Earlier this week, The Flash wrapped up its first season on The CW with another terrific episode. Even if The Flash hadn’t been renewed, it would have already had one more episode than The Flash TV series from 1990.
Obviously, times have changed and superhero TV shows are an easier sell than they used to be. But that shouldn’t discount what The Flash creative team and the performers have managed to do. The Flash may owe a great deal to Arrow, but it quickly surpassed its parent series to become one of The CW’s signature hits.
Would you believe that the comic book Barry Allen is one of the most boring characters ever created? And yet on this show, Grant Gustin gives Barry so much humanity that it’s almost impossible to root against him. The same goes for the supporting cast that includes Candice Patton, Danielle Panabaker, Rick Cosnett and Carlos Valdes. Special praise has to be reserved for actors Tom Cavanagh, Jesse L. Martin, and even John Wesley Shipp, the man who played The Flash in the CBS series.
While The Flash isn’t strictly accurate to DC’s comic book universe, it captures the spirit of the comics like no other show on TV. Sometimes it’s played for comedy, but it manages to get the right tone and it nails the drama when it has to.
On a week-to-week basis, The Flash has been filled with amazing callbacks to the comics and a sense of fun that’s been missing from a lot of DC adaptations. The Flash never lets you forget that it’s a comic book show. In fact, it embraces that part of its history while offering a modern take on the mythos.
To mark the end of the show’s inaugural season, CraveOnline has assembled a list of the top 10 epic moments from the first season of The Flash. Feel free to share your choices in the comment section below!
There are also massive spoilers for The Flash Season 1 below! You’ve been warned!
Top 10 Epic Moments In The Flash Season 1
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10. "Not God, Grodd"
Season 1 Episode 14
You’ve got admire a show that isn’t afraid to feature a talking gorilla. The Flash’s Grodd may not come from a city of super-intelligent gorillas, but he’s still telepathic and super-strong.
The series teased Grodd several times throughout the first season, but the best glimpse of him came when Grodd reintroduced himself to General Eiling (played by the great Clancy Brown) and dragged him away like a rag doll.
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9. A Firestorm Is Born
Season 1 Episode 13
If you thought that The Flash and Arrow were trying really hard to set up other heroes for their own CW series... then you were exactly right. While Arrow built up The Atom in its third season, The Flash gave Firestorm a more personal touch by linking one of half of the Nuclear Man’s alter ego, Ronnie Raymond (Robbie Amell) to Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) as her missing fiance.
By episode 13, the S.T.A.R. Labs team came up with a way to separate Ronnie Raymond and Professor Martin Stein (Victor Garber) with a device that looked very similar to Firestorm’s superhero logo. The resulting explosion was also one of the more effective cliffhangers of the season.
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8. The Tricksters
Season 1 Episode 17
The Flash got a lot milage out of using John Wesley Shipp as Barry’s father. But the show struck gold again when it brought Mark Hamill back to reprise his role as James Jesse aka The Trickster!
Hamill’s original stint as The Trickster on CBS' The Flash seemed like a testing ground before he went on to voice The Joker for nearly two decades. This time,
The Trickster was paired up with Axel Walker (Devon Graye), a copycat Trickster. The connection between the two Tricksters led to a delicious fan service moment that allowed Hamill to say a very famous line.
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7. Heatwave & Captain Cold Team-up
Season 1 Episode 10
The Flash scored a casting coup by landing the former stars of Prison Break, Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell as Captain Cold and Heat Wave, respectively. In the comics, Cold is the leader of The Rogues, a group of Flash villains that have a unique relationship with their heroic arch enemy.
Episode 10 marked the beginning of the Rogues on this show, as Cold and Heat Wave teamed up to take on The Flash for the first time as supervillains.
Unsurprisingly, both Miller and Purcell have been signed to reprise their roles as series regulars in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.
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6. Cisco Dies
Season 1 Episode 15
In the early part of the season, Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) was one of the weaker characters on the show, thanks largely to bad writing.
By the time that the 15th episode came around, Cisco better resembled an actual human being. In this episode, Cisco figured out that his mentor and surrogate father, Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh) wasn’t who he said he was. And that knowledge cost Cisco his life.
It’s only because of the next epic moment that Cisco survived his apparent death...
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5. The Flash Breaks The Time Barrier
Season 1 Episode 15
Episode 15 was filled with amazing moments, but none more so than the final seconds which found Barry desperately attempting to stop a massive tidal wave from destroying Central City. Pushing himself like never before, Barry ran so fast that he ended up in the previous day.
Time travel has been an inherent part of the show since the very beginning, and an aspect of The Flash’s powers in the comic book universe. While Barry’s first time travel experience essentially erased the events of this episode, it was still an amazing crescendo to watch.
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4. The Man In The Yellow Suit
Season 1 Episode 9
The early part of the season broadly hinted that Harrison Wells was evil, but Cavanagh’s performance was so good that there were reasonable doubts about whether Wells was just being secretive to protect Barry.
All of that went out the window when the audience learned that Wells was “the man in the yellow suit” aka Reverse-Flash. Wells not only soundly defeated Barry in their first speedfight, he did it in a way that threw off everyone’s suspicions about him.
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3. The Flash vs. Arrow
Season 1 Episode 8
Who doesn’t love a good superhero fight? That’s what comic book crossovers are all about!
The Flash writers had to come up with a way to briefly turn The Flash and Arrow (Stephen Amell) against each other... and admittedly, the cause was a little weak. A metahuman brought out Barry’s irrational anger towards Oliver, and that was all it took.
That said, this was a very well executed fight sequence that made the villain-of-the-episode irrelevant. Hilariously, the episode even acknowledged that immediately after the next commercial break.
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2. Eddie's Choice
Season 1 Episode 23
Every DC Comics fan thought that Detective Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett) was going to be the Reverse-Flash. Even after it was revealed that Eddie was Wells’ ancestor, many still believed that Eddie would wind up in a yellow suit of his own and become a supervillain to spite The Flash.
Eddie had other plans. In the season finale, Reverse-Flash was seemingly moments away from making good on his threat to kill Barry and all of his friends and family. So, Eddie shot himself and prevented Wells from ever being born.
The implications of that action will play out next season, but Eddie is done as a main character on The Flash. As far as heroic exits go, that was as good as it gets.
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1. Barry Returns To The Present
Season 1 Episode 23
Barry could have changed the past and prevented his mother’s death. But it could have undone all of the good that he’s done as The Flash and destroyed his relationships with his friends and surrogate family.Rather than let Wells escape back into the future, Barry returned to the present with an epic punch that completely demolished Wells’ time travel vehicle. It was a fantastic visual, and the greatest moment of the season.
