The Flash: 10 Ways To Ensure The Series Will Be Awesome

9. A Compassionate Backstory

Because of his relationship with Felicity Smoak in Arrow, we know a bit about Barry's backstory. In fact, if you're familiar with his recent comic book resurrection, you know it's being taken directly from Geoff Johns' The Flash Rebirth and, later, Flashpoint. In those stories Barry Allen's mother is the victim of murder at the hands of mysterious villain, but Barry's father is made the fall guy and subsequently gets sent to jail wrongfully accused of committing the crime. We've been given all those details so far. But what makes for compelling, relatable and successful heroes is the fact that their history pulls at our heart strings and puts us in their corner. Though Barry is an entirely different person than Oliver Queen, they are both motivated to do the right thing because they want justice. Having to watch his father suffer in prison for a crime he didn't commit is great potential dramatic tension to help pull us in. Considering the weight of his backstory, Barry is going to be spending much of (at least) the first few seasons working through solving the mystery of his mother's death. Once the nefarious plot is finally revealed and the villain receives his comeuppance, if it's been crafted in a compassionate way, audiences will be standing and cheering for The Flash. Because he's so young and so appealing, some of the show's success or failure could be a result of how we resonate with who he truly is at his core and much of that comes from that all-too-important backstory.