The Flash Season 5: 6 Ups & 1 Down From ‘Blocked’

1. Iris West-Allen, The Reporter

One of the episode's main plot threads saw Iris go full-swing into reporting mode, as she attempted to uncover what happened to Gridlock. She was everywhere at once: talking to Captain Singh, interviewing the injured police officers, studying the footage of last week's attack. In doing so, she was the one who figured out that Cicada existed.

Fans are well aware that the show has often struggled to utilise Iris correctly. She started off perfectly as an aspiring reporter in the first season, only for her to suffer from inconsistent writing and eventually begin playing a background role in the show that she was the leading lady of. The writers attempted to rectify that in Season 3, but inadvertently ended up portraying her as a damsel in distress, and while she was an exceptional leader of Team Flash in Season 4, this was just another excuse not to give her a separate storyline.

It's great to see that Season 5 has wasted little time giving Iris the spotlight she deserves. She is one of the show's most integral characters, and now she gets to showcase her skills at something that she should have always been doing. Iris has always been a little bit of everything, a leading lady, Team Flash's glue, Barry Allen's wife, but now she has been given the opportunity to do a job that she loves.

The episode highlighted that she is resourceful, driven and intuitive - she is, and always has been, a reporter.