The Flash: 8 Mistakes It Must Fix In Season 3
The Flash needs to fix more than its timeline.
After a soft-introduction in Arrow, The Flash made a blistering start to life as its own series. As you might expect from a show centred on The Fastest Man Alive, it came bursting out of the gate, and sprinted to the finish.
Across its first season it was fun, fast, and full of incredibly comic book-y moments that similar series simply weren't attempting. It zigged when most other superhero properties were zagging, with a fun, upbeat tone that embraced its comic roots. The challenge, then, was to repeat the trick in Season 2, but it unfortunately fell at a few different hurdles.
Although part of the problem wasn't really its fault, as like Arrow it was bogged down in having to setup Legends of Tomorrow, it made a number of poor decisions throughout its sophomore year. It introduced the legendary Jay Garrick, but it wasn't really him, and had a similar villain to Season 1, only rather less personal and not as captivating.
It wasn't a bad season by any means, with some truly standout moments, and fantastic performances from the likes of Grant Gustin, Tom Cavanagh, and Carlos Valdes. But rather than getting better and moving forward, Season 2 found itself too often standing still, and occasionally going backwards. If Season 3 truly wants to succeed, then it's going to have to course-correct a number of wrong turns.
8. An Inconsistent Season
Season 2 wasn't so much a bad season as it was a wildly inconsistent one. One it was good, it was great, delivering the towering highs of Enter Zoom, which stands as one of best episodes of the series, and the wonderfully whacky Earth-2 two-parter.
On the downside, it also had the show's worst episodes so far: Fast Lane was good, but it's a rose between three thorns, coming during the run of episodes that featured Trajectory, Versus Zoom, and Back To Normal, which was a really weak run.
Then there were some episodes that were just ok, which is more of an issue with these shows struggling to fill their 23-episode run, as filler seems to be often inevitable.
Season 1 had weaker episodes too, but they were mostly early on when the show was finding its feet, and it built some incredible momentum heading into the finale, which is when Season 2 lost quite a bit of it. Going forward it needs a clearer path in place, and to make sure capable of delivering a season that isn't totally uneven.