The Flash: Five things to improve in season 5 moving forward
Photo Credit: The Flash/The CW Image Acquired from CWTVPR
The fourth season of The Flash has been met with criticism, I state five things that can be improved in the upcoming season.
With The Flash about roughly two months away from zipping in to our small television screens and all electronic devices, it almost feels like more than six months since the 2017-2018 season of the Arrowverse shows under the CW network had drawn to a close. The San Diego Comic-Con of this year had come and gone. Ever since, there have been quite a lot of tidbits on what to expect in season 5, including from the showrunner, Todd Helbing, himself.
As stated in one of my lasts posts surrounding the topic of last season, I only went in briefly on some of the problems with Season 4 of The Flash, which included the motivation of The Thinker (Neil Sandilands) and his path to enlightenment to all of mankind and the lack of his intimidating presence to Barry Allen/Flash (Grant Gustin) at the first half of the season during their initial encounter before Allen’s trial, which paid off gradually towards the end of the season.
Also, since season 5 will air sometime in October, I may go through a checklist in response if things have checked most of the boxes from the first two episodes and halfway throughout the season. Let’s begin.
5. Stronger direction. Tighter story.
According to the current showrunner, Helbing, when FanSided insider for lifestyle and entertainment – Cody Schultz – conducted an interview at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con, Helbing started the tone will be more to do with legacy this time around. If you look at the definition, aside from law and finance, it means “an event or period of history which is a direct result of it and continues to exist after its over.” As described by Dictionary.com, it means, “Anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor.”
As many viewers may know already, Nora Allen (Jessica Parker Kennedy) will play a big part in season 5 as she revealed the season 4 cliff-hanger that she made a mistake, which has left dangerous implications in the future. Most storylines in Flash lore involve time–travel and is fine, however, this element of science-fiction in films and television can be arguably said to be overplayed. It depends on the showrunner is able to guide the other writers to carve the show into a different angle of the story and provide some meaning, value and creativity to many of the arcs that make up the overall plot of the upcoming fifth season.
Since the firing of Andrew Kreisberg back in November 2017, amidst the Harvey Weinstein scandal, many assumed that storylines of The Flash and Supergirl were changed after the producer of those two shows and Legends of Tomorrow had been let go. This is especially after the mid-season break, which led to the trial of the Flash or more specifically, Barry Allen. Apparently, this is not the case; the president Mark Pedowitz of the CW insisted there were no storylines that were changed on either of the shows in the wake of the allegations.
That means even after Greg Berlanti has taken over of the production since his fellow writing/producing associate and subordinates departure that even though Helbing was involved in co-running the show after the episodes were scripted, that prior to being replaced, the episodes still ran its course. What they need to do is find a suitable topic as a theme – that being legacy – as the central story and execute a more coherent plot, less convoluted than season 3, but have the same foundation in earlier seasons with a clear direction. For now, it seems they are going in the right direction.