11 things nobody wants to admit about the Arrowverse

The team aspect hindered many of the solo hero shows

The hideous cover for the complete series of The Flash is a perfect example of everything wrong with the final three seasons of the show. The truth is that the series is called The Flash, not Team Flash, so the refusal on the creative team’s part of accept that the supporting heroes weren’t as important to the story left fans feeling incredibly frustrated.

That’s the worst example of it, but it’s also a microcosm of an issue that plagued most of the Arrowverse shows throughout their runs: The Team. While it’s not unheard of for these heroes to team with partners and sidekicks, the insistence that each of them had to have their own team comprised of heroes who had nothing to do with the main heroes’ storylines was a hinderance. Green Arrow and Black Canary, The Flash and Kid Flash? Sure, they’re great. But bloated teams full of infuriating supporting characters that overshadow the plot and make the hero look redundant? That’s unforgivable.

The Team trope was simply a plot device to group the supporting characters together instead of having to give them separate storylines. That way Team Arrow, Team Flash, and the Super Friends could all remain at the center of the shows without having any dramatic arcs or conflicts. It was a dull and convenient method of keeping less interesting characters on our screens, and ended up making the primary heroes look like they couldn’t stop any threats on their own.

Supergirl mastered it well by the end of its run and Arrow had mixed results with it, but The Flash was the biggest victim of it, and that atrocious cover art just highlights that it never learned from its mistakes.

If we wanted to see an ensemble of superheroes, we’d flick on Legends of Tomorrow because we’d know they would do it right.