The Flash: Too Super Too Soon?

Of the four DC shows to air this fall, The Flash has undoubtedly been the cheeriest. Far less grim than the terminally gray Gotham, less bleak than Constantine, and boasting a distinctly less broody lead than Oliver over on Arrow, The Flash has set itself apart.

As it happens, The Flash differs from its sister shows in more than mood. Unlike the other three, The Flash features superpowers. The Arrow may have impeccable archery skills, Gotham may boast a gallery of rogues with atypical abilities, and Constantine may be able to deal with demons on a regular basis, but Barry Allen on The Flash has real, genuine, 100% side-effect-of-science-mishap superpowers. He’s the fastest man alive, and the possibilities of what he can do with his speed are endless.

So far, those possibilities have been drawing viewers back week after week. The show has been setting and breaking records over on The CW, being lauded for its lighter tone, capable cast, and fancy effects. However, last night’s episode, entitled “Plastique,” raises a big question: is the Flash becoming too super too soon?

In the pilot episode, Barry Allen ran so fast around a tornado that he unraveled it. A week later, he singlehandedly bested an army of clones. Two weeks later, he saves an entire train full of innocent passengers from untimely deaths. Basically? Barry Allen had one heck of a first month as a superhero. There is always the danger of overdoing the dazzle in a show as fantastical as this, but The Flash had to make enough of an impact to build an audience. The risk now is that the show will overdo the dazzle in a freshman frenzy and run out of the acceptably fantastical before the end of the very first season.

“Plastique” followed the story of a soldier-turned-metahuman whose very touch can turn objects into combustibles…whether she intends them to or not. The case of the week was interesting enough, and it was a refreshing change to find a metahuman whose immediate goals upon discovery of her ability was not to try to cause chaos. She was plenty compelling on her own, and her powers deserved some time for showcase.

Unfortunately, however, “Plastique” largely chose to overlook the new power in order to show off some never-before-seen tricks for the hero. In the first few minutes of the episode, Barry Allen discovers that he is capable of running straight up vertical surfaces, racing fifty meters up a building to rescue a falling window washer. Then, at the end of the episode, Barry discovers that he is capable of not only running on water bearing the dead weight of a grown woman, but also outrunning an explosion.

Both stunts were perfectly impressive, and it was inevitable that the show would tackle these two impossibilities at some point. But to do both in the same episode—a midseason case-of-the-week episode that, while entertaining, is likely forgettable from a mythology standpoint—may prove wasteful. The vicarious excitement at watching the Flash running up a building and running across water is lessened by lumping them together at such an early point when we are still interested in just the powers. Hopefully, The Flash still has plenty of tricks in the bag, but if Barry Allen continues burning through new ways to use his powers so quickly, the entertainment factor may be lost to incredulity as audiences find themselves only able suspend their disbelief to a certain point.

Besides, The Flash will be crossing over with Arrow in December. Where the bright cheeriness of Barry Allen and Co. may clash humorously with the dour darkness of Team Arrow (excepting, of course, for the delightful Felicity Smoak), a Flash universe that relies so utterly on superpowers has the potential to become ridiculous against the comparative realism of the Arrow universe.