The Flash Season 3

It is becoming more and more difficult for me to sit through a 23 episode season like that of The Flash. That's not saying anything bad about the season itself, but I have just grown so accustomed to the 13 episode arch done really well in shows like The Newsroom, House of Cards, or Stranger Things. However, I have enjoyed the first two season of The Flash so much that it wasn't really a question whether or not I was going to watch the third season when it made it's way onto Netflix.

If you're not familiar with the premise of CW's The Flash, it follows the story of the famous DC Superhero, the Flash. It's the story of Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin) a young attractive (it's the CW people) CSI who when he was really young, his mother was murdered by a yellow flash. Of course since that sounds crazy, his father was accused of the murder of Barry's mother and went to prison for it. Barry's life is changed when he is struck by lightning and is endowed the power of super speed. He joins a group of scientists at STAR Labs, the epicenter of the lightning that gave Barry his powers and he and his friends work together to take down criminals who have powers of their own.

I have reviewed the first two seasons of this show and if you read them, you'll know that I love this show. What I liked about the first and second season was that they really seemed to build off of one another really well. The first season established a universe where Barry would be able to build his skills and become the powerful superhero that we now love to watch just go and do his superhero thing. The second season built off of that and expanded the universe to other worlds. No longer was Barry and his friends confined to their world, they could fight bad guys on Earth 2, 3, 4, 19, wherever. And these alternate universe provided for some really fun characters and it also gave the actors opportunities to do something different with the characters they had already established.

The second season was also really great because it was streamlined with very few filler episodes. The filler episodes worked to explain character motivation and develop a more personal story. But the story was streamlined to center on The Flash developing himself as a hero against an absolute evil like Zoom. The second season did a really good job at balancing conflict of Zoom with the personal struggle that Barry is going through throughout the season. It really does become a personal story and that personal story brings us into the third season seamlessly.

The second season ends with Zoom tragically killing Barry's father right in front of him. Barry is eventually able to defeat zoom but he is incredibly distraught by the loss of his father, especially after he had just been released from prison. Although Barry seems to have won and possibly has a great future with Iris, in his grief he runs back in time and prevents the murder of his mother at the hands of The Reverse Flash. I remember watching the last episode in awe because having Barry go back and make this change is a drastic choice. It felt like a drastic choice at the last episode and it feels like a drastic choice throughout the third season.

The third season begins in the alternate universe that Barry created by saving his mother that he calls Flashpoint. Things are pretty great for Barry. His parents are still alive, he starts to hit it off with Iris despite having not grown up with her. But then he starts to lose his powers and his memory. Along with that, tragedy starts to hit and he realizes that this is not his world and he needs to go back and fix what he tried to change. While he does, he realizes that the world he left is not exactly the same and there have been multiple changes.

And really the rest of the season is Barry dealing with the consequences of this monumental change. The interesting way that they manage to bring in more people with powers in this season is the blending between the universe Barry created, Flashpoint, and the regular universe. A mysterious villain named Alchemy starts giving people powers and their personalities are blended with the personalities of their alter ego from flashpoint. Now this is only loosely explained and there are points where it doesn't exactly make sense. I will get to that when I start talking about particular characters, just know that while that part is kind of cool, it also is a little bit confusing and poorly written at times.

Another downfall of this choice was that The Flash is starting to develop a little bit of the Arrow syndrome in that they start developing characters who originally didn't have powers and weren't superheroes into partners to the main character. I haven't watched past season 2 of Arrow so I assume it's a little more complex than I'm making it out to be, but eventually Barry's friends all start developing super powers and then there's alternate versions of The Flash fighting with him. You've got Kid Flash, and Jessy Quick, and the Jay Garrick version of The Flash from Earth 3.

I don't think it's done horribly, but I think there is merit in a show maintaining its focus on one hero and I felt as the third season finally met a critical mass where every other character has super powers. If everyone has powers, suddenly the people who do start to lose their uniqueness and it becomes more and more about people's powers instead of their personalities. Again, I think they have a little bit more time before it gets to that point, but there are red flags throughout this season that make me think the show might be headed towards a down turn.

The other issue with this season is the repetitive villains, especially the main one. Remember in my season 2 review where I mentioned that the appearance of Zoom was good, but a little bit of a retread from what had happened before. A new speedster shows up and beats the living crap out of Barry. He has some time of self doubt, there's a loss of someone close to him, but Barry eventually gains the physical and emotional strength to vanquish his enemies.

Well they freaking did it again!

While I mentioned that Alchemy was the villain starting off, it shouldn't be a surprise that he was the front for the larger villain that is Savitar. And if you're looking at that picture and saying, hugh that guy looks like a transformer, well yeah, until you figure out who Savitar actually is, it's basically like Barry is fighting a giant transformer and it's the exact same story we saw in Season 2. For some reason, the Flash doesn't really seem comfortable pitting Barry up against a big bad villain that isn't a speedster and it's starting to show in the show.

Savitar proclaims himself as a god and Alchemy is giving people powers to be apart of his cult of darkness or some kind of bullshit like that.

Eventually when it is revealed who Savitar is, I will say it is kind of interesting, but it was also something that I called from the beginning. You actually don't really need to be paying that much attention to figure it out pretty quickly which was a little bit disappointing. Three seasons in and this show is not very good at setting up stories that are not predictable.

HOWEVER!

The predictability and formulaic nature of Savitar is offset by the direction that the season goes into by the 9th or 10th episode.

At a certain point, Barry runs into the future for the first time and sees a horrible future of Savitar brutally murdering the love of his life, Iris. Barry is already dealing with the consequences of changing the course of time after Flashpoint and then the rest of the season it becomes Barry's personal mission to do just that, change the course of events that lead up to Iris's death.

That is the meat and potatoes of the season. It's done, really, really well.

Honestly, the first 8 or so episodes are really filler and reintroduction episodes and those episodes were the most difficult to get through. I felt like I did when I was watching Arrow, just slugging through each episode very slowly and not really feeling the true purpose. But when you see Savitar murder Iris, suddenly all bets are off. The focus of the turns directly towards the goal of Barry trying to save the love his life.

And it works because these two have been cooking since episode one. And this is the first season they actually get together, and it actually really works. I really like these two together and you definitely see the love between them.

So when you see Iris die in the future, you know that Barry will stop at nothing to assure that she is safe and survives.

And yeah, it still falls a little bit under the melodrama that is almost a requirement if you're going to try and get a show on the CW. The one bad part about season three is that unlike Season 2, where I felt like the filler episodes were used to build the characters and make you love them even more, I did feel that, with some of the filler episodes, to which there are many, there were a couple where drama was created just for the sake of drama being created. And these dumb conflicts didn't even last for an extended period of time, they would really only last an episode and things would go back to the way things were before.

For example: the big reveal at the end of the first episode where Barry comes back from fixing Flashpoint is that he comes back to the house and figures out that Joe and Iris don't talk to one another. GASP. But literally in the second episode, that conflict is quickly resolved and by the third episode, there is really not sign of Joe and Iris ever having any kind of bad blood between them.

One of the other continuous conflicts that arise is the drama that occurs because people start to realize that Barry went back and mess with the timeline.

On a separate note, one of the best things to come out of this season was the fact that I now knew what memes like this meant...

But here's the issue with the timeline drama. Barry goes pretty much the entire season with people giving him shit for going back and changing the timeline for his own purposes... and they're not wrong. Pretty much all of the issues that come up in this show is caused by Barry. It becomes a little bit difficult to really defend the hero when the people who have qualms with him are totally justified.

One thing I did like about this season was how the roles of the members of Team Flash changed from what they were like in seasons 1 and 2.

First, the team expands. You've got Wally West (played by Keiynan Lonsdale) who actually takes up a pretty important part of the team for just being introduced in the past season. Cisco (played by Carlos Valdes) starts to develop his vibe powers and he actually goes out and takes part in the action. But he also takes up a little bit of a leadership role with a change up from Harrison Wells (played by Tom Cavanagh. Caitlyn Snow has her own personal drama that actually changes up her role quite a bit. She still is pretty prevalent in the season and she actually has a pretty big part, especially near the end of the season. Joe's (played by Jesse L Martin) role doesn't change a lot. He's still the father figure for Barry. He has his own little romance in the show which was cute but really was only filler in the grand scheme of things. And Iris changed her role from the supportive adoptive sister and really good friend of Barry's to the girlfriend. It's not a bad role, just not a lot has changed besides the fact that Barry comes home to her.

I do have to talk about one character in particular that I think was a little bit divisive. If he wasn't divisive to other people, he was definitely divisive for me because I could never really decide if I liked him or not.

And that is H.R. Wells or as I like to call him, Hipster Wells.

I have to give the writers credit. Somehow they managed to continuously give Tom Cavanagh work despite his initial character dying. In this season, the previous Harrison Wells decided to return to his Earth with his daughter. He did however work with Cisco to find a suitable replacement and that ended up being this guy. At first, it really only seems like the difference between the two is that one Wells wears a fedora and plays with drumsticks wherever he goes and the other one is stoic and creepy.

And at first, I didn't love this idea. I didn't really see the reason to get rid of old Harrison Wells and I thought the reasoning to find another Wells was really random. But I'll admit it, eventually I started to enjoy H.R. He had a lot of heart and while it's revealed he's not the brightest bulb on the tree, he still does contribute to the group and he does help. But if you've watched the whole third season, you'll know that the end of the season does not leave this character on a high note and I'm thinking it might be time for Harrions Wells to be reduced to a guest star role when Harrison Wells from Earth 2 comes to visit. But overall, we just don't really need another variation of the character.

The other character worth mentioning is Caitlyn Snow. I apologize if this is a spoiler but yes, she does get freezing powers and she does run the risk in the season of becoming Killer Frost.

However, for the casual observer, there is a difference between Caitlyn taking on freezing powers, and her straight up becoming Killer Frost with her horrible, HORRIBLE wig.

There is a slight explanation and it has a little bit to do with Alchemy and Savitar bringing the personality of Caitlyn's alter ego back from Flashpoint, but if you're not paying attention, you can quickly forget about that and it becomes very confusing why Caitlyn becomes this Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde character. Literally, her evil alter-ego cannot be reasoned with and it doesn't make a lot of sense. Remember how I said there were a lot of valid reasons why people become pissed at Barry because he messed with the timeline? Well there are a lot of reasons why Caitlyn shouldn't become Killer Frost, but we're supposed to just sit there and accept the plot convenient storyline like there's nothing wrong with it. That was a little bit annoying.

If you want to talk about extra characters, a familiar face if you're a fan of the Harry Potter films is a constant guest star on the show.

Tom Felton, AKA Draco Malfoy, joins the cast as the arrogant crime scene investigator that Barry created with the creation of Flashpoint. I always thought his sudden appearance was really random and it's never really explained, but hey, they wanted to create a new character and he's not the worst thing to ever come out of the show.

In the beginning of the season, Felton's character Julian is mainly just a thorn in Barry's side. He's not portrayed as a bad guy, just an annoying obstacle that Barry has to overcome as one of the many consequences of Flashpoint. But eventually Julian becomes a bigger part in the story and they use him pretty well. I can't say I'm totally happy with how they used him but because Tom Felton is a pretty decent actor, it was kind of fun having him in the show.

The one issue that arises with Julian is that at a certain point when his arc is somewhat complete, he kind of takes a back seat and all the great back and forth him and Barry have kind of goes away and he just becomes more of a love interest for Caitlyn Snow. And I wouldn't be bothered by that if this wasn't the season where everyone seemed to be hitched off by the end. Cisco, Caitlyn, HR, Joe, EVERYONE seems to be paired up to a love interest and these romances are just not really done that well.

Seriously, a certain point, a character by the name of Gypsy shows up (played by Jessica Camacho). We don't know much about this character except that she is some kind of bounty hunter from another dimension and she has basically the same powers as Cisco, and for some reason that is reason enough for him to say, "SHE IS THE ONE, SHE IS SOOOO INTO ME!". It really has to be one of the most forced relationships I've seen and it doesn't help that these two really don't have much chemistry. And this isn't the only situation like this in this season. I can't go into them all but there were a few more hints of The CW in this season that made me a little bit annoyed. The Flash was always a show that while it had the attractive people, it never felt melodramatic. And even the times where it was melodramatic, it was okay because we liked these characters and they deserved relationships and the little drama that came out of it. 

But even Barry and Iris fall to some really dumb drama at a certain point.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. This season benefits because it takes something that was already being built up for two seasons, a relationship that was fine, and made it actually really genuine and sweet.

So when stupid shit happens and Barry and Iris's relationship seems like it's at stake, it doesn't have much of an impact because with the show's track record and how normal people would act in a situation like the one they describe, we know they're going to get back together or move past this obstacle in an episode or two. And I get it, you gotta keep thing interesting and there's only so many new villains you can introduce before the villain of the week routine gets boring, but the show seems to be getting into a mindset that they can do no wrong... and this season proves they can do wrong.

I'm going to end the regular review here because I want to do a review on the ending. I also want to talk about the future of Flash films and what I am expecting of the 4th season. But for now, I will keep it at that and say that Season 3 of the Flash hopefully showed the creators that there are holes in the armor. This was not a bad season. With a couple of mishaps and a kind of botched ending, The Flash Season 3 was pretty solid. But I worry about the future of the show and that they might be stepping away from the comic book elements that made this show great and falling back into the comfortable CW drama. They're not there yet but Season 3 shows that they could potentially be on their way.

But what did you think? Have you seen Season 3 of The Flash? Are you excited for Season 4? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as your requests for films and TV shows I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. If you haven't watched Season 3, this trailer is going to give some spoilers away so that is your warning. I'm going to make mention of this trailer when I do my part 2 of this review. But for now, Enjoy!