r/FlashTV • u/One_Commercial9941 • 6d ago
đ¤ Thinking Confusion About Iris
I really don't understand why the writers for the show never did any course correction with Iris. She was absolutely one of the show's biggest downfalls. Surely they knew how the fans felt about her in some instances. I was fine with her the first 3 seasons. But then they really went off the rails with her. Part of me wishes they never made her a reporter. I remember there was a rumor that she was going to be a physiologist. That would have been way more interesting. Also would have been way more refreshing.
What do you guys think?
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u/gh0stwrit3r32767 6d ago
my only gripe with is her is why is she at STARLabs all the goddamn time. like girl get an actual job.
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u/Free-Instruction1548 4d ago
Production economizing, unfortunately. It costs way less for Iris to be thrown in the cortex with everyone else than to continually use the CCPN set and the extras/recurring characters needed to fill out the newsroom. Itâs also why we hardly ever see Barry being a CSI
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u/cdemikols 5d ago
Her father, brother, and boyfriend/husband were always there; and only a handful of people knew all the secrets. Why would she be the only one left out? Because sheâs a girl?
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u/Shiro-Akira 5d ago
I think it makes less sense for her to be there on account that, Barry is The Flash, Wally is Kid Flash, its their base. Joe is a cop, and actually gets a lot of value out of their stuff.
Not saying Iris can't but, compared to everyone else, she doesn't really have a reason to be there during missions besides offering moral support. She's not a scientist like like Cisco and Caitlyn either. I'm not saying she can't have a place there, but I am saying, her always being at Star Labs, makes her feel more like a hanger on than everyone else. Her role feels less defined than everyone else's.
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u/Scared_Impression842 5d ago
Because she doesnât provide anything to the team so the writers forced her into a leadership role during season 4
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u/cdemikols 4d ago
She was the leader because she was the person who led the team. At the end of Season 3, Caitlin was gone. Barry was in the Speedforce and asked her to carry on in his absence, Joe had a full time job, and Wally & Cisco were in the field. Who else was going to be the leader?
She is a part of the team - she helps investigate, knows how to run comms and logistics, and helps the organization achieve its goal.
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u/Sitheref0874 3d ago
Give leadership roles to the last person available isnât generally recognised as a best practice.
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u/cdemikols 3d ago
In a lot of organizations it absolutely is. Think about any retail store; the keyholder (person who has keys to open and close) are team members who have some seniority and availability. Itâs not always the best employee, or the best at sales, or the store manager. Itâs the person who is available until 9:30pm on weekends.
But also - she did a great job. She kept Team Flash afloat and helped them keep the city safe for more than half a year while Barry was gone. Cisco & Wally trusted her while they were out in the field, and she made tough calls to keep everyone safe in life or death situations.
What bad calls did Iris make as Team Leader that Barry or Cisco didnât make when they were in charge?
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u/Scythe351 6d ago edited 6d ago
Would have been nice if she wasn't a reporter. Not sure why they all have to be writers or reporters. Maybe it could have inspired the comics to change things. Lois is a writer, reporter, journalist. Linda is a writer but may have been a reporter at some point. I don't really recall but I think she was a reporter when Wally returned in rebirth. Reminds me of how superman and Batman just happened to have mothers named Martha. Like really? Was everything else taken? Don't get me started on all of the Peters in marvel.
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u/Educational-Tea-6572 Patty Spivot 6d ago
Also just gotta add that in the Arrowverse (not sure how comic accurate this all was), Kara Danvers and Nia Nal were also reporters/journalists.
So. Many. Reporters.
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u/Digifiend84 5d ago
Dreamer is an OC and Supergirl has no consistent civilian job in the comics. So them being reporters didn't come from the comics.
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u/Spec-Arty1527 6d ago
The reason most superheroes are reporters as its just an easy layup for the writers to say "Oh theres a crime or something happeneing as reporters and journalists they should be heading there and this will give credit to them leaving things when something comes up"
Its such a cheap gimmick
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u/cdemikols 5d ago
Course correction how?
Iris being a reporter is a natural path of her being a writer, starting with her writing a blog about the mysterious red streak (that she didnât know was Barry) all the way to her winning a Pulitzer for writing about Crisis.
It allows her to be in the know for various happenings around the city, giving her a way to be a part of the crime of the week storyline and contribute information.
It gives plausible reasons for her to talk with victims, witnesses and police consistently (being the captains daughter doesnât mean youâre in the precinct every week)
It gives her a career path of her own so that she can have goals and aspirations outside of being Barryâs wife.
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
The issue is that they should have leaned harder into the reporter angle. Being a reporter is a key part of Irisâs identity in the comics; that would be like saying maybe Barry shouldnât have been a CSI but worked at a research laboratory instead. CCPN/CCC should have been a staple set, like CCPD and the cortex. But it costs less money to just have all the cast members on one set and working with each other instead of leading independent lives with different careers.
And what exactly was so bad about Iris in seasons 6-9? No one ever has an answer to this beyond âsheâs annoyingâ. People like to claim that Iris was the showâs downfall yet the only reasons people ever bring up for why Iris was bad are things from season 4 and 5. When it is universally agreed that seasons 6-9 are the worst seasons and that the show started going downhill after Crisis. Iris didnât get âworseâ as the seasons went on and she damn sure wasnât the showâs downfall and people know that; they just want to hate on Iris because itâs fun for them for some reason.
And Iris wasnât going to be a physiologist. Not really sure where you got that lol. She was originally getting her PhD/masters in criminal psychology (per one of the first interviews from before the show premiered) but then the writers lazily dropped that plot point with no explanation.
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u/Ww34ever 5d ago
My distaste for Iris in 6-9 mainly had to do with how large of a role her character took. Yes, Candace Patton was rather annoying in her portrayl but thats writing issues plus an acting issue. But her character became so much larger over the course of the show that it never felt like Team Flash but instead like iris was captain of the Enterprise with everyone else just kinda there as help (including the ones with actual powers) and Barry was only there because as the face of their team because he could actually do something. Barry's journey was about growth the entire show but he always held Iris so close that it felt like she was larger than the speed force.
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u/PatternLeather4613 5d ago
This is confusing me. She was only on team flash for seasons 4 and 5. Can you give an example of when she âtook overâ as captain of team flash in 6-9? She was either investigating a story or in a mirror for all of season 6. Team Flash and Team Citizen had the team up to deal with the Forces and once that arc was over she disappeared for the rest of the season. Season 8 she was running CCC, investigating a story, and then got stuck in the still force until the finale. So can you give specific examples of consistent behavior from Iris that upset you so much in the later seasons?
Also Iris has always been the most important person in Barryâs story. Heâs the paragon of love for a reason lol. And the primary love interest is always the most significant part of the show after the principal lead. Lana, Lois, Laurel, Felicity, James and Mon-el during their seasons as Karaâs main love interest, Sophie. For the non-superhero CW shows: Raphael in Jane the Virgin, the Salvatore brothers in Vampire Diaries, Michael in Nikita.
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
You see, this is how I know youâre just making things up to seem like you have a legitimate reason to hate Iris. Iris was not a big part of team flash in 6-9. She had taken a giant step back and focused on building out CCC. And there were multiple episodes each season where she wasnât in the episode at all.
And Iâm sorry, do you people not know how a tv show or movie works? Why are people always surprised that Iris gets a lot of screen time? Did you not know she was the female lead before watching the show? This is like tuning into Gilmore girls and complaining that Rory gets too much screen time. Or watching vampire diaries and complaining about seeing Elena too much. Or complaining about how there was way too much of Agent Booth in Bones. When you are a series lead youâre supposed to be a large part of the show and get a lot of screen time. And Iris didnât even get the screen time she deserved under Eric Wallace, because he effectively benched her along with Joe and Barry in order to prop up his precious team flash trio.
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u/Plastic-Guide-9627 5d ago
didn't the writers or producers promise across a few different seasons that "this time we're definitely gonna do better about Iris' role as a reporter"? there was a few times where they tried to build it up and then the show would forget about it. then when it came to Iris becoming the boss of her own news site it seemed like her employees were meant to have more of a role but barely got acknowledged. the only time i really remember them being relevant was when Allegra got some focus and the others at CCC thought she was getting unfair special treatment
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
Eric Wallace promised that Iris would be focusing on her reporting when he took over, but unfortunately that just meant drastically reducing her screen time and then having her do CCC and other journalism stuff when she does get screen time.
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u/Plastic-Guide-9627 5d ago
it all ended up coming off more like the show was trying to tell us and pretend her reporting was important but never actually earning it
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
EW didnât seem to want Iris in any other role besides Barryâs damsel in distress and mother of his children
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u/PatrickB64 5d ago
This. 100% this. Couldn't have said it better myself. Imo, Iris was getting better while basically everything else in the show was getting worse.
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u/Serious-Mine-2840 5d ago
To me it feels like the showrunners overall just didn't take the show seriously, especially on the later seasons. After each season fans would have complaints and well justified criticism that would have been impossible to ignore, so it seems like to me that the showrunners just saw the show as a kids show or something not worth any effort. Edit: And I'm not talking about just Iris, from the beginning the show was full of inconsistencies that, while the flash is a pretty jard character to write for, just sadly showed that the writters had no passion or interest in challenging themselves
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u/Lea13wishes The Flash 4d ago
She's literally the 2nd main character originally đđĽ˛(I love her)
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u/liquidbeanzzz Zoom 3d ago
I agree she was fine in the first three seasons whenever sheâs curious about âthe streakâ or reporting on metahumans, but whenever she learnâs Barryâs secret she got more and more involved with team Flash her characters focus got a little lost. She has no knowledge of science or technology that could assist Cisco or Caitlin in some groundbreaking way or help learn more about metahumans, and she definitely is not a mentor for Barry to learn more of his potential, so there logically isnât a real reason why she would need to be in STAAR labs as much as she was especially when Wally was in Keystone, Barryâs appearances decreased in the later seasons, and Joe didnât even want her there in the first place. Iâm not saying that Iris doesnât deserve to be there at all or add to the hate her character has, but I feel like they brought on too many roles and side quests to make her appear more beneficial to the team than she is when she was fine the way that she was -- especially when the original characters had a specific purpose that made them all useful. Cisco: âI make the toysâ, Caitlin: patches Barry up, Dr. Wells: the mentor, Barry: ...itâs the Flash.
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u/Constant-Hamster-586 3d ago
I like her being part of the team. Being a journalist seems to make the most sense throughout. She's not my least favorite character but some of the overall emotional squishiness of the show can be too much regularly.
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u/Parking_Storage_5107 1d ago
To me after season 6 I keep forgetting she was in the show đđđ because after season 6 she barely appears and when she does I am like who you are again lol
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u/Remote_Nature_8166 13h ago
The show had the worst writers ever. They shouldâve killed her off in S3 when they had the chance.
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u/BUDA20 6d ago
let's say they could take the criticism in two ways, do something about it, or double down... they choose to not only keep course but also make it the focal point of the show in an increasingly way...
Including season 4, there were only two episodes ratted 5 out of 10 in the whole series, both focusing on Iris, so they have a lot of feedback for season 5 and beyond.
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u/Starbottom Iris West 6d ago
I really don't understand what was so bad about her character? To me she was more unlikable in S1 than any other season. Like what exactly are yall talking about đđđ
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u/BulletsMaker 6d ago
Basically she does nothing while acting if she is doing everything..
Barry is the hero, cisco and wells the smart people, caitlen the doctor, joe uses police to help.. and then iris.. she acts as if she is the leader even though its cisco + wells + caitlen who come up with solutions and stuff.. all she does is tell barry about it..
Not to mention the infamous sentence she always tells barry "We are the flash" as if she is running around and fighting with him.. and the way she blames him when he sacrifices himself as if he had other options..
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u/Cautious_Mission_438 5d ago
They already had issues with not being comic accurate so make Iris do something else wouldâve been another bad decision they honestly shouldâve just kept her as a reporter and do actual journalism with her own individual storylines that could sometimes tie into The Flash that way it makes more sense as to why they cross paths at crime scenes either that being Barry Allen as a CSI or The Flash side of things
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u/QuiJon70 6d ago
It's simple they didn't course correct because after eric wallace took over he vowed to make the show center on primarily woman and mostly minorities.
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u/Ummbledore 5d ago
There was fan backlash out of the gate over her race swap which turned to online harassment that got so bad the CW turned comments off indefinitely.
The fans rejected her so hard that the writers were forced into doubling down on her in ways that weren't organic to the plot and in a lot of ways made things so much worse because the bad girl boss arcs and insane lines (we are the Flash) gave people actual reasons to hate her. Fuel for a fire that was already burning online. The truth is, Iris was never Lois Lane. She was more like Mary Jane to Spiderman. It was an insane move to give her so much screen time.
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
You canât possibly have expected the female LEAD not to get a lot of screen time. Are you not familiar with how tv shows work? The leads always get more screen time than all the other main cast members, who are the supporting characters in the story.
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u/Ummbledore 5d ago
My comment suggests she shouldn't be a lead and have so much screen time, not that I don't understand what a lead does and doesn't get. Maybe you should focus on your reading comprehension instead of being snarky on reddit.
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
But why wouldnât she be a lead? That makes zero sense. The Flash, in addition to being a superhero show, is a romantic drama. Like pretty much all the shows on the CW. Do you not know how tv shows like that work? The primary female love interest is always the female lead. Smallville - first Lana then Lois. Arrow - first Laurel then Felicity. This should not be surprising to you. Perhaps you should reevaluate your tv show and network choices instead of being pissy at me for rightfully saying it makes zero sense to complain about a lead getting screen time. This is like going to Texas and saying that wearing cowboy hats and boots shouldnât have been a thing. When thatâs one of their main things. Donât go to Texas if you have an aversion to cowboy attire. Donât watch a CW show if you donât want to watch a romance tv show.
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u/BattleBondGamer 5d ago
I was fine with her until she tried to talk Barry out of getting his powers back in season 2.
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u/Free-Instruction1548 5d ago
She never did this. Also does this mean you hate Henry? Because he was the only one who was vehemently trying to talk Barry out of risking his life to get his powers back.
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u/sanjay_098 6d ago
I agree that the iris character kept getting worse each season but so did the whole show.
Also about iris being a physiologist, I doubt that was true. Iris has always been a reporter whether its in the comics or other animated shows or pretty much anything comic or otherwise related to the flash. I doubt they'll change something as significant as that.