The Flash: All 12 main villains ranked from worst to best

12. The Forces

The Forces storyline was easily the most baffling arc in The Flash‘s nine-season run. Fans were excited to see the show introduce the Sage, Strength, and Still Forces to join the Speed Force, but it all became just so convoluted that it was hard to understand any of it (much less take it seriously).

What made things so much worse was that the Speed Force, which looks like Barry Allen’s mother Nora Allen, had always referred to Barry as her “beautiful boy”. Here, she began referring to Barry and Iris as her “mom and dad” alongside the rest of the Forces.

Each of the avatars were unnecessarily antagonistic, infuriating and – Nora aside – just not that interesting, so to see the show go round and round in circles with them, introduce the Negative Forces to add to the confusion, and just channel so much effort into this storyline was just an all-around frustrating experience for fans.

The graphic novel approach that the last few seasons have taken may have butchered the Forces’ development, but the silver lining is that it meant this storyline ended sooner. And the show was all the better for it.

Well, until it missed the boat on another great villain…