Update (9/6/16):

With The Flash: Season 2 released on Blu-ray and DVD on Tuesday, September 6th, we're re-featuring our review of the show's second season.

Special features include behind-the-scenes visual effects featurettes for most episodes, the featurettes "Star Crossed Hawks: The Hunt for Vandal Savage," "The Many Faces of Zoom," and "Chasing Flash - The Journey of Kevin Smith," The Flash's 2015 panels at both San Diego Comic-Con and PaleyFest, deleted scenes and a gag reel.Warning: Full spoilers for The Flash: Season 2 below.

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The Flash's first season has become the benchmark by which all other DC Comics-based shows on The CW are judged. It offered a truly winning blend of humor, heart, romance and superhero action, culminating in a terrific season finale that showed just how much emotional depth there is to the story of the fastest man alive. The cast and crew faced a real uphill battle in living up to the standard with Season 2. And more often than not, they succeeded. This season met and occasionally even exceeded the heights of its predecessor. But it was also a more uneven and ultimately more flawed experience in the end.Season 2 got off to a solid start as the writers explored the fallout of Season 1's big cliffhanger. But rather than pick up right where "Fast Enough" left off - with a giant temporal vortex threatening to swallow up Central City - "The Man Who Saved Central City" jumped ahead several months to the somber aftermath. The question wasn't whether Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) could save his city once again, it was what kind of life Barry would return to when he got back. As we saw, it was a pretty lonely existence. The premiere opened on a surprisingly somber note, but one that offered an effective look at Barry's fragile emotional state and the current status quo of Team Flash, including Cisco, (Carlos Valdes), Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker) Iris (Candice Patton) and Joe (Jesse L. Martin). That darkness was a way to bring the gang back together while reminding viewers that many challenges awaited Barry even after defeating Reverse-Flash (Tom Cavanagh).Even as those early episodes touched base with some familiar faces from Season 1 (including Wentworth Miller's Captain Cold and Peyton List's Golden Glider), they also spent a great deal of time setting the stage for the next major villain in Barry's life, Zoom. Rather than continue to rely on the familiar Season 1 formula, where Barry and hid friends battled various metahuman villains spawned by the particle accelerator accident - this year they confronted foes like Atom-Smasher (Adam Copeland) and Sand Demon (Kett Turton) who crossed over from Earth-2 to Earth-1. The addition of parallel worlds this season wasn't just the latest example of Greg Berlanti and friends delving into all corners of DC's mythology, it was a fun shake-up that resulted in a wealth of both comedy and drama. Seeing characters like Cisco, Caitlin and Linda Park (Malese Jow) face off with their alternate universe doppelgangers never got old.[widget path="video/embed/playlist" parameters="slug=the-flash-interviews-sdcc-2015"]No character benefited more from the doppelganger concept than Harrison Wells. Wells might have died at the end of Season 1, but thankfully the writers found a way to bring the character back in a very different role. Earth-2's Dr. Wells made the trip to Earth-1 and began assisting Team Flash in their ongoing fight against Zoom. Cavanagh excelled in his rejiggered role. He consistently played this new Wells as a much different character than the cold, calculating villain of Season 1. This Wells was all nervous, agitated energy, driven by nothing but a desire to stop Zoom and rescue his daughter, Jesse (Violett Beane). His character arc was among the strongest of the season, as Wells formed close bonds with his new friends and worked to counteract some of the destruction his counterpart wreaked on Barry's life.Most of the cast benefited from the ongoing Earth-1/Earth-2 status quo this year. In hindsight, Joe could have used a bit more focus (particularly with him grappling with the death of his estranged wife and the discovery of the son he never knew he had), but Barry, Cisco and Caitlin all enjoyed some great storylines this year. Grant Gustin was frequently a highlight of the show as he explored Barry's lingering guilt and heartache after briefly reuniting with his mother and tried to disprove the parting message from earth-1 Wells - the idea that he'd never allow himself to be truly happy. Wells' words proved distressingly accurate and on-point over the course of the season. Barry went through a lot of emotional highs and lows this season, including a second tear-jerking, phone call reunion with his mother in "Welcome to Earth-2" and multiple traumatic clashes with Zoom. To their credit, the writers didn't try to force a happy ending out of Barry's arc, either. By the end of the finale, Barry was at an even lower point than he was a year before, which fueled his decision to make another ill-advised trip back in time. He'll no doubt be dealing with the consequences of that act for some time to come.Both Cisco and Caitlin frequently stood out this year, as well. Cisco always served as a reliable source of comic relief, particularly as his bond with Wells deepened and the two bickered with one another. But on a deeper level, this season allowed Cisco to come into his own as a hero. He grew more familiar with his powers, even finally adopting the name and trademark glasses of Vibe. He caught a glimpse of what he could become when he met his doppelganger, Reverb, and began testing the limits of his courage and his abilities. Similarly, Caitlin was shown a glimpse of the villain she could become when she met Killer Frost. But even after her failed romance with Jay Garrick (Teddy Sears) and subsequent ordeal at the hands of Zoom, Caitlin never lost her heroic streak. If the writers ever decide to morph her into Killer Frost for real, that's going to be one devastating emotional gut punch.The Flash also deserves credit for the way the writers are able to weave romantic drama into the narrative without it coming across as forced or unnecessary, which isn't something that can always be said for its sisters series. The ongoing romance between Barry and Patty Spivot (Shantel Van Santen) was always entertaining, thanks in large part to the stellar chemistry between Gustin and Van Santen. And if Iris was never the most compelling character in any given episode, she definitely improved this year thanks to her more proactive behavior and her deepening bond with Barry. It sometimes felt as though the writers were moving a little quickly in bringing Iris and Barry together, but that love connection paid off multiple times towards the end of the season (and not always in the ways you'd expect).Then there was the debut of Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale) to the Team Flash lineup. Looking back, I'm not entirely convinced Wally needed to be introduced this year. With everything else going on this season it didn't always feel as though the character received the attention he deserved. But Lonsdale proved to be a solid addition to the cast nonetheless. And despite all the foreshadowing, at least the writers weren't overzealous in terms of rushing Wally into becoming a speedster. There's plenty of time for that in a later season.Before moving into the elements of Season 2 that didn't quite work, it's worth pointing out that the show set a new bar this year when it came to special effects on a TV superhero series. There was no shortage of movie-worthy special effects this year, whether it was the various high-speed races between Barry and Zoom, the trips between dimensions and into the Speed Force or the return of Gorilla Grodd. But even Grodd's return was eclipsed by the debut of another all-CG villain, King Shark. By TV standards, the effects in "King Shark" were simply incredible, and a real testament to how much can be accomplished on a relatively limited CW budget.There was a lot to love about Season 2. At its best, this season was easily a rival to its predecessor. "Welcome to Earth-2" stands as probably the best single episode the show has delivered to date, with episodes like "Flash Back," "Rupture" and "The Runaway Dinosaur" also ranking among the best. But Season 2 was a bit more uneven than Season 1. It was prone to more highs and lows. The first half of the season suffered from an annoying lack of focus at times. With episodes like "Family of Rogues" and "The Fury of Firestorm," it often felt as if more attention was being devoted to paving the way for the spinoff series DC's Legends of Tomorrow than building up the rivalry between Flash and Zoom. Thankfully, that problem only lasted through the two-part Flash/Arrow crossover in December. Once Barry and friends returned to Central City in "Running to Stand Still" (which featured a fun team-up between Mark Hamill's Trickster and Liam McIntyre's Weather Wizard), the season regained its focus.And now to the issue of Zoom. This villain was tricky in that he was simultaneously one of the best and one of the worst aspects of the season. He had a very see-saw-type effect on the show. When Zoom was first announced as the big baddie for Season 2, I remember feeling a touch of exasperation that the writers would choose to immediately follow up one speedster villain with another. Why not give the Flash Rogues their chance to shine? Luckily, Zoom left a pretty strong impression during his first clash with Barry in "Enter Zoom." Between the demonic costume and the gravelly rasp of voice actor Tony Todd, Zoom was by far the scariest and most physically imposing villain Team Flash had yet encountered. That certainly counted for something. Unfortunately, Zoom's stock took a tumble in the mid-season finale when it became apparent that his master plan boiled down to wanting to steal Barry's speed.[widget path="video/embed/playlist" parameters="slug=the-flash-interviews-upfronts-2016"]Luckily, Zoom's characterization improved as the second half of the season unfolded. We learned much more about the villain's past and motivations, including the big twist that Zoom was actually Hunter Zolomon/Jay Garrick and that Team Flash's newest ally was no ally at all. With all the emphasis on doppelgangers this season, it was fitting that Zoom himself was really Barry's dark mirror. Both men had childhood's defined by similar tragedies and grew up to become speedsters. But whereas Barry had a close circle of friends and family to help guide him along his way, Hunter had no one. He was utterly alone on his world and all others, and that gave the villain the humanity and pathos he needed. And it was nice to see the writers acknowledge just how crucial characters like Joe, Cisco and Caitlin are to the show. Without them, Barry would be as empty as Zoom.That spark didn't quite sustain the Zoom conflict until the end of the season, unfortunately. After a pair of top-notch episodes in "Rupture" and "The Runaway Dinosaur," the season seemed to lose a great deal of momentum in its final two chapters. "Invincible" frustrated both in the lack of focus on Zoom's metahuman army wreaking havoc on the city and because so much of the conflict hinged on Barry behaving stupidly for the sake of the plot (not the first time he was guilty of that this season). I also don't know that the writers could have made it any more obvious that Henry (John Wesley Shipp) was going to die.The season finale, "The Race of His Life," was at least an improvement, but still not the ideal way to wrap up Season 2. By that point it felt as though the writers had waited too long to reveal Zoom's master plan. Even though the conflict involved Barry literally racing to save countless Earths from annihilation, Zoom's defeat didn't quite pack the drama or weight it needed. The finale was less notable for the end of Zoom's story than it was for the ways in which it set up Season 3. For one thing, there was the reveal of the real Jay Garrick, an act which allowed Shipp to don a Flash costume for the first time in decades and all the complaints about the show "ruining" Jay to be put to rest. And then there was the final cliffhanger, with Barry traveling back in time and almost certainly sparking the beginning of a Flashpoint-inspired status quo for the series. That alone is cause to be excited for Season 3.