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A Lighter and Softer Spin-Off to Arrow, The Flash is a 2014 live-action CW television series based on the DC Comics character of the same name, starring Grant Gustin as lead character Barry Allen.
Barry first debuted in Arrow in "The Scientist" and "Three Ghosts", two Poorly-Disguised Pilots that did their job well enough to give him his own show. The story starts when Barry is struck by lightning after being caught in the explosion of S.T.A.R Labs' new particle accelerator. After spending nine months in a coma, Barry awakens to discover the accident has given him super-speed. With the aid of S.T.A.R. labs and his adopted father Detective Joe West, Barry begins using his new powers for good, serving as a counter for the other metahumans who don't share his morals. Other main cast members include Barry's love interest, and later wife, Iris West; her younger brother Wally who shares Barry's powers; ice-themed metahuman Caitlin Snow; Hollywood Nerd Cisco Ramon; Dr. Harrison Wells and his many Alternate Selves; Joe's girlfriend and telepathic meta Cecile Horton; tech genius Chester Runk; Reformed Criminal Allegra Garcia, a meta who can manipulate EM energy and Barry and Iris' Kids From the Future Nora West-Allen and Bart Allen.
Despite the Arrowverse being named after Arrow, it owes much of its growth to The Flash, this show being the one to connect to the otherwise unrelated Supergirl and setting up the characters from Legends of Tomorrow. It's also the only show to take part in all of the Arrowverse's Crisis Crossovers.
With the end of Arrow in 2020, The Flash became the flagship of the Arrowverse. Airing from 2014 to 2023 with nine seasons, The Flash proved the longest running of the Arrowverse shows and the longest CW original.
- Action Girl: Lisa Snart.
- Adaptation Name Change: Iris' father is now called Joe West.
- Adaptation Species Change: King Shark and Deathstorm are both metahumans. In the comics, the former was a demigod and the latter was undead.
- Adapted Out: The Cosmic Treadmill. Speedsters time travel simply via their own power.
- Adorkable: Nearly everyone but Barry Allen and Cisco Ramon are the stand outs.
- Always Save the Girl: Barry, with Iris.
- Badass Normal: Joe West.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Caitlin never seems to take too much damage.
- Big Eater: Barry as per tradition. As he tells the first incarnation of the Superfriends, he needs about 3,000 calories to fuel his super-speed.
- Brainy Brunette: Barry Allen, Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon, Harry Wells and Hartley Rathaway.
- Childhood Friends: Iris and Barry.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Iris and Barry,
- Cosmic Retcon: Flashpoint.
- Cute Bookworm: Caitlin Snow.
- Depending on the Writer: No two writers have ever agreed on how the Jekyll and Hyde relationship between Killer Frost and Caitlin Snow works.
- Exact Words: The Monitor never said which Flash had to die in Crisis.
- Expendable Alternate Universe: Inverted. The denizens of Earth-2, even the Thou Shalt Not Kill types, make clear that they don't see Earth-1 as a real world and have no issue murdering its inhabitants.
- Five-Man Band: At the start of the series it was these five people:
- The Hero: Barry Allen/The Flash.
- The Lancer: Cisco Ramon/Vibe.
- The Chick/The Medic: Caitlin Snow/Frost and sometimes the villain Killer Frost.
- The Smart Guy/The Mentor: "Harrison Wells" (actually Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash) in the first season, followed by various Wells incarnations from the multiverse, most prominently Harry Wells from Earth-2.
- Team Dad: Joe West, police detective and the team's law-enforcement liaison.
- Sixth Ranger: Iris West becomes this gradually as she finds out Barry's Secret Identity.
- Forgot About His Powers: It rarely, if ever, seems to occur to the man with Super Speed that he can dodge slow moving projectiles.
- Freak Lab Accident: Barry, although it turns out not to have been an accident after all, Cisco Ramon and Ronnie Raymond.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Captain Cold tries to justify his behaviour on account of his bad childhood. As Iris furiously points out, everyone in the room had a bad childhood and they all turned out fine.
- Going for the Big Scoop: Iris.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Caitlin often has this reaction to Barry's severe injuries on missions.
- Heroic BSOD: 1st: Barry can't save his mother's life even though he goes back in time and has to live with that choice, resulting in him distancing himself from everyone in his life for 6 months. 2nd: his father's murdered right in front of him by Zoom and he does save his mother and lives in an Alternate Reality for 3 months.
- Hot Scientist: Caitlin Snow, Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon, Hartley Rathaway, Harry Wells, Eowells Thawne, Ray Palmer and Felicity Smoak.
- Hot Scoop: Iris West, Linda Park.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Barry, when he comes up against Caitlin who's been taken over by Killer Frost in Season 3.
- Identity Impersonator: Among many, the villain "Everyman" shape-shifts into Barry Allen and promptly kisses Caitlin Snow.
- Intrepid Reporter: Iris West.
- Literal Split Personality: Killer Frost is separated out of Caitlin in Season 7.
- The Multiverse: Honestly breaches between the worlds can be opened so casually that one wonders why the barriers existed in the first place.
- Musical Episode: "Duet."
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Are there weird cosmic events going around? Extinction level events possibly caused by great bursts of speed? To quote Oliver Queen "Oh Barry, what have you done this time?" Though that particular Cosmic Retcon was not caused by Barry.
- Not Blood Siblings: Barry marries his adoptive sister, Iris.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Season 6 has Barry discover that Earth-Prime has quite a few differences from Earth-1.
- One True Love: Iris, for Barry.
- Police Are Useless: Averted. While they're outgunned by metahumans, they're competent enough to follow clues and evacuate citizens efficiently.
- Power Nullifier: Team Flash manage to create a way to siphon off Barry's powers completely and give them to their enemy, Zoom, under duress.
- Power Trio: Barry, Cisco and Caitlin were established as this when the series began, but the bonds gradually loosened over time.
- Reckless Sidekick: Wally West at the start of his tenure, although he eventually pares down the impulsiveness a bit.
- Rogues Gallery: Leonard Snart/Captain Cold, Mick Rory/Heatwave, Lisa Snart/Golden Glider, Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash, Hunter Zolomon/Zoom, Earth-2 Linda Park/Dr. Light, Gorilla Grodd, King Shark.
- Science Hero: Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon and, mostly in the beginning of the series, Barry Allen.
- Secret Identity: Barry Allen, Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow, mainly, although Barry seems to play fast and loose with revealing his identity.
- Sentient Cosmic Force: The Speed Force. It's later joined by the Strength Force, the Sage Force and the Still Force.
- Spiritual Antithesis: As tonally far from Arrow as one could get.
- Superhero Paradox: From Season 2 onwards, any rogue metahuman that shows up in Central City can be traced back to Team Flash's presence.
- Superman Stays Out of Gotham: For the most part, Oliver, Kate, Kara and Jefferson don't show up in Central City. Though Oliver and Kate are justified. The Central City Police Department has a very low tolerance for vigilantes, with Joe outright telling Barry that the CCPD want to arrest Oliver in episode 8, who himself is pretty terrible at fighting metas, so it's not likely that they'd be receptive to Kate. And as a Bat, Kate's not likely to leave Gotham anyway.
- Trauma Conga Line: Barry's mother dies when he's 11, his father's wrongfully imprisoned for the murder. Dark. He gets adopted by Joe West, who is a great surrogate father. Light. Then, Barry finds out who murdered his mother, has to let him go and loses two of his friends in the process. After all this, he gets his father out of prison only for him to be murdered by another villain. Barry snaps and creates Flashpoint, only to realise he has to return to the real world where his fiancée is targeted by another villain, which results in the death of another friend. Good times.
- Where Does He Get All Those Wonderful Toys?: Cisco always has a million technical marvels lying around that are both improbable and relevant to exactly the situation the team is facing. Sometimes, he even makes wonders in a very short amount of time.
- You Can't Fight Fate: The newspaper with the 2024 headline with a byline that reads Iris West-Allen is Iris and Barry's reasoning for starting to date in Season 2. All of Season 3 is about this trope, both with regards to Savitar and Killer Frost. The early part of the sixth season, dealing with Flash's long-foreshadowed disappearance/death in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, is also about this trope.