The character of The Flash has always been near and dear to my heart. His powers are so much more than ‘guy who runs really fast’ and his stories always end up using the best part of any good science fiction story, multiple timelines, time travel, parallel worlds. All that good stuff, and of course he has some awesome villains.

So four years ago when they announced the CW was making a Flash show as a spin off of Arrow my mind was blown. I couldn’t wait to see the character in live action and cross over with the already well developed Arrow characters, but I didn’t think The CW would have the balls to actually double down on some of the crazier things in Flash’s stories. Boy am I glad I wasn’t right about that one.

Due to the nature of the show having 23 episodes, we get a LOT of villains. More a less a new minor one every episode. There are many that I think stand out for better or worse but I’m just going to focus on the main season long baddies in this post.

The first season came out of the gate swinging with our first and (in my opinion) the best major antagonist the show has faced Barry against….

THE REVERSE FLASH

Eobard Thawne, a man from the future trapped in the present is the mastermind behind the whole premise of the show. One of the more complex and layered protagonist/antagonist relationships that has ever been on screen is that between The Flash and Reverse Flash. A quick recap so you are up to SPEED (subtle enough?):

-In this timeline Eobard Thawne is an enemy of The Flash from the future, though it is never shown we know from Eobard’s dialogue that he hates Barry Allen/The Flash of the future. He hates him so much in fact that Eobard went back in time to kill Barry as a child, attempting to not just kill him, but erase him from existence entirely.

-When The Flash from the same future he came from stops his own murder Eobard settles for the next best thing, killing Barry’s mother and framing his father for it.

-After this, Reverse Flash loses his powers due to the time travel shenanigans and is trapped a century before his time.

-Eobard realizes his powers are reliant on The Flash’s powers, so he must create and train The Flash in order to return to his time.

This is why I love the character of the Reverse Flash so much, everything he does is only because he wants to go home. He does nothing that he sees as unnecessary to reach his goals. A good motivation that anyone can relate with. Mixed with the mystery of his identity, his badass costume, chilling red eyes and distorted voice he comes together as an antagonist we understand, but still root for the hero.

Even in his final moments as he is fading out of existence he begs for help. Reverse Flash is a human character, not some caricature who is trying to destroy the world or something. Which brings us to season 2 when we meet…

ZOOM

Just from comparing the two images of Reverse Flash and Zoom you can see the differences between them. Zoom looks more savage, almost like a faceless horror movie villain. For the first half or so of the season that’s exactly what Zoom is, an unchained powerful beast from another Earth that leaves nothing but destruction in his path. The first time he fights Barry he breaks his spine and drags him around his own city. Unfortunately once we get to know the man under the suit, Hunter Zoloman, he falls apart as an antagonist.

What does Zoom want? He wants Barry’s to get faster so he can steal his speed and conquer both Barry’s Earth and his own. But he pointlessly falls in love with Caitlin, and he pretends to be Jay Garrick for some reason, and he somehow builds a machine that can destroy EVERY other Earth in the multiverse somehow? At the start of the season I get excited any time he’s on screen to see Zoom tear shit up and am curious about the man underneath the scary mask. By the end of the season I’m scratching my head wondering what exactly he’s trying to do again. All in all Zoom is a mediocre antagonist, cool to look at but not very much under the surface.

SAVITAR

At this point I’m getting a little tired of the ‘who is the fast man underneath this suit’ mystery that the show has relied on for three seasons in a row at this point (not season 4 though, hooray!) and Savitar is the laziest of them all.

We don’t learn who Savitar is or what he wants until the last couple episodes, and by this point you likely won’t be very interested anymore. Although the reveal of Savitar being Barry himself from a future gone wrong is a great premise, the show doesn’t get to even use it until the very end. He is introduced to Barry literally the exact same way Zoom is, carrying him around the city beating him effortlessly. Except this time it’s way less surprising because we watched this happen only one season ago.

Basically Savitar is a less interesting Zoom in a Megatron suit with fancy lights on it. In my opinion if they revealed that Savitar was future Barry early in the season, with the main mystery of the season not being ‘who is Savitar’ and being ‘why is Barry Savitar’ we could’ve had a fleshed out antagonist who’s interesting to watch interact with everyone and slowly unravel his story over the course of the season rather than the last 3-4 episodes.

Overall Savitar might have had the most potential out of both Reverse Flash and Zoom, but he is the weakest antagonist the show has given us this far.

Thanks for reading.

Brody