippled, but also from the future.
  • "Dr. Wells'" reveal as the Reverse-Flash. Especially as there was a scene where the Reverse Flash was beating what would eventually be revealed to be himself to a pulp.
  • Thawne using the Tachyon device because his connection to the Speed Force isn't strong enough.
  • Bloodstains are found in Barry's house from the night of Nora's murder and neither of them belongs to Thawne. But one of them is a match for an adult Barry.
  • The Reveal in "Fallout" that Gorilla Grodd and the Reverse-Flash are actually working together.
  • In "Out of Time," Barry his love and secret identity to Iris, Thawne reveals to Cisco that he is from the future and killed Nora. Then he speeds his arm through Cisco's heart. Topped off with Barry time traveling for the first time at the end.
  • In "Tricksters," we learn that Eobard Thawne is really blonde and built like Eddie. But as soon as he left the Allen House his speed ran out. Desperate to return to his own time, he stalked Harrison Wells and his wife Tess. He was the one who caused the car crash that killed Tess, so he could get Wells alone and use some device to make himself look like Wells so he could build the Particle Accelerator early (it was supposed to be built by Wells and Tess in 2020). So who knows how Thawne screwed the Timeline up by doing that.
  • "The Trap" had a few. It starts off with Barry meeting Gideon and finding out not only does he disappear in the future, he's the director of the CSI division of the PD as well as married to Iris and Gideon's creator. Later on it's revealed that Harrison Wells had been spying on everyone the whole show (and earlier, as he had watched Barry grow up), with cameras placed around the city. Thawne then abducts Eddie, reveals his identity and mentions that they're related. Finally, Iris finds out Barry is the Flash after brushing hands reminded her of something that had happened while he was in a coma. Hoo boy.
  • "Fast Enough": Thawne convinces Barry to try and go back time in exchange for letting him get home as well. On the way backwards, Barry sees the Flash Museum, the Legends of Tomorrow, and Killer Frost. But when Barry goes back, the future version of himself sees him, and waves him off, so Barry ends up only saying good-bye to his mother. Meanwhile, in the present, Thawne sees a metal helmet with wings like Jay Garrick's come out of the time portal, and takes that as a sign to leave. Barry comes through the portal and superspeed punches Thawne and his machine, trapping Thawne in the present. Thawne proceeds to hand Barry a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, starts making with the threats towards the rest of the cast...and then Eddie shoots himself to erase Thawne from existence. Oh, and now there's a black hole that Barry has to run into to try and stop.
• Special Effect Failure: Though it is understandable that the series doesn't have a Hollywood movie budget, the fact that Grodd is an obvious CGI character is just...both unsettling and ridiculous at the same time.
• Squick:
  • Eiling's Kryptonite Ring for the Flash, in which a grenade fires hundreds of sharp needles, piercing him all at the same time. And Thawne mentions that they should pull them all out. Comments indicate that the fragments have tiny splinters inside to lock them in place once they break the skin, which would be even more painful and messy to remove. Who wouldn't wince at a situation like that?
  • The Reverse-Flash's preferred method of killing people involves impaling people with his arm. It raises the Nightmare Fuel of the show to a whole new level.
  • Eobard Thawne "absorbing" Harrison Wells, especially the end result for the latter.
  • The brief moment in "Tricksters," where James Jesse comes on to Iris, a girl easily young enough to be his daughter. Eww.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Remember that episode where Flash was infected with a Hate Plague that led to not only Eddie starting a manhunt on Flash but also Flash losing Iris's trust? Neither does anyone else.
  • Fans initially assumed that with Firestorm and Arrow returning in the same episode that the Pipeline's inmates were going to run loose, there would be a battle royale of heroes vs. villains. Nothing of the sort actually happens in the episode in question: the Flash and his support are the only ones to deal with the breakout, and the other heroes only show up at the end to help defeat the Reverse-Flash.
  • The last episode of the first season. They build up everything and leave us wondering how the future is going to be after he changes it, but then Barry decides not to, leaving things worse than if he hadn't done it in the beginning. Eddie kills himself to stop the Reverse-Flash, Nora is still dead, and a black hole is consuming the city. Where they end it on a cliffhanger.
  • Even though Eobard Thawne was a mentor and even father figure to the entire team for years, once the team does believe he's the Reverse-Flash, he's instantly relegated to "generic evil guy who must be stopped" status. Shouldn't the team still want to trust this father figure, and want him to be redeemed, even if they know it's an empty hope? Shouldn't his time with them have changed him in some way, and if not then why not? There's an entire mountain of emotional and ethical dilemmas here that the show could have mined, and totally let pass by.

Season Two

• Accidental Innuendo: In "Gorilla Warfare", Grodd kidnaps Caitlin, hoping she would help him create more super-intelligent gorillas like him. What Grodd meant was that for Caitlin to repeat the experiment that gave Grodd his powers, but with the allusions to King Kong and his pre-established soft spot for Caitlin, some viewers might get misled...
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: "Jay Garrick" was not widely hated, but was rather divisive for essentially being a Replacement Scrappy and an Adaptational Wimp; still, many were shocked to see him fulfill his role of getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice by Zoom right in front of his Love Interest and friends, before having his slowly dying body forcibly dragged into Earth-2 by the villain. This gets pretty soundly undone, however, once it's revealed that "Jay" was really Zoom the entire time and the person they saw die was simply a time remnant who intentionally let himself be killed. It's also undone in a meta sort of way as Zoom, while not without his criticisms, is far more popular side of the character.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Caitlin moving on from Ronnie's death by the time she meets "Jay." Some have complained it's too soon after Ronnie's death, others have pointed out it's been six months since his death and she spent an entire year mourning Ronnie after the Particle Accelerator explosion.
  • Zig-zagged. Even though Iris reacted with heartbroken disbelief that her mother abandoned her because of a drug rather than passed away, she was very understanding and quick to forgive Joe for keeping a secret from her for 20 years, as opposed to when Joe lied to her about Barry being the Flash for months. Justified by context: with the Flash secret, everyone around her knew but her, including the very villain they were trying to protect her from, yet Joe and Barry had insisted on keeping her in the dark. She had to find out through an incidental sensation at the end of a rescue, and after chewing them out and watching them almost die against Grodd, she and Joe came to the understanding he needed to start telling her the truth more often. This time proved that Joe had learned his lesson, as he confessed himself before Iris was any the wiser about her mother's return, and he was already in tears assuming that he'd once again earned her anger before she even reacted.
    • That said, some fans are happy because this trope is in effect, pointing out that at least it means Iris's plot isn't more soap opera angst.
  • The real Jay Garrick is a minor case, as he doesn't seem too adversely affected by his time as Zoom's prisoner. Apart from destroying the mask Zoom kept him in and keeping Zolomon's helmet for himself, Jay seems perfectly fine.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Once again, Weather Wizard is defeated with unsatisfying ease. After Team Flash defuses the Weather Wizard and the Trickster's evil plan, the Flash effortlessly beats them up. It may be justified in the Trickster's case, since Mark Hamill is too old to perform his own stunts, but that doesn't let his younger, superhuman cohort off the hook.
  • Geomancer, who singlehandedly brought Central City to its knees, fought off Zoom, and tracked down the Flash's base ends up getting defeated by Caitlin using the "Boot" on his neck.
  • Trajectory, who was a fully badass Dark Action Girl who outran the Flash and defeated him every time they fought, ends up killing herself by Velocity overdose and disintegrates.
• Anvilicious: Thanks to the introduction of the Velocity enhancer, basically a steroid for Super-Speed, the show really hammers it in how Drugs Are Bad. At least three characters have become addicted to Velocity drugs because they feel that they need more and more of it to feel powerful, and it's caused Trajectory to die from an overdose and provided Zoom with a super disease that's slowly killing him due to overexposure to the drug. Taken up to eleven when Barry attempts to try out the drug himself only for Wells to confront him about it and give him a pep talk about why it's bad for him like some after-school special.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • The lack of resolution or even solid hints as to who Zoom is behind the mask grated on the nerves of fans as the season went on, especially when compared to Thawne's early reveal. Even when Zoom's mask finally came off, the reveal came almost out of nowhere, and raised more questions than it did answers.
  • Building up to the introduction of Wally West way too long, since it takes until the Winter Finale before Wally even makes an appearance and the season never gets to his role as Kid Flash. There's also the fact that he's Locked Out of the Loop about Barry being the Flash until just before the second season finale. For Wally fans who only watched the show in the hopes of seeing Wally West as the Flash/Kid Flash, it becomes tiring.
  • The man in the mask who Zoom has imprisoned. Episode after episode after episode of the guy banging out coded messages, and the occasional coy hint that we just won't believe who it is, until just about everyone has given up hope that any reveal could possibly be worth dragging the mystery out this long. He is finally unmasked in the Season Finale.
  • Cisco's metahuman abilities are also progressing too slowly. It started off well in the first half of the season, but after his Earth-2 counterpart Reverb demonstrated powers closer to his comic counterpart, people expected that he would learn to use these soon. He didn't until the second to last episode, and even then it was by accident. There are even some episodes where it's easy to forget his powers are still a thing, with quite a few missed opportunities where he could have used them to find people. Luckily Flashpoint somehow upgraded his powers, but even then he is not that well exploited.
• Ass Pull:
  • Having Henry released from prison, only for him to decide to leave Central City. As noted on the WMG page, it feels like a convenient way for Barry to be able to abandon his original motivation and thus story arc in Season One, but also prevent Henry's presence from messing up the character dynamic of Team Flash (and the writers either having to make the effort to give Henry decent screen time, or otherwise frequently Hand Wave his absence).
  • In "Running to Stand Still", the villains' plan involves sending bombs to a hundred random children all over Central City, with Cisco pointing out there's no way to find them all. Okay, so how do they get all the bombs in time? Turns out, by finding one bomb and sending that into a portal, all of the bombs are somehow magnetically attracted and pulled into the portal where they harmlessly explode. What? Umm, so why do the bombs all conveniently have magnetizable capabilities? And how the hell does Wells know that before even seeing one of the bombs? Also, the bombs were seen crashing through windows, meaning any of them could have been stuck in the house while being pulled into the air.
  • Caitlin's discovery that "Jay" has a potentially terminal illness, which wasn't foreshadowed even in that very episode.
  • "The Reverse-Flash Returns" pulls some especially nonsensical Timey-Wimey Ball shenanigans to explain how Eobard Thawne can still exist after Eddie's death. It also suddenly pulls out the idea that Nora Allen's death is a fixed point in time that can't be changed, which everyone talks about like they knew it all along, despite the whole climax of last season being based around Barry trying to stop it. In fact, the writers seemed to anticipate how the audience would tend to reject this, as the episode of Legends of Tomorrow that aired two days later (kinda sorta not really) clarifies how something can become a fixed point in the Arrowverse.
    • This gets worse in "Versus Zoom" as the same explanation is trotted out to explain how Zoom pulled off the trick of appearing to kill himself in front of the team, making even less sense as there's no reason he would have a time remnant like Eobard did. And even if you accept this, the remnant being killed should start unraveling time like Eobard's did. ""The Race of His Life" fixes this to some extent by showing that the time remnant is actually the version of Zoom who appears from the future, explaining how he could die without the original being harmed.
  • "Flash Back" introduces the time wraiths, Dementor-like beings who track down speedsters who travels through time without taking certain precautions. While based on the Black Flash from the comics, it's still quite weird how Barry is told it was simply dumb luck he never ran into them on his previous trips through time.
  • The reveal that "Jay Garrick" was Zoom all along and his real name is Hunter Zolomon comes off as this. Though there are hints such as his Adaptational Wimp status and the fact his Earth-1 counterpart's name is different, and according to his actor he knew all along about the twist, it really feels like it came out of nowhere just to be a shock to viewers, and raises a lot of questions that aren't properly answered.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After all of the hell that Eobard Thawne put the Flash and all of Central City through back in the first season, it's extremely gratifying to see Barry finally kick his ass.
    • The scene where Cisco later confronts him and gloats his victory over him is quite cathartic on its own, given Eobard killed him in an alternate timeline.
    • As divisive as the overall scene may be, Barry easily overpowering Thawne during his mother's murder is very satisfying to watch.
  • From the same episode as the above, Patty using her detective skills to deduce that Barry is The Flash is extremely cathartic to viewers feeling frustrated by Barry insisting she be Locked Out of the Loop.
  • He's nowhere close to beaten, but after Zoom has spent the entire season appearing all but invincible, it's very satisfying to see him held off by Killer Frost while Harry finally saves his daughter and slips through Zoom's fingers in "Escape from Earth-2."
  • Barry successfully overpowering Zoom twice in "The Race of His Life," with the latter being capped off by two Time Wraiths dragging Zoom to a very well-deserved fate.
• Contested Sequel: For a lot of people, this season was even better than the first, or at least a worthy successor. For others, it was a mess that ended up setting up all the problems that would later befall the show in later seasons. Even still, there's debate about whether this season was better than season 3 or not, with some arguing that everything wrong with season 3 started in season 2. A lot of it seems to come down to how one feels about the show's treatment of Zoom or its Adaptation Deviation treatment of the Flash mythos that just gets worse from here.
• Creepy Awesome: Zoom is described as "an unstoppable demon with the face of death." His terrifying presence and the savage beating he dishes out to Barry in "Enter Zoom" solidifies his status as the show's scariest, yet most badass villain. The voice really sells it.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • The episode "Family of Rogues" shows the Snart siblings at their most sympathetic portrayal by introducing their abusive father, Lewis.
  • Zoom's backstory reveals that he was abused as a child, saw his mother get murdered before his very eyes, was sent to an orphanage before becoming a crazy serial killer, and was eventually driven into becoming Zoom because he felt nothing but hate all of his life.Hunter Zolomon watched his father kill his mother, an experience that warped him into a psychotic serial killer. And, unlike Barry, Hunter had no one to care for him after losing his parents. None of this excuses his actions, but it's not hard to see how he wound up becoming what he is.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • King Shark proved extremely popular and memorable despite only appearing for 45 seconds. Positive fan response even led the creators to bring him back as the main villain in a self-titled episode later in the season. He eventually got to make a full Heel–Face Turn down the line!
  • Patty Spivot. The one temporary love interest that the fandom affectionately remembers. Beloved for how kind and accepting she was too Barry, while also having a badass side. Many thought she could have been a great addition to Tean Flash and that Barry turning her away was wasted potential.
  • Earth-2 Iris is also very popular in the fandom. Many see her as much more badass than her Earth-1 counterpart, a given as unlike the original Iris, this Iris went through the police academy.
  • The man in the iron mask in "Escape from Earth-2" has gained a lot of interest for his mysterious background.
  • Out of Zoom's Earth-2 minions, Killer Frost and Black Siren (for obvious reasons) became instantly adored by the fanbase.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Zoom, wearing a black version of Flash's suit, with a monstrous face and the addition of Tony Todd's voice. He also easily defeats Barry in their first fight, temporarily cripples him, and publicly humiliates him by showing his broken body in front of his friends, allies, and the entire city in order to crush their faith in the hero. An impressive feat that not many DC supervillains have accomplished.
  • Several of the Earth-2 metahumans, particularly those who are evil counterparts to the heroes of Earth-1 such as Reverb, Killer Frost, and Black Siren, also qualify. Both the characters and their actors look to be having a lot of fun playing the villain.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: Zoom is Hunter Zolomon. Specifically, the showrunners said at the start of the season that Zoom in the show was going to be an original character using the Zoom name so as to allow them to make it a mystery, and generally comic fans were open to the idea since they probably couldn't adapt Hunter's story without having Wally as the Flash. When they then revealed that he actually was Hunter all along, albeit a Hunter with almost nothing in common with the canon character, fans were understandably annoyed.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: Any Fanfic that was made after Season 2 will usually have Linda her having Dr. Light powers. Also having her cover the particle accelerator is also common.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The show drops a tantalizing starting point for stories about the Earth-2 versions of the Arrow cast, with Robert being the Hood after Oliver died in the shipwreck. Black Siren's appearance also has some fans thinking about what her Start of Darkness was.
  • "Welcome to Earth-2" reveals that the 1990 Flash series is part of the show's multiverse. Have fun with stories of Barry meeting another Flash with his name who looks like a younger version of his dad.
  • After The Reveal of the man in the mask being the real Jay Garrick, fanfics of his adventures before being captured by Zoom and his post Season Two adventures on Earth-3 are bound to appear.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • After "Versus Zoom," Jay helping Barry defeat Sand Demon comes off as Zoom bringing Sand Demon to Earth-1 just to kill him. By extension the same applies to every Earth-2 metahuman he sent after Barry in the early part of the season, as he never intended for Barry to actually lose to any of them. Meaning whether it was in the process of falling to the Flash or by his own hand as punishment for failure, they were all going to die.
  • In "The Reverse-Flash Returns," Patty Spivot wants to help Barry fight crime, but he refuses, unilaterally deciding that he is going to keep her safe by preventing her from working with him. About the same time on Arrow, Diggle, Laurel, and the rest want to help Oliver Queen fight crime, but he refuses, unilaterally deciding that he is going to keep them safe by preventing them from working with him. Diggle chastises him, saying "That's not your call to make." The fact that Diggle was seen as right on that show makes it all the more harsh that Barry did this to Patty; it was the same decision, and according to Arrow, it wasn't his call to make.
• He Really Can Act: Teddy Sears' initial portrayal of the square-jawed but depowered superhero "Jay Garrick" was somewhat bland, but his eventual portrayal of Zoom proved to be quite entertaining and a good counterpart to Tony Todd as his masked self.
• He's Just Hiding:
  • Many doubt Ronnie Raymond is truly dead, because they Never Found the Body like last time, and since singularities have never been established to be a guaranteed way to kill someone. This is especially the case due to the involvement of alternate Earths, which leaves it open for him to have been transported elsewhere instead.
  • Atom Smasher to a lesser extent; while it's largely unquestionable that he's dead, the fact a) he's from an alternate universe, b) it's confirmed there are more than just two worlds, c) Smasher in particular, along with others, existed on both Earth-1 and 2 (albeit, he was a powerless muggle on Earth-1), meaning he could exist in one of the other universes as well, and d) Smasher is usually a hero in the comics while the one encountered in the show was a villain all mean it's likely there's a heroic version of the character floating around somewhere.
  • Trajectory's death looked suspiciously like being absorbed into the Speed Force.
  • Zoom looks suspiciously like the Black Flash as he's dragged off by the Time Wraiths, so many fans expect him to show up again sooner or later. And even barring that, there could easily be a time remnant of him still around somewhere considering how casual he is about creating them. He does end up returning as the Black Flash, where he has been rendered in a decaying state with all traces of Hunter Zolomon gone and being a slave of the Speed Force.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • After The Reveal in "Versus Zoom," "Jay" describing Zoom as "an unstoppable demon with the face of death" comes off as some rather subtle Evil Gloating on Zoom's part.
  • The show's version of Wally West is a Composite Character of the original ^note aspiring mechanic, admiration of the Flash, getting involved in a History Repeats of the Flash's Freak Lab Accident and New 52^note Race Lift and "record" versions. This is a few months before an adult Wally West returns during the DC Rebirth event to coexist with the New 52 Wally, causing him to become a Decomposite Character.
  • Zoom's ultimate Evil Plan is to destroy the entire multiverse save for Earth-1 due to "need to have some place to hang [his] cowl", but there's the fact that over on Arrow, Damien Darhk came very close to nuking the entire world, so Zoom would have had no place to live even if he had succeeded.
  • As shown below in Memetic Mutation about Patty being Zoom would be this when the comics introduced Meena Dhawan, a love interest for Barry who became the Negative Flash, who wore a black version of the Flash suit much like this version of Zoom.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Two key story elements are copied from Season One. Joe's police partner is left Locked Out of the Loop of Barry's identity as the Flash despite working closely with him, and the Big Bad is a mysterious Evil Counterpart to the Flash who wants Barry to become faster to further his evil plans. Both of these make Season Two just a tiny bit repetitive. Even Zoom's reveal is an exact copy of the reveal of the Reverse-Flash in Season One — the team's kindly mentor is actually their worst enemy and has been playing them all for fools.
  • Zoom's Evil Plan of wanting to conquer the hero's city is something that's been been done to death on Arrow. Although it's eventually revealed he also wants to destroy the multiverse.
• Jerkass Dissonance: Harrison Wells of Earth-2 may have good intentions (Zoom is holding his daughter captive), but he's definitely an unpersonable grump nonetheless. However, his snappish, biting remarks have provided some of the best lines of the season, if not the entire show. A lot of fans are liking Wells for his incredibly blunt and confrontational personality, providing a stark contrast from both the cool, analytical, and methodical Eobard Thawne and the nice guy Wells of Season One.
  Cisco: "Our 'Wells' might've been evil, but you're just a dick!"
• Love to Hate: Zoom is a sociopathic Serial Killer, completely devoid of any redeeming factors, but his Creepy Awesome portrayal and sheer intimidation factor has endeared him to many fans. So people want him to get taken down and pay for all of the bad things he's done, but can't help enjoying him while he's around.
• Memetic Badass: Zoom gets this treatment, being the biggest, baddest speedster to have existed.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Patty is Zoom. ^ExplanationAfter many, many wild, crackpot theories about who Zoom really is, the fandom seems to have "settled" in the most absurd candidate possible and ran with it.
  • Fans are also joking that Sonic is Zoom because of the blue colour scheme.
  • Following the deaths of Ronnie, Hunter's time remnant and Earth-2 Ronnie, fans have jokingly come to the conclusion that every person who becomes Caitlin's boyfriend will inevitably be killed. This trend was eventually broken with Julian in the third season, but not before once again claiming Hunter, who as Black Flash was frozen and shattered to pieces by Earth-1's Killer Frost.
  • Everyone is Jay Garrick. ^Explanation After "Jay Garrick" was revealed to be a time remnant (and speculation, turned to fact, that the mysterious masked man is the real Jay), people have taken to claiming other characters are versions of Jay, as well.
  • After "Flash Back," referring to Hartley as if he's been a regular character since his Season One appearance has become quite popular.
  • Earth-2 Lives Matter! ^ExplanationFans joke about how Team Flash seems to be fine with killing off or causing the deaths of Earth-2 metahumans sent by Zoom to attack Barry, when the team previously went out of their way to apprehend and lock up Earth-1 metas that attacked.
  • "YOU CAN'T LOCK UP THE DARKNESS."^ExplanationZoom's most frequently quoted line and the one he is most heavily associated with.
    • It's part of a joke to respond with this line to someone saying "What?"
    • The meme also isn't restricted to "darkness" with people claiming all sorts of things that "you can't be lock up...".
  • After the end of Season 2, some people (like so) have been making jokes that every season finale will feature more and more Barrys from different futures (and timelines) at his mother's murder scene.
    • Some fans have even jokingly begun to ship Barry and the timeline due to Barry's meddling often being referred to as him fucking the timeline.
• Narm Charm:
  • The mayor presenting the key to the city to the Flash. It's a classic superhero cliche that should be unbearably cheesy, but instead is a Heartwarming Moment. It really sums up how this series is a love letter to the superhero genre, rather than trying to distance itself from it like so many recent adaptations.
  • "Jay" describing Zoom as an "unstoppable demon with the face of death" sounds a little awkward until we see Zoom in action and it becomes clear that "Jay" wasn't exaggerating. The fact that it's later suggested to be some subtle Evil Gloating on Zoom's part helps, too.
  • The simple fact that the Arc Villain that our heroes must face is named Zoom. An onomatopoeia for "go fast." But the costume, the voice, and Zoom's actions manage to keep him terrifying. Just be grateful the Reverse-Flash never went by the even-stupider "Professor Zoom."
  • Zoom catching lightning in slow-motion. It's obvious that he's defying the laws of physics, but it makes him look so epic.
  • Zoom, of all people, saying "Merry Christmas" in "Running to Stand Still" is simultaneously unsettling and hilarious. It also serves as a nice Call-Back to Eobard Thawne saying "Merry Christmas" in "The Man in the Yellow Suit."
  • From "Versus Zoom," Zoom's over-the-top declaration that "YOU CAN'T LOCK UP THE DARKNESS!" should come off as silly, but the effect of Teddy Sears delivering the line with Zoom's Black Eyes of Evil combined with Tony Todd's voiceover performance makes it terrifying.
• Older Than They Think: Jefferson "Jax" Jackson is not, contrary to popular belief, merely a Decomposite Character/Composite Character of aspects of both Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch, but was originally a member of Ronnie Raymond's supporting cast.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • King Shark shows up at the end of "The Fury of Firestorm", looking far better than you'd expect from the show's budget, and promptly gets knocked out, only serving as the means to introduce Barry to Earth-2's Harrison Wells. Luckily for fans, he got his own episode later.
  • Damien Darhk's cameo in "Legends of Yesterday". He gets one scene where he kills some Argus personnel and menaces Oliver. Neal McDonough plays up the Evil Is Hammy aspect of it for all it's worth.
  • Reverb, a.k.a. Cisco Ramon of Earth-2, only gets one scene before being killed, but he makes an impressive showing with his menacing demeanor and using his powers to subdue and beat down Barry.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Ronnie has two: Hunter Zolomon pretending to be Jay Garrick as a love interest for Caitlin and Jax as the other half of Firestorm. For comics fans, Jax is also this to Jason Rusch, the second canonical Firestorm in the comics. The fact that Rusch already appeared in Season One doesn't help his case. Fortunately, Jax's role on Legends of Tomorrow seems to be redeeming him in the eyes of the fans.
  • Zoom is a downplayed case. He is generally considered a good villain, but is not as acclaimed as Eobard Thawne. Some of Zoom's critics were against him for repeating elements from Thawne.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: "Jay Garrick." Fan reception early on in the season to the character was lukewarm, mainly due to being seen as an Adaptational Wimp. However, the revelation that the Jay Garrick persona was just an act from the start and he's actually been Zoom all along certainly changed a lot of minds. This is especially true since many fans feel that Teddy Sears' performance as Zoom/Hunter Zolomon is superior to his as Jay Garrick.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Barry and Patty's turbulent courtship was just shoehorned. It was evident that the relationship is disposable and Barry would ultimately end up with Iris.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Black Siren is shipped with Oliver by comic fans due to being more similar to the comic Black Canary than Laurel ever was. When she migrates to Arrow, however, she refuses to have a romance with him.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: With the addition of "Jay Garrick" and Patty Spivot (respective love interests of Caitlin and Barry), the naval battles from Season One have only become that much messier.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Zoom's entire performance in "Enter Zoom": catching lightning and throwing it back at Barry, beating Barry senseless, breaking his back, and parading his broken body around town in an extended Kick the Dog moment.
  • From "Welcome to Earth-2," Zoom coming out of nowhere to kill Deathstorm and Reverb, kidnap Barry, lock him in a cell next to Jesse's, and brag about it'll be the last place he ever sees.
    • Not to mention the trip to Earth-2 that offers a glimpse of "everything," meaning the likes of Jonah Hex, the Legion of Super Heroes, the 1990 Flash, and Supergirl.
  • "Versus Zoom" reveals Zoom's true identity: Hunter Zolomon of Earth-2, and he (and a time remnant in the Earth-2 two parter) has been posing as "Jay Garrick" all along. Hand in hand with that is the reveal that Hunter created the persona of Earth-2's Flash to give people hope just so he could rip it away as Zoom.
  • THEN it turns out in the finale that Jay Garrick actually does exist...on yet another Earth. He has a bright red and blue suit and is the Earth-3 counterpart of Barry's father. And HE's the man Zoom kept locked up in the iron mask — as a trophy.
• So Okay, It's Average: While enjoyable, some fans aren't enjoying Season Two as much as Season One (which admittedly set the bar pretty high). There are several reasons for this: accusations that Zoom is too similar to the Reverse-Flash to stand out on his own as a Big Bad; him being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad as most of the metahumans this season have been his lackeys at the expense of the Rogues (all of whom have been Put on a Bus), while other fan favorites like the Trickster and Grodd were used pretty quickly in the first half; the big reveal of Zoom's identity causing some pacing issues; the way the main characters have been forced to act like idiots to justify Zoom' threat; Barry's romance with Patty being seen as a Romantic Plot Tumor for those who didn't care for them while she was never properly used as Joe's new police partner because she was always kept Locked Out of the Loop before she was quietly written out. But the final straw for many was Zoom's plan to conquer Central City, which was seen as a blatant copy of Arrow, since many a villain on that show has tried to conquer Star(ling) City. Regardless of its problems, this was seen by many as the best Arrowverse season during 2015-2016.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Atom Smasher's transformation in the season premiere is painfully CG, looking like something we might have seen twenty years ago.
  • Barry saving Dr. McGee looked like an animation of an old 3D Videogame.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • Caitlin and "Jay" really come off as this, especially considering that Caitlin just lost her husband and basically runs after him like a hypnotised puppy from the very start.
  • Some think this of Barry and Patty as well, since a lot of people felt like Barry was settling, and the typical "I have to keep my identity a secret from my lover" thing being beyond outdated by this point. It doesn't help that her comic counterpart was a very obvious place holder for Iris, so those who knew that felt this way about the show's version by default.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Rogues despite being a big part of Season One, have all been Put on a Bus meaning that the Big Bad, Zoom gets all the attention and there's little break from that particular arc.
  • The Adaptational Villainy of Hunter Zolomon was badly received by most of his comic fanbase. In the comics, he was a tragic figure who had a lot of bad days before he snapped, and even when became Zoom his main motivation was to make the Flash suffer tragedy so it would turn him into a better hero. Here he had a really horrible childhood before being shunted off to foster care and was a notorious serial killer all before he got his powers, and he makes people suffer just for the hell of it.
  • The treatment of Jay Garrick. Considering Jay is one of the oldest heroes in DC Comics, not to mention the first Flash, how he was treated in the show (at first being deaged and depowered, made into Caitlin's love interest, then revealed as really an alias Zoom adopted as part of a cruel (and ever stupid) twist on the world) seen as disrespectful to Jay's legacy. It was mitigated by revealing that the real Jay Garrick is Henry's Earth-3 counterpart, and is much Truer to the Text, but he's still given a costume that doesn't look like his costume counterpart and he's still Demoted to Extra compared to how he should be treated.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • "The Reverse-Flash Returns" could have been a triumphant return for Season One's well-received Big Bad and a possible hint that fan-favorite Eddie might somehow be alive. Instead, we got a timey-wimey bit of technobabble that is generally considered an Ass Pull, with Thawne's return only lasting a single episode (albeit one that tied up a couple of loose ends from Season One, such as the reason for Thawne's hatred for the Flash). Although given the fact the two's timelines are in reverse, the door's still open for him to come back.
  • "Flash Back" brings us Hartley's Heel–Face Turn which a lot of people wanted. However, while the episode did show him helping with the Time Wraith, the details are glossed over once Barry get to the future, with him now being a lot friendlier and saving Barry from the Time Wraith. Those wanting a redemption arc for the character unfortunately didn't get it.
  • Subverted with the apparent inexistence of Jay Garrick. Apparently he was a character invented by Hunter Zolomon to bring a false hope, but The Man in the Iron Mask was the real Jay Garrick and the Earth-3 counterpart of Henry Allen. Jay becomes a recurring character and ally of Team Flash in posterior season.
  • Zoom. In the comics he's an Anti-Villain with a unique motivation, but the writers decided to add more mystery to the character and thus confirmed he wouldn't be Hunter Zolomon, indicating that this Zoom, who was introduced as a terrifying villain who utterly breaks Barry in their first fight, would at least be an interesting new character. Then they proceed to leave his Zoom side underdeveloped for the bulk of the season. Then there is the reveal that he really is Hunter Zolomon, except he's basically In Name Only without any of the nuance, making it feel like they wasted both the opportunity to create a new Big Bad for the Flash and waste a popular comic character with potential. The only thing that softens the blow is that it's the Hunter Zolomon of Earth-2, meaning his counterpart on Barry's world could potentially be more like the comic version.
  • From "Back to Normal" to "The Runaway Dinosaur" Barry was without his powers, and the episodes revolved around stopping the threats in other ways. You'd think this would be a good time for Cisco to learn to use more of his powers like Reverb, especially since one of the enemies is his brother's Earth-2 counterpart, but that doesn't happen.
  • The show's budget limitations force the "Metapocalypse," with every remaining Earth-2 metahuman attacking Central City at once, to be crammed into all of about five minutes. It's played up as a massive catastrophe, after which Barry speeds in and cleans up the whole problem save for a few stragglers.
  • With Captain Cold and Heatwave having transplanted to Legends, things seem to be set for Lisa Snart becoming an independent villain on her own, and maybe even becoming leader of a new iteration of the Rogues (just exactly like what happened in the comics). Sadly, Lisa has never been seen since.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Ironically played. For the first half of the season, no one really cared about Iris's mother when she had nothing to do with the more interesting main plot, until it introduced Wally to the show, while the "more interesting main plot" became an infuriating Arc Fatigue plot that ruined several popular characters, while the plot that came from Francine's introduction, Wally slowly building a relationship with Joe and Iris, ends up becoming one of the best parts of the season.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nobody thought that Joe's wife would show up - the implication for the whole first season being she's been dead for all these years.
  • King Shark, a giant talking shark, appeared out of nowhere at the tail end of a season 2 episode well before he would become important, becoming one of the biggest talking points after the episode's release due to the shock factor.
  • Earth-2 Deadshot's appearance is considered a (pleasant) surprise, considering his main counterpart was killed by Executive Meddling during Arrow Season Three due to the upcoming Suicide Squad (2016) film.
  • No one, both In-Universe and out, expected the appearance of Reverb, an supervillain version of Cisco.
  • Since Word of God claimed that Zoom would not be Hunter Zolomon in this rendition even before Season Two aired, it surprised a lot of people when Zolomon showed up. Turns out that claim was a Red Herring; the Zoom of Earth-1 isn't Zoom. Earth-2 Zolomon, on the other hand, is.
  • An Earth-2 character is introduced to the Arrowverse shortly after the very dramatic death of their Earth-1 counterpart, Laurel Lance, over on Arrow.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Joe and Iris telling Francine to stay out of their lives comes more across of Kick the Dog than anything else. Joe at least realized he made a mistake when he learns they have a son who grew up without a father because of this, not so much Iris, who treated it like a complete betrayal when Francine never had a chance to tell her.
  • Other fans are calling foul on Henry Allen's abrupt departure in the premiere, pointing out that Barry had been working for years to free him and wanted nothing more than to spend time with his dad, and finding his on-screen reason for leaving less than convincing.
  • Wally at first, blaming Joe for not being around when he was a kid, despite the fact that his mother left before Joe even knew she was pregnant. Joe even points out that as a detective's wife Francine knew how to disappear. The next episode shows that he's angry at Francine too, even more so, and he quickly learns to get past it and bonds with Joe.
  • Barry ends up being even more of a jerk to Patty over his secret identity than he was to Iris, openly lying to her face when she figures it out while claiming that it's for her own good, as if her not knowing would protect her if Zoom found out how much Barry cares about her.
  • Scott Evans' being disappointed that Iris wasn't asking him out on a date and was instead trying to talk about work seems to be an attempt to humanize a rather one-note Flash hater. Instead it makes him appear even worse since he proceeds to get angry with Iris and guilt-trip her. Considering that he was the one to assume there was a date and that he holds power over Iris (being her boss and all), some fans were not amused when she expressed an interest in pursuing the relationship.
• Vindicated by History: At the time, season 2 was seen as a massive step down from season 1, with many viewers voicing annoyance at how the plot had issues with too similar to both the past season and ''Arrow'' Season 2, the confusing nature of the reveal of Zoom's identity, and a number of the comic fandom that watched the show really grew to hate what it apparently did to Jay Garrick and Zoom. However, seasons 3 & 4 generally poor reception seems to have made a lot of the people who liked this season become more vocal, and so it's more fondly remembered among the fandom. Zoom in particular is mostly remembered for his first few episodes, where he was an enjoyably dark badass with a cool air of mystery, rather than later when he acquired an inconsistent plan and New Powers as the Plot Demands.

Season Three

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Despite the lukewarm reception that he initially received, fans were saddened when H.R. sacrificed himself in Iris's place, which really made up for his shortcomings.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: While the Speed Force is unambiguously a jerk, how much of its harshness to Barry is genuine and how much an attemt to manipulate him into getting angry enough to continue fighting?
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • You know, for somebody who has spent 3 years of his life trapped within a mirror fully conscious and unable to do anything, Mirror Master seems to take it in as a minor inconvenience. Justified, as he mentions to the Top it just seemed like one night to him.
  • Jay doesn't seem affected at all when he is released from an "And I Must Scream" prison in the Speed Force. He is just worried about Savitar and even smiles.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Despite all his glory, the fight between Solovar and Flash was very underwhelming, with Barry defeating him very easily in what was originally built up as a fight to the death.
  • The great Gorilla Grodd ends up defeated by Solovar in a CGI fight that doesn't even last two minutes. In all fairness, the show had exhausted its budget on CGI gorillas.
• Anvilicious: The "you shouldn't kill but be merciful" message was told too much times by Team Flash, to a point that it makes the episode seem less as a superhero series and more of a preachy chapter. The fact that Barry has used lethal force before sure doesn't help.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Savitar's true identity and motivations ended up being dragged out way too long. Longer than with Zoom in fact. This bordered on Trolling Creator territory by "Abra Kadabra" and if it didn't cross the line then, it definitely went there in "The Once and Future Flash". Tellingly, the episode where The Reveal was finally made was titled "I Know Who You Are", making it seem like even writers knew they had dragged this mystery out too long.
  • Some also feel that Barry still being blamed for Flashpoint by Lyla in Episode 22 is a bit wearying, as they feel that while Barry did accidentally Ret-Gone her daughter, he's already apologized and paid for it enough.
• Ass Pull: Savitar explaining that the Philosopher's Stone is made up of "Calcified Speed Force Energy". This was never hinted at before the show, and is only bought up to explain how Barry is unable to save Iris from Savitar.
• Awesome Ego: Savitar, not unlike Zoom, spends a big chunk of his dialogue boasting about his status as the god of the Speed Force. It helps that, as he's the first speedster and so fast that even other speedsters can't track his movements, his claims of godhood come off as very credible.
• Badass Decay: Savitar's powers seem far more impressive early on in the season than later. Initially he's trapped in the Speed Force and so while he can only seldom appear in the real world, he's an absolute beast when he does, whose battle scenes are both terrifying and pure Scenery Porn...not to mention, he has a plethora of other cool powers. When he's freed from the Speed Force, he loses most of his powers other than his Super-Speed, and is now only slightly faster than Barry, much like Zoom or the Reverse-Flash, meaning his scenes are no longer spectacle. So, this is somewhat justified, but still disappointing nonetheless. Also, many people were impressed by his appearance in his introduction episode, liking the idea of a god-like speed entity. Alas, it turned out it was all just posturing and he was Human All Along, which disappointed many people.
• Bizarro Episode: "Duet"; a Musical Episode that involves both Flash and Supergirl getting trapped in a world where they must sing and learn a life lesson about the meaning of love.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • The show making such a big deal about revealing that Kid Flash is Wally. Even if you don't know the comics, it's very easy to recognize the actor even with the blurring effect.
  • Likewise, Dr. Alchemy being Julian underneath the mask. Many fans had guessed this early on in the season, several as far back as "Paradox", and certain episodes like "Shade" and "Killer Frost" gave rather blatant hints to the revelation. Also, his last name is Albert, as in the first name of the comics' Doctor Alchemy. (It's later established via Freeze-Frame Bonus in "The Present" that Julian's full name is Julian Albert Desmond.) Though rather fewer people predicted the secondary twist that he's an innocent victim who had no idea he was Alchemy, having been used like a puppet by Savitar.
• Catharsis Factor: Barry punching Savitar in the face in "Cause and Effect" after all the trouble the latter caused during Season 3. It's topped later on by Barry stealing Savitar's own armor and delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown. And then Iris kills Savitar with a single shot through the back.
• Character Perception Evolution: Savitar was disregarded by many when he first appeared as a Replacement Scrappy to the much more popular Reverse-Flash and Zoom and for being yet another speedster villain as the Big Bad. The Reveal of him being an evil future time remnant of Barry was also criticized for being long guessed by pretty much everyone. These factors made many think of him as the show's worst villain as a result. However, thanks to the reception of main villains in later seasons (especially Cicada), Savitar is looked upon nowadays as one of the series' best villains, as he had a genuinely emotional and deep-rooted conflict with The Flash, could actually be intimidating and even sympathetic when the plot demanded it, and the reveal of his secret identity, even if it was pretty obvious, is now seen as allowing a lot of past elements to fall into place. Although he still has his detractors, he's now viewed in a better light.
• Creepy Awesome:
  • Alchemy is a Malevolent Masked Man who makes his presence known through a voice in his victim's heads, followed by him scratching his name into a nearby glass with an invisible force. If his victim's haven't come voluntarily by that point, he'll possess them to make them obey.
  • Savitar is a Humanoid Abomination that outruns the Flash and acts so fast that you'd barely notice where he is.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Jay Garrick due to becoming a mentor to Barry and finally talking some sense into him, and for being just a Cool Old Guy in general.
  • Out of all the alternate versions of Harrison Wells, Mime Wells and Hells Wells were the ones who endeared the fandom the most.
  • Gypsy, due to being a sexy, badass, darker Distaff Counterpart to Cisco.
  • The Accelerated Man a.k.a. The Flash of Earth-19. His brief appearance accompanied by his very old fashioned but memorable outfit has made him a One-Scene Wonder and left many fans interested in what his story is. Plus his lightning appears to be purple!
• Epileptic Trees: Savitar's identity has been one of the biggest source of wild theories on the show. Some of the more popular ones include Prometheus, Wally West, Future Barry Allen, H.R., Eddie Thawne, Daniel West, and Ronnie Raymond. Turns out he was a time remnant of Barry Allen.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Killervibe (Cisco/Caitlin) has a large following, given their incredibly close and nurturing friendship, some fans pointing out several parallels between the two to Barry and Iris's tight-knit bond before they became the Official Couple.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: There are more than a few fanfics where Barry attempts suicide to Ret-Gone Savitar.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: The Rival's costume has been harshly criticized as one of the most ridiculous villain costumes in the entire Arrowverse. Basically, the Rival wears a black suit similar to Zoom's, but with red and yellow lightning bolts scribbled all over and has a goblin-shaped mask that's supposed to make him appear menacing, but doesn't.
• Fight Scene Failure: Wally's final fight against the Rival. We're told and shown repeatedly that Wally can never beat the Rival. He then proceeds to do so easily, though Rival was merely holding back. Then Wally idiotically turns his back, leading to him getting stabbed.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The scene in Season 2's "Invincible" where Cisco and Caitlin dress up as Reverb and Killer Frost? Hilarious. The reveal that in the new timeline, Caitlin is starting to turn into Killer Frost? Not so much...
  • The same thing applies to the scene in "King Shark" where Caitlin plays a trick on Cisco by pretending she's becoming Killer Frost; now it's happening for real.
  • Cisco and Dante's reconciliation in "Rupture" becomes this with the reveal that some time between then and "Paradox," the latter was killed in a car accident. Even worse, it's implied that said reconciliation may not have happened, or at least not in the same way as the previous timeline.
  • Caitlin's insistence she'd never become Killer Frost in "King Shark" now that she's slowly turning into Killer Frost. It's not just the ice powers, it's like a virus replacing Caitlin with the "Killer Frost" persona.
  • The fall of Star City as detailed in "Star City 2046" seems more and more likely now that Sara Diggle is no more and John Diggle Jr. exists in her place.
  • Barry's oft-mocked claim in the show's opening narration of being "the fastest man alive" despite several characters being faster over the course of the show. Savitar, who is the fastest speedster on the show yet, happens to be a time remnant of Barry, proving the claim true.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: Barry proposing to Iris this season along with Grant Gustin's acting in both the mid-season finale and his second proposal in "Duet" becomes additionally delightful because of Grant Gustin becoming engaged to his girlfriend in April 2017.
• Hilarious in Hindsight
  • The Rival was believed to be Savitar by some early viewers. He gets killed by the real Savitar one episode after his debut.
  • The episode "Killer Frost" focusing on Caitlin worrying that her Superpowered Evil Side would corrupt her mind and turn her against her friends becomes this when Gotham had a similar plotline where Captain Barnes ended up turning evil after corruption from his superpowers, too.
  • Also slightly sweet, but the entirety of the second half of the season dealt with Barry attempting to rescue Iris, and Grant looking out for Candice, let it slip that she would indeed have a job come season 4, assuring her Iris was gonna live. Guess both in character and out Barry/Grant will always rescue his friends.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Rival is considered this by some, what with him being another evil speedster after we just got done with Zoom (and Thawne in the previous season). It doesn't help that he has little backstory or motive and wears a black costume like Zoom. Of course it's a moot point since he's killed by Savitar for his incompetence in the second episode.
  • Following the winter finale, the revelation by Savitar that "one will fall, one will betray, and one will suffer a Fate Worse than Death" as well as the accompanying vision of Iris being killed by Savitar in late May 2017 seems to bring back memories of the Tonight, Someone Dies trope that was liberally used last season on Arrow, not to mention Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as well. It certainly doesn't help that the resolution to the former was almost universally reviled by fans.
  • Many feel this season is too similar to Arrow since Barry's arc is very similar to Oliver's concurrent arc — they are both confronted by a villain of their own making (Prometheus for Oliver, Savitar for Barry) who want to destroy the hero without killing them; Prometheus wants to turn Star City against Green Arrow, Savitar wants to do it by killing Iris. Both Barry and Oliver are haunted by their past failures (Barry creating Flashpoint and Oliver's inability to save Laurel) and they let their guilt from their failures cloud their judgement.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • Iris's prophesied death at the hands of Savitar had this reaction. Fans were very doubtful that spending a whole season trying to prevent her death, it was very unlikely the writers would go through with killing the female lead of the show. Seemingly averted in the penultimate episode of the season, but the person Savitar killed wasn't Iris but H.R. impersonating her, playing this trope straight.
  • The same has to be said of Caitlin, even though the way Julian had saved her still remains controversial. It was also doubtful she would be kept as a villain when she has been popular in her heroic role.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Jay Garrick. He is often depicted as a "bitch slapper" to speedsters who fucks up the timeline due to him pulling Barry from fixing the post-Flashpoint timeline. Him volunteering to take Wally's place in the Speed Force has added more to his badass reputation.
  • After the Season Finale, H.R. Wells acquires the fame of defeating villains with his transmogrification device.
• Memetic Loser:
  • H.R. was seen as this for not only lying about being a scientist, but for also being seen as The Load on Team Flash. Ironically, H'R.'s Heroic Sacrifice in the Season Finale has made him the inverse of this trope.
  • The Rival, in a combination of being a Flat Character and Fashion-Victim Villain, he is often seen as the red-haired step brother nobody asked for when grouped with the more intimidating and interesting evil speedsters like Reverse Flash, Zoom and Savitar.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Now's who the villain, Flash? Now who's the villain?"^note Eobard calling Barry out on creating Flashpoint.
  • Doctor Alchemy saying "You Failed" in a Creepy Monotone is now being compared to a Game Over screen.
  • "Unclear."^ExplanationFlashpoint Wally's response to Caitlin's query about whether or not she had just been kidnapped by Barry.
  • Harry's sarcastic remarks and outdated slang in "Magenta," appending seemingly positive comments with "NOT!" have become a meme in themselves.
  • The addition of Tom Felton to the cast has resulted in several comparisons between the show and Harry Potter. There were even screencaps of Felton comparing the two leads and making him say variants of "I hate lightning."^ExplanationHarry Potter is famous in-universe and out for, among other things, his lightning bolt-shaped scar.
    • The revelation that Doctor Alchemy, who often uses the Philosopher's Stone, was actually Felton's character Julian being possessed by Savitar only served to increase the amount of comparisons, as did the fact that Julian has a deceased younger sister named Emma.
  • "Nah."^ExplanationH.R.'s nonchalant response to Wally when the latter tried to goad the underappreciated writer into training him.
  • Snurtle the Turtle^ExplanationH.R.'s housewarming gift for Barry and Iris was a pet turtle, where instantly fans immediately started jokingly hyping up with absurd theories like Snurtle being Savitar, or Snurtle becoming a speedster...
  • Barry's decision to run straight into Grodd's shield during "Attack on Central City" was met with significant derision and achieved memetic status almost instantly.
  • "I am the future, Flash." ^note Savitar's response to Barry asking him his identity. Quite a few have interpreted this line as "I'm the Future Flash," as in Savitar literally saying he's a future version of Barry Allen. Indeed, that is exactly what Savitar means when he says that.
    • The reveal that he was actually saying "I am the Future Flash" then led to memes that Savitar does not have a proper grasp of grammar due to the odd phrasing of the line.
  • Savitar's identity. Once again, fans are forced to play the guessing game of the Big Bad's identity, with a variety of creative theories. See Epileptic Trees for more details.
  • Similarly, who will die this season? With the show's habit of killing an important character each season, fans have been speculating on who will kick the bucket this time, with Iris and Julian being popular candidates. ^note With Barry witnessing a possible future where Savitar kills Iris and Savitar's prophecy that a member of Team Flash would die, Barry's been spending a fair share of the season trying to prevent Iris' fate, with some fans believing he won't succeed. Meanwhile, Julian is viewed as expendable to the fandom and also happens to be Caitlin's love interest, since poor Caitlin has a nasty tendency of witnessing her love interests being killed (which happened twice with Ronnie Raymond and once with "Jay Garrick.") The one who ends up dying is H.R.
  • "Music by Blake Neely." ^note Someone on Team Flash would learn of Savitar's identity or Savitar's identity is going to be revealed only for the credits to pop up.
  • Emo!Barry^note The brooding, long-haired Barry from the Bad Future quickly became memetic.
• Memetic Troll: Savitar is often joked about being just some all-powerful jokester who uses his amazing powers to screw with Barry over the maniac with a god complex with a greater evil plan. Considering that he seems to have used his powers to look into the futures of team Flash, some fans are going so far as to say that he made it up just to troll them.
• Narm Charm:
  • Savitar's over-the-top boasts and declarations of godhood could have come off as ridiculous, but the combination of his power, Tobin Bell's intimidating voice-over performance, and his monstrous appearance make them terrifying.
  • Unlike the aforementioned mind-control of Cisco and Harry, Grodd controlling Joe in "Attack on Central City" is much more intimidating, thanks to Jesse L. Martin's performance and Grodd also using it as an attempt to force Joe to kill himself.
  • In "The Once and Future Flash," it's easy to dismiss Barry's second battle against the 2024 New Rogues because of the latter's Flat Character dialogue and eye-rolling cheesiness of it all, but the charm Barry brings to the scene along with the excitement of watching 2017 and 2024 Flash capture the New Rogues makes the scene work and reminds viewers of the Silver Age antics that made them enjoy the show in the first place.
  • The whole of the "Duet" episode. Is it narmy and over the top? Oh yeah. But is it also fun, enjoyable, silly, and has some great musical numbers? Oh yeah.
• Never Live It Down: Nobody is going to let Barry forget how many lives he ruined by going back in time and saving Nora. Fans are particularly irate how he didn't care what happened to Cisco and Caitlin in "Flashpoint" because he was so focused on himself. Even worse is the fact that because they don't remember Flashpoint, he won't ever get called out on that particular action. This is similar to some fans' reactions to the Barry's role in the Flashpoint comic.
• Paranoia Fuel:
  • Doctor Alchemy can track you down no matter what universe you live in.
  • Savitar escalates the threat level of previous speedsters by the simple fact he's completely invisible to everyone besides other speedsters (and Dr. Alchemy), and even when Barry does catch sight of Savitar he can barely keep pace with him. As the scene at the end of "Shade" demonstrates, you'd never know he's coming until it's far too late. The Action Prologue of "Killer Frost" further up the ante; Savitar is capable of moving so fast, the effect is akin to instantaneous teleportation.
• Questionable Casting: With the announcement of the Music Meister appearing in the series, many fans were up in arms that they didn't bother trying to get Neil Patrick Harris for a Role Reprise.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Quite a number of fans view H.R. as a completely inferior replacement for Harrison Wells as the Team Dad. The team openly admits that they dislike his presence, and Harry Wells' fans were upset or sad that he was Put on a Bus in favor of the new Wells.
  • The New Rogues, Mirror Master and the Top, are this to the original Rogues Captain Cold and Heat Wave. Granted, this is due to said Rogues moving over to Legends of Tomorrow; it doesn't stop fans from missing the duo back when they were stirring up trouble for Barry.
  • Savitar was seen as this for some, being yet another evil speedster, and one who lacked the impact Thawne and Zoom had.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Julian shakes off much of the hate he got in "Monster" due to much needed Character Development in the form of Break the Haughty and Hidden Depths. While forcing Barry to quit his job as a CSI tech in exchange for not ratting on Caitlin/Killer Frost while criticizing Barry's sense of justice and morality two episodes later seemed to have erased any ounce of goodwill, this was soon resolved with the reveal that "Alchemy" was simply Savitar using his body as a vessel, and Julian had no idea about it, handily clearing up all the apparent inconsistencies in his characterization and allowing him to make friends with the team. Unfortunately his continual tendancy to grab the Jerkass Ball after joining the team, and especially, his action of removing Caitlin's suppressor to prevent her death disregarding her will, turning her into Killer Frost, never redeemed him to more than Base-Breaking Character.
  • H.R. was not originally well-liked both for being a Fake Ultimate Hero and being just plain annoying. But as the season went on, his annoying tendencies were played down as his compassion and worth as a strategist were played up — his sensible take on things makes him the mentor Team Flash has been missing since Season 1, even if H.R. is plenty eccentric. It helps that the writers are well-aware of the fandom's gripes with H.R. and will often have other characters bring attention to them. His Heroic Sacrifice to save Iris in the Season Finale ended up skyrocketing his popularity with fans.
  • For most of the season, many viewers were unsatisfied with Savitar as the Big Bad mainly due to the Arc Fatigue over his true identity as well as his apparent bland and cliched characteristics. Ever since The Reveal that Savitar is an evil time remnant of Barry, viewers became eager for what should be some very interesting and emotionally resonant plotlines going forward, in addition to retroactively making a lot of past elements in the season fall into place.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: A general criticism of the show that's especially notable in this season, as there are literally five different romantic subplots going on at the same time, causing some of the fanbase to feel they're being overdone in general. Barry and Iris bring too much emphasis in minor conflicts. There is also Mon-El and Kara's romance from the crossover; Supergirl was suffering this very problem in Season 2.
• The Scrappy:
  • This show's version of the Rival, for being nothing like the version from the comics, having no real personality outside of wanting to beat the Flash, and his ridiculous costume.
  • The Top's change in powers was received very poorly, along with her pointless Gender Flip and generic personality. There's also criticisms of Ashley Rickards' performance as feeling phoned in, with the actress boredly reciting lines a lot of the time.
• Seasonal Rot: Season Three tends to be the least well-regarded season of The Flash (at least until Season Four concluded), due to Too Bleak, Stopped Caring with regards to Savitar being seemingly destined to kill Iris, fans feeling tired of the Big Bad being another evil speedster, romantic emphasis on 5 simultaneous relationships, too many filler episodes, Savitar's goal not being enough to sustain a big bad and the fan perception that Barry just hadn't grown as a hero at all, with him seemingly being unable to dodge attacks he should easily be able to and being almost totally reliant upon his Star Labs crew to win his battles for him.
• She Really Can Act: Some fans and critics were pleasantly surprised by Danielle Panabaker's performance as Killer Frost and how she manages to differentiate her not only from Caitlin but also from the version of the character that appeared in Season 2.
• Ship Mates:
  • Snowbarry (Barry/Caitlin) and Savifrost (Savitar/Killer Frost), probably due to the fact they are technically the same ship.
  • For that matter, Savifrost and WestAllen, because it effectively allows Barry's two major heterosexual ships to exist at the same time.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • The introduction of the Caitlin/Julian (Snowbert) romance has led to ship wars between Snowbert, Snowbarry (Barry/Caitlin), Killervibe (Caitlin/Cisco) and Savifrost (Savitar/Killer Frost) shippers.
  • Downplayed with the Wally/Jesse ship. While generally accepted, there are fans who are unsure if the romance will ultimately work out and wonder what its development will mean for Linda (Wally's wife in the comics) who hasn't been seen since the first half of Season 2 and thus has yet to meet Wally. The very next season, Jesse dumps Wally, and not even in person at that.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The season's first two episodes turned a lot of people off with their aggressively dour tone, reminiscent of the infamous Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Many fans even declared that The Flash was the weakest Arrowverse show of the season. Luckily, things picked up quite a bit afterwards as it again starts fully (albeit temporarily) playing into the goofy Silver Age stuff that was the whole draw of the show in the first place.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Julian finally being punched out by Barry/The Flash, after putting up with half a season of his constant complaints and whining.
  • Likewise, Cisco chewing Julian out for his recklessness in disregarding Caitlin's wishes, and turning her into her greatest fear Killer Frost, heavily reflected a large opinion of the fan base.
  • Earth-2 Wells relentlessly calling out H.R. on his obnoxious tendencies feels like the writers acknowledging everything wrong with the character.
  • "Into the Speed Force" sees Jesse deck H.R. in the middle of a dramatic speech when he tries to dissuade her from going after Savitar alone while fueled by her grief over Wally being trapped in the Speed Force. After H.R. goes down, Jesse remarks how that was "oddly satisfying."
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • In the comics, the Top is an inexplicably awesome badass with psychic powers and enough Super-Speed to blitz Barry or Wally; here, she is reduced to Jesse Quick's Starter Villain, in addition to a rather pointless gender flip from a man to a woman.
  • The Music Meister is an undeveloped Trickster Mentor with completely different powers (to the point that 'Music Meister' is completely ill-fitting as a name^note he traps people in dreams modelled after their favourite movie genre, and it just so happened that Barry and Kara were in a musical mood) from his animated counterpart and wants to help the good guys learn a lesson about love instead of the flamboyant, over-the-top showman who wanted to conquer the world by mesmerizing them through his beautiful singing. Not being played by Neil Patrick Harris also doesn't help, especially as NPH was willing to reprise the role if they reached out.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The much anticipated "Flashpoint" world is over in a mere episode. Exactly how Barry's meddling in time caused Cisco to take Wells' place as a tech guru (it's also unclear if he still has his powers or not), Caitlin to end up as an eye doctor, and Joe to be a miserable drunk who hates his job go unexplained, not to mention any effects it would have on Star City and Team Arrow. Though to be fair, despite "Flashpoint" no longer being present, it still has a very big impact over the season due to Dr. Alchemy.
  • On "Flashpoint" we could have known better about Earth-1 Harrison Wells since his murder was negated, but that point is not developed at all.
  • Flashpoint in the comics: Bruce Wayne died as a child and now his father is Batman and his mother is the Joker; Aquaman and Wonder Woman are at war and the former sank Western Europe under the waves; the world is drowning and the Flash is slowly losing his ability to fix the problem. Flashpoint in the show: Joe is a drunk and Wally got hurt.
  • The return of Rick Cosnett and Robbie Amell was disappointing for many fans since they were expecting them to reprise their roles or act as alternate versions of their previous characters rather than them portraying the Speed Force. People were interested on what happened to Eddie on "Flashpoint" as well, but it did not appear.
  • Jesse finally gets her powers and becomes Jesse Quick and then goes back to Earth-2 just as quickly. Many were hoping she'd stay on Earth-1 long enough to form a Power Trio with her, Barry, and Wally (when he got his powers). Jesse decides to stay on Earth-1 to be with Wally, moving in with him at the end of "Attack on Central City," but at the end of "Into the Speed Force" Jesse temporarily migrates to Earth-3 to substitute Jay while he is trapped in the Speed Force and negate Savitar's plan with her.
  • "Duet" squanders its entire premise, with only two original songs in the entire episode and a lion's share focused on bringing Kara and Mon-El's Romantic Plot Tumor over to another show. By limiting the concept to just a dream, it also meant that the cast were mostly singing songs about the dream personas, where as their actual character arcs at the time (such as Wally's trauma from being trapped in the Speed Force) could have gotten musical ques instead (particularly as Keiynan Lonsdale is a singer as well).
  • In "Cause and Effect", Cisco and Julian have the idea of giving Barry anterograde amnesia, but their Laser-Guided Amnesia-style procedure accidentally gives him Identity Amnesia instead. This is somewhat disappointing since anterograde amnesia is utilized far less often in fiction, and the plot that results from Barry's amnesia is somewhat cliche.
  • Many people were intrigued by the idea of redeeming a Big Bad for a change instead of killing him off. Had he gone on to live his own life, maybe as the Flash of another Earth or just living out his life on a different part of Earth-1, we could have had a fascinating Redemption Quest and the occasional cameo. Well, it didn't take long until Savitar ditched the attempt. Others are interested to see what would happen if Savitar succeeded in his plans, as the few instances we got of how he acts when he wasn't messing with Team Flash or building up to killing Iris, he was shown to be boastful and somewhat demanding yet still kind and reasonable; heck, his first appearance as Savitar was him coming to the rescue of his followers. Plus outside the stuff he did to ensure his own existence, he never really did a lot of evil stuff. In fact his evil deeds can be counted on one hand: 1) Killed the Rival for failing him, 2) Tried to get Magenta to kill her abusive father.
  • The quick resolution of Iris's death in general. While of course it was well known that they weren't going to actually go on with the show without Iris, the fact that Barry was robbed of a downright Big Damn Heroes moment going against the grain to save the love of his life, which in the comics was a heart-wrenching, slightly confusing, but overall pretty epic quest Barry undertook, including traveling far into the future and facing off with Abra-Kadabra. This could have been the plot basis for, if not just the season finale, but season 4, with several open possibilities of multiple Crossovers with other "Arrowverse" properties, and making a Big Bad out of an Ensemble Dark Horse character like the aforementioned Abra-Kadabra and lead to a giant heartwarming reunion between the Star-Crossed Lovers.
  • Caitlin's transformation into Killer Frost is caused by an unknown source following the alteration to time post-Flashpoint, and her exact motivation for turning evil as a result is poorly explained at best (there's some degree of Sanity Slippage and she treats using them as if being demonically possessed, with her succumbing to a Superpowered Evil Side). The comics actually gave Caitlin a very good reason for why her powers turn her evil (she needs to feed on organic body heat or else she'd freeze to death, and doing so is lethal for those she drains heat from), which could have made both her Face–Heel Turn as well as her eventual redemption make far more sense.
• Unexpected Character: Fans were on the whole taken aback when it was announced the Music Meister, an obscure villain from one episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, would appear in a crossover between The Flash and Supergirl, titled after two characters who have nothing to do with Music Meister. Turns out it was a musical episode, so It Makes Sense in Context.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Barry is berated for changing time to save his mother and father, but as selfish as his actions were, however, he only did so to release his enormous pain. The fact that The Legends have done worse time aberrations and yet aren't that punished makes it seem like Barry is being unfairly punished for a hasty but relatable human mistake (and it's not until seven episodes in that anyone notes that what Barry did just makes him human). It's difficult to fault Barry for the consequences of his actions when he couldn't possibly have predicted them.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • A lot of fans are annoyed with the fact that Barry didn't go looking for Cisco and Caitlin during the three months he spent in Flashpoint until he needed them, making his claim that Cisco is his best friend in "Killer Frost" ring hollow. They're even more angry at the fact that since they asked Barry not to tell them about their Flashpoint lives, it's likely that they won't ever call him out on this despite the fact. There's also the fact that he seems to ignore everyone telling him to leave them alone just because he wants things to go back to the way they were, when giving them the space they need may be more effective than talking to them and blaming everything on himself. Many viewers are starting to like Barry a lot less than they did back in Season 1.
  • Iris chews out Barry for being too uncomfortable to kiss her around Joe in "The New Rogues." The thing is, they weren't just kissing. They were full-on making out, which is inappropriate around, well, pretty much anyone.
  • Most agree Cisco has a right to be angry at Barry for messing with time and that he shouldn't give Barry a free pass, but still find his attitude to be overdramatic and sometimes downright whiny. While Barry's actions unintentionally led to Cisco's brother dying in the new timeline, Cisco usually acts as if Barry intentionally let him die or murdered him himself. Cisco didn't do himself any favors in "Invasion!" by forcing Barry to reveal the existence of Flashpoint to everyone, an incredibly dickish move that went against Cisco's promise to be professional and not let the rift between them interfere with the mission. However, in the third part of the crossover, he has a Jerkass Realization, gaining back some fans' respect for him.
  • To an extent, Joe and Iris trying to give Wally the cold shoulder when it comes to his newfound speed and discouraging him from training in "Invasion!" They're clearly concerned about his well-being (and Wally's actions throughout the previous episodes didn't do anything to alleviate their fears), but fail to realize that, with his personality, strong desire to help people, and insecurities about being The Un-Favourite of the West-Allen family, Wally's bound to rush head-first into danger anyway, as shown with his Big Damn Heroes moment later that episode; many feel it'd be a great deal more helpful for them to ensure Wally is better prepared instead of limiting him and giving the boy an earful, which was the lesson Harry learned about Jesse in "The New Rogues."
  • It's very hard to feel sympathetic towards Caitlin in "The Wrath of Savitar" when we find out that she kept a piece of the Philosopher's Stone to see whether she could use it to get rid of her Killer Frost powers. When you consider that Savitar was going to kill Iris, mind-controlling Cisco and Julian, giving Wally hallucinations, and threatening Barry, keeping the Stone seems selfish, since she knew the Stone kept Savitar from being fully defeated. It doesn't help that Caitlin can be talked down from her Killer Frost persona, has both power-dampening cuffs AND the necklace that Julian made her, and that we've never seen her actively try to get rid of her powers. What makes it even worse is that she's barely reprimanded for her actions, when earlier in the episode Wally was kicked out of the Cortex for his secret and Barry has been punished for pretty much every mistake he's made on the show.
  • Barry's journey back into the Speed Force also elicited this reaction for many in several different ways. When confronted by the Speed Force's manifestations, Barry is chastised for creating Flashpoint, as the Speed Force only gave back his speed in "The Runaway Dinosaur" because it thought Barry had come to terms with his mother's death. Barry says he did, right up until Zoom killed his father, which is heavily implied to be an event the Speed Force allowed in order to test Barry's resolve. The Speed Force also faults Wally for his current imprisonment within the Speed Force, ignoring the fact that Savitar clearly set up Wally to take the fall and is now running free because of it. Barry then gets blamed again for handing off the task of defeating Savitar to Wally, disregarding that Barry had a good reason to do so — Wally, who also has a personal investment in saving the life of his sister, had the potential to succeed where Barry had failed countless times before, and Barry, out of feasible options when it came to changing the future, took it upon himself to train Wally. Even for a Sentient Cosmic Force operating by Blue-and-Orange Morality that is trying to impart the lesson of accountability, and even if it holds Barry to a different standard from other speedsters because he is its champion, the Speed Force comes across as excessively harsh.
  • Barry and Iris when they try to forgive Savitar due to Iris not being the victim and not causing Barry's Despair Event Horizon. The idea was that Barry was trying to go back to his heroic routes and do things the more noble way, not to mention the fact that Barry was trying to get Savitar to release Caitlin and Cisco, but to some it came across as H.R having less importance to the team than Iris since he was negotiating with Savitar soon after he sacrificed himself for Iris. Worsened by the fact that he likely wouldn't be so merciful if Iris was the murdered one.
• The Un-Twist: Savitar bluntly stating "I am the Future Flash" was deemed too obvious by many for him to be a Future Barry Allen, but turns out that's exactly who he is. Due to Barry seeming too obvious, many fans thought it could be Ronnie or Eddie before Savitar reveals himself as a Barry Allen time remnant.
• Vindicated by History: After season four concluded, season three received this from different parts of the fandom, feeling that despite the many problems this season had (detailed under Seasonal Rot above), it was better handled than season four, which either amplified many of those problems, or course corrected them too far in the opposite direction.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: If there is one shining achievement to be taken from this season, it's that the show has come a long way with its all-CGI characters. Grodd looks better than ever, while Savitar, Solovar, the residents of Gorilla City, the Time Wraiths, the Black Flash, the hologram monster and Killer Frost's ice trail have all showed up in CGI form, and all look very nice and convincing. ^note As of the second half of the season, Savitar is portrayed by an actor in a suit rather than being an all-CGI character.
• Wangst:
  • Barry's guilt over Flashpoint grows old after a while.
  • Wally's desire to become a superhero because he feels so useless to the team begins to get a little grating on fans who're tired of him complaining about not having powers as opposed to actually doing something about it.
  • Cisco's resentment over Dante's death also left a number of fans annoyed, since he stopped being fun and he caused problems in the Invasion! crossover with that attitude.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • After Barry's highly controversial actions at the end of Season Two, the Comic Con trailer for Season Three got a lot of fans back on board by spending its whole length promising that the show wouldn't be skimping at all on addressing Barry's own responsibility for the Flashpoint timeline, even ending with Reverse-Flash shouting at him "Now who's the villain?!"
  • Earth-1 Caitlin getting Killer Frost's powers has gone over very well, after many fans were displeased that her comic identity was apparently shunted entirely onto the Earth-2 version in the previous season.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • The Rival's costume having no resemblance whatsoever to that of his comic counterpart, looking more like that of the Black Racer or Daniel West's Reverse-Flash, was met with some skepticism. Critics particularly noted his mask, comparing it to a goofy evil Hawkman.
  • Dr. Alchemy's costume looks nothing like his comics suit (who wore a Badass Cape, In the Hood costume that was both very easy to translate to live action) to instead wearing a cloak and Plague doctor mask. It just didn't really make much thematic sense to his character.
  • The Music Meister never gets to wear any of his flamboyant performance costumes and just dresses in all-black.

Season Four

• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • Even Wally's detractors sympathized with him when Jesse broke up with him by sending him a break-up cube.
  • Polarizing as he was, some people were saddened when DeVoe stole Ralph's body.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The apparent failure of Harry Wells' cerebral inhibitor has made some speculate that Savitar was using Exact Words, since Savitar only said that Team Flash used the cerebral inhibitor against DeVoe, not that it succeeded; however, it is possible Savitar said the truth, and that the cerebral inhibitor worked in his timeline but things have changed enough so that it no longer does. The cerebral inhibitor does work, but in another way.
• Anvilicious: The episode "Girls' Night Out" is felt by some to have overused the concept of feminism in a rather unsubtle way.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Clifford DeVoe may have been identified as the villain earlier than his predecessors, but his actual motivations or intentions were kept in the dark for a long part of the season.
  • Ralph's constant cycle of becoming a hero, becoming dissuaded, being pep-talked into heroism again and then promising that he's determined to stop DeVoe before promptly getting scared again so he can repeat the whole scenario in a later episode has proved extremely unpopular.
• Audience-Alienating Era: This is generally considered the weakest season of the show thus far. Even with the middling reception of the previous season, most agree that the overall quality was much worse, with only a few redeeming factors.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: In general this season went for a lighter approach, but many found that to do so the show opted to just really sink to bottom of the barrel humour. For a lot of people it made the show less Lighter and Softer and just more a gross version of Denser and Wackier, which isn't what fans wanted.
• Awesome Ego: DeVoe might have the biggest ego of all, being in love with his Super-Intelligence and talking to everyone else like they are inferior creatures who aren't advanced enough to understand what he's saying.
• Broken Base:
  • With the addition of the Council of Wells, the trend of having Tom Cavanagh portray more versions of Harrison Wells has become divisive. Some find the new Wells popping up to be amusing and creative, while others feel the joke has gotten old and tiresome. They lack the disposable side of two of their counterparts (Earths-1 and 19), but the concept of Harrison Wells is seen as putting throwaway characters. Another criticisms are that the writers are overworking Cavanagh or that they are trying too hard to keep him relevant for the series.
  • How much Barry needs Team Flash and whether he even needs them at all, especially at this stage of his superhero tenure, has become a major source of contention this season. They can generally be split into groups. Those that think the team should be disbanded argue that Barry didn't have a team in the comics, and that this one is severely limiting his opportunities to shine because they build his tech and think for him, since they all need things to do, thus preventing Barry from being as intelligent as his comic book counterpart, which is not helped by the fact that Barry is a much better scientist and detective when he is not working alongside his scientific friends. It also stifles the storytelling, since Cisco, Caitlin and Harry specifically have limited stories outside of the team so the action is always focused in S.T.A.R. Labs. Those that want to keep the team argue that this is an adaptation of the show and so a team makes sense, especially since non-Flash characters can help make the story richer. Then there are some in the middle who think the team can stay, but want it scaled back so Barry gets more focus or only certain members should be on it - but that's another Broken Base because people can't decide who they want on the team; some want characters from the comics to have priority, while others think it should be limited to just the scientists. A Vocal Minority started a campaign to bring back the "Original Team Flash", which they take to mean Barry, Cisco, Caitlin and Harry, despite him only coming in season 2. It should be noted, however, that the campaign was started by Snowbarry shippers and is strangely focused on getting rid of Iris (and Joe, sometimes) specifically, which people have noticed.
  • Many fans were upset by the announcement that Julian Albert (Tom Felton) won't be returning as a series regular, especially since, during Season 3, a sizable group of fans were only watching to see him in it. The unsatisfying conclusion to his character arc and the fact that he became nothing more than Caitlin's lapdog in the second half of the season doesn't help. Many others however have found his continued nasty and dickish behavior as well as his disregarding Caitlin's wishes and removing her suppressor because of his selfish desires completely irredeemable, and were glad to see him go.
• Captain Obvious Aesop: This article criticizes Ralph Dibny's episodes for, among other things, being centered on pretty obvious morals, which is grating for audiences since they're mostly extremely basic.
• Creepy Awesome: DeVoe's overall appearance sitting on his hover chair, with wires connected to his Thinking Cap, while speaking in a very mechanical way, gives off a very unsettling air.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Breacher is this to no one's particular surprise, probably because he's played by Danny fucking Trejo.
  • The Council of Wells are to date among the most popular of Tom Cavanagh's Wells portrayals, especially Wells 2.0 and Harrison Wolfgang Wells, who were downright funny and creatively gimmicky.
  • Prank, James Jesse's ex-lover. In the 90s series, Zoey Clark was a deluded fangirl of James, whom he ultimately disregarded for being annoying — traits that would make her come across as a poor man's Harley Quinn to the average (or modern) viewer. ^note Note that Prank actually predates Harley Quinn by almost two years to the date. Here, Prank was instead one-half of an equal partnership with the Trickster, the Bonnie to his Clyde during their Glory Days as Central City's most feared criminals, but also was smart enough to evade arrest for decades and proves to be even nuttier than James is.
  • The mystery girl, played by Jessica Parker Kennedy, manages to avoid the show's usual Arc Fatigue of introducing characters without disclosing their identity immediately, likely due to the restraint shown on limiting her appearances and her tendency to steal her scenes with her adorable, bubbly personality. Helps that she's strongly implied to be Barry and Iris's daughter from the future. Her identity is confirmed in the season finale, although her name is Nora instead of Dawn.
• Epileptic Trees: Ever since Cecile was revealed to be pregnant, a popular fan theory that arose was the baby would be Daniel West and become the Big Bad of Season 5. The baby being established as female has not discouraged this theory, with fans pointing out how much CW loves doing Gender Flips and could easily make her Danielle West. Turns out she's named Jenna West, and seems to be a Mythology Gag to Jenni Ognats.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: Many fans took a liking to Barry's bearded look which he grew after being released from the Speed Force (Joe shaved it off) and while he's imprisoned thanks to DeVoe's Frame-Up since it made him look mature and manly. The fact that this is how Grant Gustin commonly looks like while not filming helps.
• Fight Scene Failure: In "Girls' Night Out" there is a battle with Killer Frost vs. Amunet. The problem is that it treats it as if someone who has to wait to use metals for a somewhat long time is a menace for Kiler Frost, whose ice blasts are at least fast enough to immobilize Amunet.
• Fountain of Memes: Drunk Barry ^note The only part of the aforementioned "Girls' Night Out" episode that was universally liked was watching Barry Allen get plastered for the first time since becoming the Flash. Literally everything that came out of Drunk Barry's mouth was memetic.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Ralph's sexist behavior in his earlier appearances was supposed to be comedic, but in light of Andrew Kreisberg's termination for sexual harassment, it can be hard to watch for more than a few fans, which seems to be why his behavior was downplayed after Crisis-on Earth-X. It is even harder to stomach after Hartley Sawyer was fired over some resurfacing tweets with misogynistic and racist humor.
  • Fans made jokes about DeVoe being revealed as the season's Big Bad much earlier than previous main villains. It only culminated in Barry getting so paranoid about DeVoe (because of his own prior knowledge) that gets him in trouble with the CCPD, even becoming an indirect catalyst for DeVoe framing Barry for murder.
  • Ralph's impersonation of Clifford DeVoe is less badass or funny when DeVoe takes Ralph's body for real.
  • Cisco mistook a sexy cube from Gypsy for a break-up cube. Cisco and Gypsy do break up for real, albeit amicably.
  • Ralph Dibny's firing from the CCPD seems harsher to see after Hartley Sawyer being fired over years old, offensive, dark humor tweets.
• He Really Can Act: No matter what your feelings are about DeVoe, it's widely agreed that everyone who ended up having to play him while he body surfed were able to perfectly capture the character that Neil Sandilands originated (though Miranda MacDougall was not very convincing at first, she eventually came around to the role). All of these actors manage to showcase his creepiness, his monotone speaking, and his season-wide gradual descent into madness in a way that is very difficult for actors to manage.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: The entire first half of the season is spent building up to Barry and Iris's wedding, just hot off the summer that the cast celebrated Danielle's real life wedding, and Grant's engagement and planning of his soon to be real wedding.
• He's Just Hiding: DeVoe's death was not only anticlimactic, but also quite unconvincing, especially given he just added how he anticipated this very incident moments before Marlize pulls the plug on him. Lots of fans are convinced he's still out there as a digital consciousness and will be back, which is actually in-line with his comics counterpart becoming an AI.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: "Girls' Night Out" had a drunk Barry asking about the death of Jack during Titanic. A few months later, the film's director would actually answer that very question.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • The "There are a bunch of new metahumans in Central City!" plot is pretty much yet another retread of the previous seasons, with the only difference being the source of metas. In Season 1, it was the Particle Accelerator explosion; in Season 2, it was Zoom bringing them from Earth-2; in Season 3, it was Savitar giving people their powers from Flashpoint; and now it's people who were hit by dark matter on a nearby bus when Barry exited the Speed Force. "Don't Run" provides some justification for this, as it's likely none of them had the mental powers that DeVoe was hoping to use in order to switch bodies with them]], meaning he probably created more in hopes that one of them would develop said powers.
  • Ralph Dibny's entire character arc over the season consists of him either not wanting to be a hero and then being dissuaded from retiring, or clashing with everyone else about what it means to be a hero before someone will inevitably teach him how to be one. He then forgets this the next episode and repeats the same arc.
  • Some did not like that Laurel Lance from Earth-X was a carbon copy of her Earth-2 counterpart.
  • Many people have pointed out that the show's same formula of everyone standing around S.T.A.R. Labs failing every episode until the finale, as well as Barry still needing to be told how to use his powers by Caitlin, Cisco and Harry, has made the show extremely stale.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Ralph's death at DeVoe's hands left a lot of people unconvinced and heavily in denial that he was really gone, especially after the excessive Character Development and screentime invested into him. Despite Word of God statements insisting he was really dead, come the finale he's able to wrestle back control from DeVoe over his body.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "THIS HOUSE IS BITCHIN'" ^note Barry's Madness Mantra that he kept scribbling on the walls in an alien language became an instant hit. It became a bit of an In-Universe meme too with characters constantly referencing it, as well as a Running Gag of sorts.
  • "We are the Flash." or "You are not [X]. We are" ^note In "Mixed Signals" Iris tells Barry "You are not the Flash. We are", which raised some eyebrows because Iris goes to the field far less than Barry, and afterwards both Barry and Iris occasionally say that they are The Flash. This led to lots of jokes of Iris, or other characters, taking credit for being a superhero with the "We are..." statement (and it's not even limited to the Arrowverse).
  • Joe West has shut down and is not responding. ^note This is based on his initial response when Cecile said she was pregnant at the end of "Luck Be a Lady."
  • #feminism ^note "Girls Night Out" used this to the point of being something that got the episode mocked, especially by feminist fans.
  • "Because of Flashpoint" ^note Following Word of God's reveal that Ralph Dibny was retroactively alive due to Flashpoint, fans have jokingly stated the writers would use Flashpoint to explain every inconsistency in the show.
  • "What am I thinking now?" ^note An assortment of memes spawned over Cecile's newfound telepathy and varying outcomes on her attempts to read minds.
  • Prison Break ^note "True Colors" is often jokingly considered to be a crossover between The Flash and Prison Break with Wentworth Miller showing up.
  • Harry Wells is Reverse-Thinker!
  • "Flashpoint 2" or "Flashpoint 2.0" ^note When it was revealed the Mystery Girl was Barry and Iris's daughter and that she did a temporal aberration, her deed was associated with saving Barry from the satellite, just like Barry prevented Thawne from killing his mother.
• Memetic Hair: Wally, due to his constant hair style changes throughout his appearances.
• Misblamed: The season has, so far, been met with a lot of negative opinions regarding its quality, but for a Vocal Minority of fans everything wrong is somehow because of Iris West (and, in some cases, Candice Patton). Even when other factors are in play (i.e. Wally being written out being blamed on her prominence rather than due to Keiynan Lonsdale's schedule, the clunky development Wally had, how it forced the writers to put The Worf Effect on either Wally or Barry and the introduction of Ralph Dibny, or Barry's Idiot Ball grabbing being blamed on her influence rather than to make him fall into DeVoe's plans and so that the scientists on the team continue to have a purpose), it's not uncommon when a problem is brought up on a discussion board for someone to insist it's somehow because of Iris, no matter what leaps of logic are needed for it.
• Narm Charm:
  • DeVoe's blubbering and screams as he is purged from Ralph's mind are a bit much for some, but it's hilarious to watch a villain as smarmy and self-assured as him go down like that.
  • The scene where DeVoe casually walks through A.R.G.U.S killing everyone in his path in over the top ways, including using a small toy to make someone fall and break their neck, all of which is set to Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus". It should be ridiculous, but DeVoe has so much fun with it, it's a very impressive The Oner, and the music is timed perfectly with the scene. Combine all of this with the fact that he manages to use each and every one of the super powers he'd spent the entire season getting and instead it's the most popular scene in the entire season.
• Never Live It Down: Fans won't ever let go of Iris's "You are not the Flash. We are." line, even though it's barely ever mentioned, along with the fact Barry actually said a similar line previously.
• Nightmare Retardant:
  • DeVoe's debut would have otherwise been very creepy, had it not been for him making an allusion to his codename by saying "I'm thinking." The line comes off as so cheesy it's hard not to laugh when hearing it.
  • Veronica Dale's video about Central City's bombing should have been creepy, but the actress does so badly that the video may even be cheesy. The worst part are those "Eden Corps" shouts.
• Older Than They Think: A lot of news articles and interviews hyped the "Flash-time" concept, particularly the idea of the speedsters communicating with one-another in "stopped time", with some claiming it was a totally original idea of the show's and a new ability they created for the Flash, something never used in the comics. While the name they gave it was original (though not exactly clever), this has been shown many times in the comics, and speedsters going about acting normal while the world around them isn't moving is pretty common and often used for Talking Is a Free Action. Not to mention, the plot itself was recycled from several Wally West-era stories.
• One-Scene Wonder: Jay and Silent Bob as security guards in "Null and Annoyed".
• Paranoia Fuel: Clifford DeVoe can watch over the heroes at any time with his hidden cameras. Not even his wife is safe.
• Replacement Scrappy: Ralph Dibny has become one of the bigger Base Breaking Characters this season for replacing Wally West as Barry's protégé. Wally's fans thought his slot could have been used to develop Wally after all the mishandling he had so far.
• Seasonal Rot: There are debates on whether this season is better or worse than Season 3, but it is generally agreed upon that this season pales in comparison to the two earlier seasons.
• Signature Scene: The scene everyone loves and remembers was DeVoe invading ARGUS and slaughtering all of the guards in an extremely cruel and humiliating fashion. It's widely considered to be DC's response to the very similarly acclaimed fight scene from Daredevil.
• So Okay, It's Average: For many, the series still has its awesome moments and likeable characters, but this season has been derided for mishandling the team characters even more so than previous seasons, still developing characters at the expense of at least another one, the action being lacking, an overcompensating use of comedy, the long time of teasing plot twists for its own sake, its poor execution of "The Trial of the Flash" arc, a villain whose strategic skills seem unconvincing and lacking, and a plot disconnected from the Big Bad.
• Squick: In "Subject 9", Ralph is delighted to find his retainer in an old shoe and immediately puts it into his mouth.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Ralph Dibny inverts this when in "Run, Iris, Run" he accuses Iris of not being the one who goes out into the field to risk her life, unlike the powerful metas. In-universe, the line is treated as Jerkass Has a Point, but it overlooks that Iris did risk her life despite her lack of powers before and after resigning journalism — at one point, specifically to help him — and Ralph is acting hypocritically and selfishly for most of the episode.
  • Barry plays this straight in "Null and Annoyed", where he scolds Ralph for his tendency to do jokes and his lack of cooperation. Barry is supposed to be an overly harsh mentor, but his position is at least understandable.
• Take That, Scrappy!: After Oliver and Felicity interrupting Barry and Iris's wedding to make it a double during Crisis on Earth-X made a LOT of fans turn on them, it is revealed Barry and Iris did not approve of said disrespect either but preferred to tolerate it to avoid creating more conflict. They put the Queens' gift in the "return" pile.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • DeVoe's change from Neil Sandilands to multiple actors has alienated some people, since Neil Sandilands did a good portrayal of DeVoe.
  • Ralph Dibny in the comics is defined by two main traits: A completely infallible Nice Guy who's maybe a bit too goofy at times, and being Happily Married to his partner-in-crime-fighting, Sue Dibny. Neither of which are true for the show version, as the show turned him into Plastic Man with Ralph's name, and for a lot of fans, this was a really bad idea. Doesn't help that many of the things people hate in particular about Ralph in the show (being a Dirty Coward, his initial lecherous attitude towards women, his stinted character growth, etc) are the things completely original to the show, so one can't wonder if he'd have been a much better received character had he been Truer to the Text.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A common criticism is that Barry returned too early in the season. Particularly, we see almost nothing of how the team has operated without him outside of a single fight scene, before Cisco and Caitlin put into action a plan to get Barry back, which completely nullifies the way the last season ends as well as involving a lot of Fridge Logic (the Speed Force is sentient; the idea it could be tricked so easily is pretty ridiculous). As a result, Wally, Cisco and Caitlin have been ignored in favor of Barry and Wally departs. It even makes you wonder why the writers created this cliffhanger at the end of last season, only to be solved so easily in the first episode of the following season.
  • Somewhat more specifically, but Wally's final episode before he left could have had an opportunity to develop him more before he left, but doesn't. The episode had the team taking on Hazard, an Anti-Villain who is just frustrated with how she's been a continuous Butt-Monkey in life since she was born. Given that Wally had just been dumped (something she also had to deal with), as well as having been similarly Born Unlucky and mistreated in life, could have had a chance to try talking Hazard down by noting how they're simlar (Barry tried to talk her down earlier, but failed as he couldn't connect to her).
  • The "Trial of The Flash" subplot could have been a perfect opportunity to develop Wally or at least Caitlin and Cisco, but it is used just to develop the new guy, Ralph Dibny, and even he is misused in a cycle of not wanting to be a hero to then be dissuaded.
  • For that matter, how does the trial and Barry's subsequent incarceration figure into the Thinker's plan? Absolutely nothing. DeVoe remained inactive throughout the entirety of that arc that the only thing of consequence happens in the end (DeVoe stealing the bus metas' powers). Even then Barry's imprisonment really wasn't even relevant to that plotline, and could have happened without being in prison at all.
  • Caitlin Snow returns to the team too easily and her Journey to Find Oneself is swept under the rug, when her journey could be used to develop her as a solo vigilante, aside that it could have been a gradual development of her Killer Frost side to explain how she became an anti-hero. Instead, Caitlin returns to the team from the very first episode, being Easily Forgiven, while the development of her relationship with Killer Frost (such as the notes they write to communicate when one of them is in charge of the body) occurs off-screen.
  • The arrival of Earth-X Laurel Lance could have been used to show another character and to take another route with her, but she is just a Replacement Flat Character of her Earth-2 counterpart minus her development. Fans of Laurel Lance were not happy with this, since for them the Arrowverse writers seem to dislike her and they wanted to see a heroic Laurel Lance.
• Unexpected Character:
  • The Weeper, whose special ability involves crying, was a DC villain not many expected to see on the show.
  • Nobody expected Laurel Lance from Earth-X. While Katie Cassidy was intended to appear on Crisis on Earth-X, she could not since she was mourning the death of her father.
  • In "We Are The Flash", Wally West was a surprise. His presence at Jenna's birth was foreshadowed but the implication was that reunions with Wally from now on would be limited to the Crisis Crossovers.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Jesse Quick breaking up with Wally through a "Dear John" Letter instead of telling him in person was seen as too rude of her, even if scheduling conflicts limited how much Violett Beane could appear (they could have easily done it offscreen).
  • In the same episode, Barry and Iris celebrate another couple breaking up right before their wedding. It's played for laughs, but still.
  • During "Run, Iris, Run", Ralph refuses to go back into the field because he's scared of DeVoe possibly coming after him, and after Iris confronts Ralph, he answers by accusing her of hiding at STAR Labs when the rest of them are risking their lives. While his fear is justified, it looks extremely hypocritical that Ralph is accusing someone of hiding when several Ralph-focused episodes consisted of him either giving up because of his own selfishness or fear, or merely wanting the glory of being a hero instead of wanting to help people, especially when Iris has willingly risked her life many times without even being asked. It gets worse when Ralph spends the rest of the episode belittling Iris's efforts and demeaning her when nobody did the same when it came to his own failures, and still chooses to hide in the bunker while accusing Iris of doing the same thing.
  • It is hard to sympathize with Caitlin Snow when she asks Amunet to help her restore her Killer Frost side with the condition to do any favor for her. Amunet is not a kind ice cream seller, but a human trafficker who is not above asking Caitlin to do something very immoral. While Amunet is not completely evil, Caitlin acted very selfishly with her request. This review addresses it.
• The Un-Twist: Clifford DeVoe's deadly condition was supposed to be solved by stealing Ralph Dibny to gain his resistance and shapeshifting. DeVoe ends up stealing Ralph Dibny's body.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Ralph's elasticity, while not entirely perfect (his sequence of turning his gut into a six-pack just looks off), has been praised overall for its well-done implementation and excellent comedic usage. Scenes such as Ralph sneezing off his face (and the general horror Team Flash expresses, Joe vomiting in particular) have been very effective.
• Wangst:
  • Ralph Dibny's attitude of hiding in S.T.A.R. Labs while hypocritically berating Iris and being happy that DeVoe apparently isn't possessing him has alienated a few people. Those who loved Ralph as a fun character were annoyed and those who already hated him dislike him even more.
  • Some people thought that the team's grief over Ralph's death was overblown, especially given that they didn't know him all that long, and the show was trying too hard to make it seem like Ralph was a better person than he was.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • The show simply bringing back Harry Wells rather than trying to come up with another new role for Tom Cavanagh got a lot of people on board.
  • "Enter Flashtime" was well-received by the fandom and for a few people brought comparisons to the two earlier seasons, which for some are better than the third and fourth.

Season Five

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: While Nora was quite the controversial addition to the cast, viewers still felt for her (and her parents, for that matter) when she was erased from existence during the season's finale.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • It took the team seventeen episodes (nine after the reveal) to learn of Nora’s relationship with Eobard.
  • Given the other villains introduced for this season (such as Icicle, who only lasted 2 episodes) and the potentially more interesting storylines that seemed to have been setup (the Young Rogues), fans have complained that Team Flash should have beaten Cicada by the midseason finale, having had numerous opportunities to do so that failed because of bad luck and/or they never bothered to restrain him whenever he was subdued — given how quickly it's resolved when Joe gets back, one gets the impression that Jesse L. Martin's medical leave forced the writers to change their plans.
• Contested Sequel: This season was very polarizing for fans due to Cicada, Thawne being the real antagonist, the Arc Fatigue around Cicada I, Nora's affiliation with Thawne, Barry's reduced prominence in favor of the rest of the team, and Nora West-Allen's role. It's either better than Season 4, better than seasons 3 & 4, or the worst season thus far. Thawne's plan in particular has caused division on whether it was the season's saving grace or if it is a Gambit Roulette that relies on the heroes carrying the Idiot Ball.
• Creepy Awesome: Rag Doll runs on this, providing one of the most beloved Nightmare Fuel episode of the season.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In "What's Past is Prologue", Thawne appears as though he will Tele-Frag Cisco at the night of the Particle Accelerator Explosion...only to actually reach for a handshake which later turns awkward because they can’t decide if they're going to do a handshake, super-secret handshake, or a fist bump.
• Designated Hero: While not as extreme as other examples, Nora gets hit with this in the second half of the season. In The Flash And The Furious, Nora lies to the police, telling them that Joslyn broke out of police custody when she was actually kidnapped, possibly making her prison sentence longer, all because she found out Thawne had been lying to her and that must mean no criminals can change, despite being told by someone who can feel emotions that Joslyn felt guilty about what she did.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Rag Doll, who many deem the creepiest Flash villain period. He was set up as an effective parallel to Ralph as an Evil Counterpart and showed off some very unsettling Nightmare Fuel Body Horror thanks to his actor being real life contortionist Troy James.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Rag Doll manages to pull this off along with a few doses of Creepy Awesome. The creepy application of his powers makes for a very compelling villain to watch.
  • Unlike their predecessor, Cicada II is generally considered to be threatening, competent and badass thanks to the ease with which they believably defeat the heroes and a more threatening performance.
• He Really Can Act: As Narm-filled as his performance as Cicada is, Chris Klein actually does a surprisingly good job portraying Orlin Dwyer as a normal person before his fall to villainy and during his interactions with Grace, up to the point where his reaction to learning Grace is in a coma and may not ever wake up can come across as genuine Tear Jerker.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This season does a Mythology Gag to the comics by referencing Cameron Mahkent (who in this show, doesn't exist). A few years later, Cameron Mahkent will appear in Stargirl!
• Ho Yay: Sherloque's nickname for Ralph, "baby giraffe", is presumably intended to be mocking. Instead, it sounds like a flirty pet name.
• Like You Would Really Do It: An image from one of the show's sets posted by a cast member showed a newpaper in the background with a headline that appears to say "Vibe dead," and the title for episode 3 was revealed to be "The Death of Vibe." A lot of fans believed that while the writers have killed off main characters before, they usually haven't done so until towards the end of the season and therefore wouldn't kill off Cisco that early, nor would they actually spoil it in the title of an upcoming episode if he was going to be Killed Off for Real.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • RIP chinstrap. ^ExplanationIn regards to the new Flash suit lacking the chinstrap from the previous seasons.
  • "Schway." ^ExplanationNora's use of Future Slang from Batman Beyond in her monologue rekindled its memetic status.
  • After Ralph theorized that one world in his "manyverse" theory is a world where Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is never made, many viewers immediately commented on wanting to go there.
  • Nora is Thawne. ^ExplanationDue to Thawne claiming in Crisis on Earth-X that he could and would disguise himself as anyone, fans started claiming he's actually Nora.
  • After the season, behind the scenes footage surfaced of Grant and Jessica filming a running scene in front of a green screen, and Grant shrieking. Thanks to the backdrop it became incredibly easy to insert the two into other shows, movies, and games.
• More Popular Replacement: While still disliked by a portion of the fandom due to adding on to the Cicada Arc Fatigue, Cicada II - aka Future Grace Gibbons - is considerably more popular than her uncle, whom many fans have felt only escaped so long because of Team Flash holding the Idiot Ball until Joe West got back. Not only is she much more powerful, but unlike her uncle whose attempts at trying to be scary and intimating come off as Narm, she's genuinely frightening. Plus she had an actual plan to wipe out all metas that was quicker and more effective than walking around stabbing each one in sight.
• Narm Charm: Iris jumping out of a building to save Barry seems over the top and hard to believe, but for some the scene worked due to being fitting for Iris as a character.
• Older Than They Think: The initial reaction of many viewers was criticizing the writers for trying to make Nora use the word "schway", Future Slang for cool/hip, to artificially create their own meme, when it's really a nod to Batman Beyond from back in 2000 (set in the late 2030s), where it was used first.
• One-Scene Wonder: Raelene Sharp, one of the few metas who manages to put up an impressive fight against Cicada and even manages to hurt him. But she gets killed off in a Cold Open.
• Replacement Scrappy: Sherloque Wells to all the previous main Wellses. By now it's safe to say fans have gotten sick of the many alternate Wellses popping up every season and that the once amusing Running Gag has gone stale. This Wells having little going other than being a Sherlock Homage doesn't really help, along with the fact that this is yet another jerk Wells, but lacking Harry's more amicable traits or connection with the Team.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Initially Ralph was well received as a funny comic relief and as fresh air, but many, many, many fans and critics alike started to hate him due to his plot initially going nowhere, his Spotlight-Stealing Squad and his Adaptational Jerkass on occasion. Ralph has won back support after his polarising run last season as a Plucky Comic Relief character. This season he is far more serious and competent as both a superhero and a detective, and is a straight Nice Guy.
• The Scrappy: Orlin Dwyer/Cicada, is easily the most hated Big Bad to date, and not in a Love to Hate way. Fans despise him for how one-note and generic he is, possessing no Evil Plan aside from “stab every meta” unlike his predecessors who all made elaborate schemes. Along with how he keeps hitting Team Flash with The Worf Effect so that it's actually their incompetence which allowed him to keep getting away. Chris Klein's failure to make Orlin terrifying makes this villain even less credible.
• Seasonal Rot: While it has some supporters, Season Five generally isn't well-remembered, mostly due to the Cicada Arc Fatigue and Nora's polarizing characterization in the second-half of the season.
• Special Effects Failure: Ragdoll climbing out of a briefcase in "Gone Rogue". The framing of the shot shows clearly that the briefcase starts out empty, making it obvious the actor is climbing through a false bottom.
  • Also, the scene where he slips into a narrow pipe (grossing out one of his teammates while doing so). His mask is supposed to be made of a hard ceramic-like material, but it turns as rubbery and malleable as the rest of his body.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The Icicle storyline could've been a lot more interesting if it was more than two episodes stretched far apart. Also, it could've answered the question that's been silently buzzing since Caitlin was held hostage on Earth-2, but was never brought up again...does E-1 Caitlin have a brother?
  • Basically a lot of things about Nora's future went unexplained. Like what was Thawne doing in 2034? How was he apprehended then without the Flash? Who was the other person who visited him? How did Iron Heights obtain Cicada's dagger if he was never caught?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Future Iris is presented as being simply overprotective of Nora, somewhat understandable given that her husband and various other speedsters had disappeared in the line of duty. However, putting an inhibitor in her without her knowledge or consent, and not even telling Nora that she's a speedster, paints Iris in a very bad light to some of the fandom, since they consider Future Iris's actions to be unambiguously unethical and inexcusable regardless of the situation in the Crisis of that timeline. Some feel that it's especially bad given that it would be one thing to want to protect a child, but Iris didn't even tell her when she became an adult.
    • Barry also gets hit with shades of this, since when he hears about it from Nora, his reaction is essentially, "Well, if Iris did it, it must be okay."
  • Given that Nora has repeatedly lied about working with Thawne, even after learning that Thawne killed her grandmother, and the lengths she has gone to keep lying to Team Flash, many viewers had difficulties feeling sorry for Nora when Barry locked her in the Pipeline, and were much more on Barry's side than Iris's (especially since Iris never worked with Thawne or experienced his evil firsthand).
  • Cisco and Caitlin chewed Barry out for saving their lives all because he depowered King Shark when he was about to kill them and they're squeamish about depowering metas without permission. Later on they're willing to irrationally risk meta genocide instead of peacefully depowering one meta who's proven to be so unable to be reasoned with she killed her uncle (and former idol) when he tried, or her past self who they were about to give the cure to when her guardian was alive. Cisco in particular came off to many fans as whiny and selfish this season, especially because he spent much of the season wangsting about being Cursed with Awesome and wanted to create a cure for this reason and just to retire from superheroics with his girlfriend but considers using it to stop genocide comparable and worse than Thou Shalt Not Kill. He controversially took it in the last episode of the season.
• Wangst: Cisco spends much of the season angsting about his powers and spends countless hours creating a metahuman cure for himself and others (some of whom in truly unfortunate circumstance but for most it would have been more appropriate to address in a time with less lives in danger). One wonders why he couldn't just retire without going to the extreme of doing away with his powers entirely.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: There have been mixed opinions regarding the new Flash suit; a large number of fans praise it for doing away with the leather and remaining brightly coloured, however there's been some criticism towards the mask for removing the chinstrap and, while the rest of the suit is made of a thin spandex fabric, the mask is still thick rubber. As a result, it looks too big for his head.

Season Six

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Why does Eobard know exactly how to press all of Barry's buttons regarding Nora? Perhaps because he misses his "little runner" more than he'll admit?
• Arc Fatigue: A lot of fans lost their patience with the Mirror Iris plot. Nine episodes passed with the season ending with Iris still stuck in the Mirrorverse. Meanwhile, the characters didn't notice that the Iris who was living with them for the past several weeks was not the real Iris. Barry is suspicious of Mirror Iris at first, but he falls for her blatant emotional manipulations far too easily and for too long. Wally and Joe come to suspect her behavior on one occasion, but they do nothing. When one person, Kamilla, finally finds out the truth, she is immediately replaced by a duplicate. It's only after six episodes that Barry finally realizes that something is wrong after Mirror Iris banishes him from his and Iris's loft.
• Broken Base: With this season Barry's "I Am The Flash" recap is deleted. While some fans feel that this just means getting into the action of the episode quicker, others feel that without it a piece of the show's heart and charm is now missing.
• Contested Sequel: Like previous season, it is divisive on whether or not it is an improvement or not. Some have hailed it as the best season since the first two due to dealing with some of the problems of the series, seeing the graphic novel concept as a healthy approach to the series without stalling it too much, several interesting character arcs and the character of Ramsey Rosso, but others have considered it a weak or outright bad season due to still having too much filler despite dividing the main antagonists for the season, still showing problems with too many Regular Characters, having too many simultaneous plot points, and the second major antagonist being seen as confusing and unengaging. The second part was particularly criticized for the Mirrorverse arc being too long. The fact that it was Cut Short before it could be finished due to Covid-19 doesn't help matters, although fans have been generally forgiving of that part.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Chester P. Runk. Much like Team Flash In-Universe, Chester is very easy to like given his Totally Radical, Keet, Nice Guy personality, as well as an enthusiastic online streamer. Not to mention he is a 100% sympathetic meta with the endangering lives he caused being a complete accident.
• Evil Is Cool: Bloodwork has probably been the show's best received villain since Zoom thanks to his motivations, powers and being a genuinely frightening villain. His One-Winged Angel form also looks extremely cool.
• Fans Prefer the New Her: When they saw Iris with curly hair in "Kiss Kiss Breach Breach", some fans loved that look and stated they would like Iris to embrace it instead of the straightened hair she often uses for the series.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The Nash Wells subplot, given Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) reveals that Nash is being tricked by the Anti-Monitor into releasing him, and upon doing so, is forcibly transformed into Pariah & stripped of the memories of his old life.
  • Barry asking Oliver to unleash his full potential during Crisis on Infinite Earths was revealed to have the collateral damage of poisoning the Speed Force. Oliver did warn him about it being dangerous, but the exact consequences were unknown at the moment and restoring the multiverse took precedence then.
• He's Just Hiding: About Harry and Jesse, fans have doubted if they are really Ret-Gone after the Crisis. There being a multiverse despite what Cisco says indicate that they may still be in another Earth or they might even be sent to Earth Prime in a similar way to other doppelgangers. Jossed in Harry's case, as he and his other doppelgangers now share a body with Nash.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Barry losing his powers again was argued by many to be already done to death in past seasons.
• Like You Would Really Do It: The general premise of the first half of the season is that Barry has to die in the upcoming crisis and there's absolutely no avoiding it. Considering that he's not only the main character of the show, but that they've prevented Bad Futures before, most fans don't buy that they would actually kill off Barry - on a permanent basis, anyway. On top of that, the Monitor’s exact wording that “The Flash must die” leaves some room to get around it due to Barry not being the only Flash in the multiverse. The Exact Words loophole is invoked by The Flash of Earth-90 as he takes Barry’s place as the Flash who vanishes.
• Love to Hate: Bloodwork has received praise for evoking a demonic and creepy atmosphere, giving the show one of its scariest villains yet.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Turtle McSnurtle ^ExplanationIt's become increasingly common for the fandom to wonder what happened to the turtle that HR gave to Barry and Iris in season 3. One joke in the lead-up to Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) was wondering whether or not he would be one of the many cameos.
  • "Let me in! LET ME INNNNNNNNNN!" ^ExplanationThe scene of Nash trying to enter the Monitor's lair in "The Last Temptation of Barry Allen, Part 2" resembled an infamous meme from The Eric Andre Show. Predictably, edits began to be made the moment the episode aired.
  • Barry Allen triumphing over Oliver Queen's grave ^Explanation While it's technically a scene from Arrow, a Behind-the-Scenes picture of Grant Gustin jokingly posing with a peace sign in front of Oliver Queen's grave frequently gets mistakenly attributed to this show (even by some of the fans). It's used to show an underdog outlasting or "winning" against its predecessor or rival. This meme has now spread to other fandoms too
• Paranoia Fuel: Eva can spy on everyone by seeing through their mirrors and can even Capture and Replicate people from the main world.
• The Scrappy: Mirror Monarch is viewed as a rather uninteresting and underwhelming Big Bad, with her motivations feeling more than a little muddled and convoluted. While her arc was mostly agreed to have started off strong, it became criticized for going on too long and requiring the characters to hold the Idiot Ball for her to move on with her plans (not unlike Cicada). It doesn't help that the final fight against her was widely considered disappointing and too easily resolved.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The first part of the season has been criticized over doing little to integrate the Crisis on Infinite Earths beyond bringing up Barry's possible death, which fans didn't think it would happen anyway. Using Cynthia's death or what happened to Earth-2, especially since there were two beloved characters from Earth-2, would have been good chances to do so.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: During the last part of "The Last Temptation of Barry Allen", Cecile and Kamilla are shown escaping from the Zombie Apocalypse without contributing to the plot. Something similar happens with Nash Wells, although this case is to explain how he got to open the underground lair and become Pariah before Crisis on Infinite Earths.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Many cannot sympathize with Nash Wells for constantly stalking Allegra Garcia and trying to force a friendship just because she is a doppelganger of his late adoptive daughter, since in the end Allegra is not her and does not owe him her friendship.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Bloodwork in his One-Winged Angel form looks as the terrifying monster he is supposed to look.
• Wangst: Joe has to go into witness protection and the cast basically act like he's dying. He's only gone a for a few episodes.

Season Seven

• Ass Pull:
  • The whole idea of Nash Wells having to host the consciousness of every Wells from the multiverse is fine as far as comic book superhero logic goes...except for HR Wells. He was dead, and had been so for a few years when Crisis happened. At least Harry, Sherloque, and all the other Wellses (and even Thawne) were still alive before Crisis began. HR hadn’t been in the previous season, either, meaning his appearance comes out of nowhere and is never elaborated on.
  • Although the idea that Iris having had Speed Force in her system was arguably plausible enough to help jumpstart the artificial Speed Force, the idea that "Nora" was infused with Barry and Iris's humanity as confirmed in 7x11 feels like a total Ass Pull just so the authors could hammer home the whole "Iris and Barry power of love". Others feel that the whole "Iris having Speed Force in her system" is ridiculous to begin with, given that she'd shown absolutely no signs of it beforehand (the one hint was her getting a shock from Barry's lightning in Season 1, which could've very easily happened to anyone who was in contact with a moving speedster).
  • The idea of Frost not having Caitlin's medical knowledge, despite being stated to have all of her memories. Not only does this raise some huge Fridge Logic issues, but it seems like the only reason the writers went with it at all was to keep Caitlin relevant so she could remain the team medic. On top of that, it's an outright Retcon as Frost does in fact demonstrate Caitlin's medical knowledge not long after she starts manifesting back in Season 3.
• Contested Sequel: While a lot of people did not like this season, there are also a lot of fans who thought the season, while not without its own issues, was at least better than many of the previous seasons, especially Seasons 3 and 4.
• Evil Is Cool: Grant Gustin gives a chillingly great performance as a cold, calculating Barry.
• Les Yay: Eva's possessiveness over both Mirror-Iris and the real Iris lends itself to this, especially with her and Iris holding hands in the battle against the clone army.
• Like You Would Really Do It: No one thought Frost was actually going to have to spend the rest of her life behind bars.
• Narm Charm:
  • Barry's speech to Abra Kadabra, stopping the latter's plan to blow up Central City. While, as noted above, it can feel a little ridiculous given that it's the second consecutive episode where this exact plot happens, it also provides a great moment of connection between them, and gives Kadabra infinitely more layers of characterization than the "hammy bad guy from the future" he was before.
  • While Barry breakdancing and singing "Poker Face" is completely ridiculous, it's also a sweet bonding moment for him and Cisco, and it's entirely in-character for the two of them to be silly and ridiculous.
  • Again, the lightsaber battle in the season finale, especially for people who like the sillier aspects of comic books.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The new Nora has been received a lot better than the old one, being more down to earth and responsible, and not carrying the baggage of the old Nora.
• Rooting for the Empire: After all the Wangst and avoidable plots caused by the main characters being totally ruled by their emotions, the unemotional but competent and effective Barry was refreshing to many. It doesn't hurt that if he'd just thought to tell them "we'll get the others later" instead of calling them unimportant, Iris wouldn't have resisted and would've been outside the Mirrorverse and not in a coma, and Barry wouldn't have destroyed the generator Nash sacrificed his life to make. His feats in his short screentime also showed him to be rather efficient and badass
• Seasonal Rot: A lot of fans agree that Season 7 is one of the worst seasons in the series, if not the worst.
  • The Force Family arc starts out well enough, as the three evil Forces are, bad CG aside, competent and scary in their own right. Plus, having the Big Bad be the actual Speed Force is a nice twist. Unfortunately, things spiral out of control in the second half of the arc, as the show really tries to hammer home that the Forces are essentially Barry and Iris's kids, despite the three newcomers being real people with no connection to them before getting their powers. Instead of actually defeating any of the Forces in battle, the three newbies are convinced to join Barry's side through The Power of Love.
  • Allegra's arc felt rather rushed given that she seemed to not really have much purpose on the show, especially after Kamilla left and Iris was Put on a Bus. They tried to give her focus by finally wrapping up the Esperanza plot, but given the way the arc ends and that Barry is never really involved at any point, plus how Allegra never really got to use her powerup in any way after the arc ends, makes it feel like the entire story was All for Nothing.
  • The Godspeed arc only had four episodes to tell its story, and while there were a lot of single moments fans really liked, the overall story had little punch since we never really got to know Godspeed himself until the finale. Even then, August Heart is not one of the strongest villains on the show and is easily outclassed by the return of Thawne (especially since in terms of motivation, he's basically a combination of Thawne and Zoom). Some people also thought the show got a bit too silly for its own good, with Godspeed being compared to the White Ranger, and the final battle being fought with lightning swords.
• Special Effect Failure: In the episode "Central City Strong", the CGI for the creature that attacked Barry and Phillipe is bad. Really, really bad.
• Strawman Has a Point: In "Rayo De Luz", Sue makes the argument that Allegra cannot possibly redeem her cousin, and that villains are just too far gone to want to change themselves, citing that her own parents became too far involved in Black Hole for her to pull them out. While the episode treats her in the wrong for this line of thinking, and indeed Allegra is proven right when she successfully saves Ultraviolet, this is a comic-based show we're talking about. Looking at DC's own history, there are numerous villains who no one would ever trust with redeeming themselves—Lex Luthor, The Joker, Darkseid—to say nothing of the various forces Team Flash has fought over the years (Thawne, Zoom, Savitar, etc.). While the episode presents that redemption is possible for anyone, Sue isn't entirely wrong to believe that there's no coming back for some villains.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • If H.R. was able to exist in the mind of Nash Wells despite having already been dead when the multiverse was destroyed, could Earth-1 Wells have been in there, too? He’s mostly likely not shown because he had no real connection to Team Flash (like Harry, Sherloque, and HR) or any obvious quirks (like all the other Wellses), but these factors could have actually made it more interesting to see how he would’ve reacted to everything that happened after his death, including the existence of infinite versions of him. Then he does come back to life...and promptly disappears after one episode.
  • The death of Nash, and by extension the other Wellses, is well-done and emotional. It’s a shame that Caitlin and Cisco couldn’t have come back to properly say farewell, however, as they were the ones who actually got to know Harry, HR, and Sherloque, unlike Allegra and Chester. Barry even comments on Harry and Cisco’s dynamic, making it all the more saddening that this is the second time Cisco will find out Harry is gone after the fact.
  • In the episode "Family Matters, Part 2", a storm ends up allowing several prisoners to escape from Iron Heights. Frost manages to capture several of them and receives parole for her crimes. It may look good on paper, but the episode only shows scenes of Frost fighting against one prisoner. Everything else occurs off-screen.
  • Speaking of Frost, The People v. Killer Frost makes such a big deal of Frost's redemption arc culminating when she sacrifices her own freedom now that she's become her own person, without any chance of ever getting it back, to avoid setting a legal precedent of metahumans being forcibly depowered as punishment. The prison bus ride was obviously not going to stick, but by granting her parole on account of an Off Screen Moment Of Awesome, not only is said sacrifice cheapened and her whole redemption arc weakened, but the show also lost a priceless opportunity to show the public's reaction to the news. Sure, there was a throwaway line that since her Heel–Face Turn Frost had become a popular member of Team Flash enough to have her own themed drink at Jitters, and that the metahumans of Central City won't forget Frost's courage, but that leads to nothing. It would have been a great opportunity for the Central City metahuman community to raise and unite in solidarity against the sentence, even for the Muggles to spark a metahuman rights movement in support of the heroic ones or, on the contrary, to have a faction that applauds the decision for the collateral damage that even the heroes often cause. Instead, the reaction of the public to such a high-profile case involving a former villain turned much-beloved hero is not even mentioned, and plays no role in the release of Frost.
  • Even though "Masquerade" received praise for addressing mental health and its stigma in the black community, quite a few fans felt a premise as such should've been centered around Iris, especially after Eric Wallace promised to focus on the long term effects of Iris's experience in the Mirrorverse only to subvert the Author's Saving Throw above.
  • Once again, Iris's career with The Central City Citizen is completely ignored. Eric Wallace said it was gonna be huge in Season 6 going into Season 7, except it was already dropped when Iris got trapped in the Mirrorverse and her mirror duplicate was only pretending to investigate Black Hole. Gets even more troubling when Kamila leaves Central City with Cisco in the middle of the season.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: Even in a season as chaotic and haphazard as season seven without a single unifying Story Arc the entire way through, the sub-plot toward the end involving Joe teaming up with Kristen Kramer to investigate someone she knew a lifetime ago feels extremely disconnected to everything else that's going on. Even after the season finally wraps up the plotlines have had virtually no intersection.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Even though she made it clear how much she despises metas, the show expects us to develop sympathy to Kramer when it's revealed her brother led her squad into an ambush, not her, and she comes begging to Joe for help after she angrily rebuffs his accusations.

Season Eight

• Angst? What Angst?: Iris disappears for four episodes in a row because of her time sickness, and with the exception of the first episode, Team Flash doesn't seem to worry too much about her absence for the next three episodes. In fact, there are even episodes where Iris is not even mentioned. The script tries to justify this with the fact that the future involving Nora and Bart hasn't changed, so nothing bad must have happened to Iris, but even so, it's bizarre that even her husband and her father don't seem to be as distressed as they should be. The explanation also rings hollow in light of how often "time remnants" and such have come up, meaning that Nora and Bart's existence isn't even a 100% guarantee that Iris will come back. It's even more glaring when contrasted with Barry's desperation to save her life in Season 3 when she was fated to die at Savitar's hands, or his obsession with saving her from the Mirrorverse in the second half of Season 6 and the beginning of Season 7. Random scenes during these episodes like the group playing "Dungeon and Dragons" don't help much.
• Arc Fatigue: Allegra and Chester's UST gets dragged out throughout the whole season, and even into season nine. There are so many moments when they could have had their first kiss, and even once they finally do, it's put aside and not really dealt with in either that or the following episode, save for some mutual awkwardness.
• Ass Pull:
  • The existence of the Negative Still Force and how the Arc Villain can manipulate it to his whim, especially since it serves almost no purpose from a Watsonian perspective since Thawne could've easily time-travelled inconspicuously with the Negative Speed Force and gotten the same results.
  • Iris suddenly remembering her time with Barry in the Bad Future created by Thawne.
  • Thawne's meddling with time causing him to fade from existence yet again.
  • Avery goes right from studying the theoretical aspects of time travel and being unsure if it's even possible, to suddenly knowing enough about temporal mechanics to give advice to Nora and Bart.
  • Cecile claims in "The Fire Next Time" that she won't use her powers on a client, after having previously used them on all and sundry without their consent. Given that she goes right back to using her powers on her friends without their consent in the following episodes, and actually does use her powers on a client in the following season, it feels like a convenient Deus Exit Machina to avoid cutting the story short.
  • In "Into The Still Force," Barry somehow has a little of the Still Force with him. The authors don't even try to explain how or why.
  • "Negative, Part One" introduces not only the Negative Still Force, but also the Negative Sage and Strength Forces, when there was no hint of the latter two existing previously.
    • The same and following episodes have Meena share her powers with Eobard and later with Barry just by thinking about it. Up to this point, there was no hint that it could be possible to do this at all, but Barry seems sure that it'll work. This also leads to the Fridge Logic of if a speedster can turn anyone into another speedster, not to mention questions of why "Wells" and "Jay" were so intent on concoting elaborate plans to steal Barry's speed when they could have just asked nicely prior to his finding out about their true identities.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Eobard Thawne being the mastermind behind "Armageddon" is unsurprising, considering that his return was teased beforehand, and that Barry becoming Despero's target feels like something he would have cooked up, especially since the last season ended with him angry at how Barry upped his game and promised to do the same.
  • Likewise, anyone familiar with Despero's comic history won't be surprised that he's Evil All Along.
• Evil Is Cool: Deathstorm has mostly been well-received due to having an awesome CGI design, being one of the few Flash villains who isn't human, and finally bringing Robbie Amell back to the series.
• Growing the Beard: After three seasons that were even lackluster or mixed bags, Season 8 has been deemed one of the best seasons since the show's early days and brought back the fun spirit it once had.
• Informed Wrongness: Most of Team Flash willing to let Thawne fade from existence is treated as a bad thing, and that they should show mercy to him, but that ignores the fact that Thawne is a horrific monster who has made Barry's life a living hell since day 1—from framing his father for his mother's murder to altering history so he can rule as a hero—and he's dying of his own actions, not because Team Flash is trying to kill him themselves. It's not crossing the heroic Moral Event Horizon so much as it it's letting a Karma Houdini get what's coming to him. It's almost like the writers tried to create a Batman-Joker situation between Barry and Thawne and that Barry needed to enforce Thou Shall Not Kill to keep from becoming a monster, yet forgot that said dynamic works because Joker wants Batman to kill him so he can destroy his efforts to protect Gotham, whereas Thawne wants to make Barry's life a living hell, and even admits to his face that he won't stop doing so even when Barry offers to save him. The only plausible explanation for why Joe specifically objects is that, by Barry admitting he knows a way to save Thawne and choosing not to do it, he would be committing Murder by Inaction, something an old cop like Joe would be very against.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Like her or dislike her, no one thinks Iris is really gone for good.
  • After surviving being erased from existence (twice) and then getting killed, it's hard to believe Thawne is really gone for good just because he's been erased from existence a third time. Fans were proven correct when Thawne was confirmed to return for Season 9 (though as it turns out, this was an earlier version of Thawne fulfilling his part in the time loop).
• Memetic Mutation: "Olha que diálogo merda" ("Look at this shit dialogue.")^ExplanationThis was the reaction of Barry's Brazilian voice actor Alexandre Drummond to The Flash's words upon confronting Despero in "Armageddon, part 1" ("Whoever you are, if you're looking for a fight, you found one"). It ended being accidentally aired, leading to much infamy and joking in Brazil.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Much of "Armageddon Part 4" is devoted towards the Will They or Won't They? drama between Chester and Allegra, after dragging out such a storyline for two seasons. Worse yet, the fact they spent over a decade dealing with this issue makes this subplot more problematic, while also taking away from having Ryan Choi finally becoming the Atom. After that, a few episodes have scenes that basically spell out they have affection for each other that they're both avoiding, but it still doesn't go anywhere beyond that.
• Salvaged Story: Has its own page.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • When Thawne starts dying thanks to Barry undoing Reverse Flashpoint, everyone except Joe, Allegra, and Chester are content with just letting him die. Joe gives Barry and Iris an earful for crossing that line, and the narrative makes letting the villain die a bad thing—except nowhere in the show's history has he ever been shown as deserving of mercy. For starters, he killed Barry's mother, escaped death twice, saw Nora temporarily wiped from existence to ensure his own survival, twice did he transform the world into his own twisted utopia where he's the hero, teamed up with actual Nazis to invade Earth, and even made it where Joe died and made it seem like Barry went insane to turn everyone against him—all of this just to spite Barry for being the hero. If anything, he's far more deserving of his fate. While he doesn't die, he is stripped of his speed, which he considers a far worse fate, but still, the fact most of Team Flash know what the villain did made it a lot easier for them to just suffer this fate.
  • Rosa is upset at Cecile for stealing her powers, something which is brushed off as, essentially, "Well, I didn't mean to." Anyone would be furious if someone had just taken their powers away.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Tends to be viewed as a significant step up from Season 7, which is often considered to be the worst season of the show.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • Damian Darhk calls Chillblaine "Chilllame."
  • Caitlin mentions that her last few relationships haven't exactly been healthy, a shot at the less-than-popular romance with Julian (also, of course, Zoom).
  • For those who don't like Iris, it wasn't exactly terrible to see her get seemingly vaporized by Tinya and then mostly Put on a Bus for a few episodes.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Barry, Iris and Caitlin in "Armageddon". When they learn Thawne is dying thanks to him messing with time, they decide to let him die. Joe gives them a blistering What the Hell, Hero? speech about showing mercy to their worst enemy and not crossing that line... except Thawne spent the entire series, including this event, making their lives miserable out of pure spite, including mucking with history to kill Joe and make Barry the bad guy, so this was but the last straw in his long list of offenses against the two, and had every right to let him suffer his fate considering. Barry even admits he considered sparing Thawne until he tells him that, even if he spared his life, he wouldn't stop making Barry's life as miserable as possible, so it's clear there's no mercy to give.
  • Caitlin is intended to be seen as the bad guy for treating Mark with disdain. Thing is, he was a confirmed criminal whose Heel–Face Turn (in so much as it happened at all) was mostly offscreen, so it's hard for the audience not to share her views of him. Especially because he leaves Caitlin with his and Frost's bar tab, which comes off as him just being petty and proving that he's still not such a great guy. And in his next appearance, he comes in having just stolen some tech from someone else. In fact, at no point during the season does Mark ever show any truly heroic qualities.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Cecile's breakdown in the third episode of "Armageddon". Yes, she's obviously still very grief-stricken over Joe's death, and the last season showed that she's had similar struggles before, but her lashing out at everyone when presented with evidence that proves otherwise, especially when Caitlin and Iris try to comfort her in a time of crisis, makes her come off as much worse than intended. This is particularly prominent because Caitlin actually had to go through losing her lover twice, neither time having a body to bury, and then the next guy she fell in love died in front of her eyes and then turned out to have been evil. Meanwhile, Iris is Joe's daughter. In light of that, Cecile's claim that Caitlin and Iris don't know what she's going through (which Caitlin gently calls her on) rings particularly hollow.
  • Barry worrying about all the casualties and natural disasters he'll cause in the Bad Future doesn't garner much sympathy when the whole point of his actions is to undo said Bad Future, meaning those disasters will never happen anyway.
  • Joe's lecture to Barry and Iris about being willing to let Thawne die. Even if his point was justified, him going out of the way to practically scream at them for not wanting to save the man who made their lives hell is not. What makes this worse is that Joe died thanks to Thawne until Barry fixed things, which Barry even points out, meaning he, of all people, should be more sympathetic to their plight, and even after admitting he wants this villain dead too, Joe still thinks heroes shouldn't cross that line. Allegra and Chester as well are the only two team members to have never been directly affected by Thawne (which they admit), meaning that they don't have a perspective on just how evil and dangerous he is. In fact, it's not clear if they even know who Thawne is and what he's done other than that he's some old enemy of Barry's.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: In spite of the show's usual foibles in regards to CGI characters, Despero looks pretty good—almost on par with Grodd.
  • The shot of Barry Outrunning the Fireball looks amazing.

Season Nine

• Angst? What Angst?: "Hear No Evil" is an episode in which Caitlin is suddenly and effectively killed off and replaced by Khione, who literally has Caitlin's body and apparently possesses some semblance of Frost's powers, but has the personality of neither, and thus Team Flash debates whether Khione should be considered her own person or whether she should be viewed as Caitlin's new personality (and thus they should attempt to restore Caitlin, even though it would erase Khione.) In the end, they elect to leave Khione as is, and the equipment needed to restore Caitlin is destroyed by Pied Piper so that Mark can't use it to restore Frost... and then the whole team decides to party, as if they hadn't just effectively lost a close friend and one of the last remaining members of the original Team Flash.
• Ass Pull:
  • Apparently, Cecile's powers can reach across time now, just when that's most useful. Somehow. Also, in the final episode, she inexplicably starts to fly. While, given that she's telekinetic, it's not in and of itself impossible, but the fact that she's suddenly an expert flier when she's never previously been shown even hovering really puts it squarely in this territory.
  • How, exactly, did Mark and Caitlin's experiment turn the latter into a goddess?
  • Cecile and Allegra being able to effectively fight speedsters who previously gave the Flash a serious fight during the finale can really stretch the bounds of credibility.
• Memetic Mutation: The Cecile / The Virtue ^note Cecile's ever increasing screen-time, powers and her sudden 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.
• Narm Charm: The team hug at the end of Episode 7. Is it a bit cheesy? Yeah. But it also shows the bonds of friendship between all of them.
• Replacement Scrappy: Khione. Caitlin fans despise her because she not only replaced Caitlin, but she also effectively sinks the Snowbarry ship. Fans who dislike Caitlin hate her because she takes time away from other characters, and pretty much everyone dislikes how she also serves as an excuse to keep Chillblaine around because he plays a large role in her creation. Which ends up being pointless when he leaves halfway through the season (though he comes back for the finale). She also doesn't play much of a role in Team Flash; she's not a fighter, journalist/detective, or engineer, doesn't appear to have any of Caitlin's medical knowledge, and doesn't have any other relevant abilities other than undefined powers and a "connection to nature," meaning that throughout Season 9 she either doesn't play a significant role in most episodes, or else uses her powers perfectly tailored to the plot to save the day.
• Rooting for the Empire: The Legion of Zoom, a group of the former evil speedster Big Bads that are summoned by Cobalt Blue so that they can team up together and change their predestined fates. Given how beloved most of these guys were (sans Godspeed), and how disliked most of the New Team Flash members are, this led a lot of fans to be rooting for the Legion of Zoom to at least do a decent job against the heroes. Their anticlimatic defeats were very poorly received by most viewers, with each of them getting one-shotted by New Team Flash members.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Very few, if any, fans disliked how Khione called out Chillblaine for his faults, particularly acting like she is Frost. The fact that the whole bar cheers her on is just icing on the cake.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Whatever your feelings about latter-day Flash, any longterm Arrowverse fan would have to be made of stone not to be moved by Barry and Diggle seeing Oliver one last time.
  • Seeing adult Barry interact with his parents while unable to let on his true identity can be tough to watch.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: In 2049, Allegra, Chester, and Cecile look pretty much exactly the same as they do in the present day, implying that either the show didn't bother with any aging makeup, or else that sometime in the next 20 years they'll start using a Lazarus Pit or something. Cecile (who ought to be in her 60's, at least, and doesn't show a single grey hair) even lampshades this.

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