(Photo: Warner Bros. TV/The CW)

After the third season of The Flash took some very dark turns, there seemed to be a growing nostalgia for the lighter-hearted days of the show's past. Thus far with The Flash Season 4, producers of the show have gone in that direction with stories that veer more toward the level of fun rather than depressing -- and those changes to the series were quite intentional.

"My goal for the year was that people would think I got fired, and they brought somebody new on," Flash Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg laughed at a Q&A held by The CW on Monday.

"I think there's a public perception that might be that we really felt like we needed to make a course correction after last season," the producer admitted, though he pointed out that even the show's earlier days got pretty dark.

"I think people are misremembering how dark season 1 was," Kreisberg reflected. "It was about avenging the death of Barry's mother and his father was in jail and in the beginning we had The Mist and Blackout and Girder. I mean, we had some tough guys as our villains," he recalled.

For Season 4, "it wasn't going to get any darker than it got last season," Kreisberg said, pointing out the future vision of Iris West's death and the notion that it was a doppelganger of Barry that ended up being the villain were both incredibly dark notions. "So we just wanted to do something new and something fun."

"Our goal was if the previous seasons were Raiders of the Lost Ark, this season was The Last Crusade where we were actually commenting on the silliness of the show and just wanting everybody to just have a good time and have it be funny," he said of the writers' intent for Season 4.

"I think people are craving a little bit of that right now," Kreisberg said.

"It's a tough world, and having 42 minutes of just pure, unadulterated joy, I think, is something people are keen for."

The Flash airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.