Despite its great downfall in recent years, CW's 'The Flash', was once a truly spectacular product of media for its time. Network television was really the only competitor before the now current streaming era we live in, which now provide us with content similar to 'The Flash', only to live up to far better expectations. Regardless of how once fans, or current fans of the show feel about the decline of it all, one key feature we can collectively reminisce back to were the truly exceptional villains the show gave us.
Reverse Flash, Zoom, Savitar! From the actors who played them, to iconic lines of dialogue, the villains of this show were truly a milestone on their own for the people who worked on it's exemplary efforts in making them extrordinary in their own rights. The main prospect aside of creating a superhero is giving them that one true villain that poses a significant threat, and in earlier seasons, 'The Flash' did this properly.
Of course when looking back on most recent villains of the show, fans are divisive solely based on what they like or prefer. There had been a handful of awesome villains, and bad villains, but I want to focus on one villain who had so much potential, only to be wasted by the same stupidity that plagues the entire series as a whole:
Red Death
What a complete miss on the shows end for this one... When it was revealed that we would finally get Red Death as a villain on the show, we were all excited since the last the show even referenced the character was way back in Season 5. Back then they wanted to establish the killing legacy Cicada left, as they held a higher kill count compared to The Red Death, still noting that Red Death was a killer to some inhumane degree.
Sadly, thanks to Eric Wallace, he chose to compact such an intriguing and hyped up character fans of the show had wanted for years, into a 5-episode arc that heavily relied on cheesy callbacks to older Batman films. The concept of using Batwoman for The Red Death was not a bad idea -- the execution was handled very poorly was all...
The only praise that whole arc even truly deserves is that one fight scene we got between The Flash and Red Death, where, despite the janky effects, it was a superior fight utilizing clever ideas with the lightning-powered batarang, and the Spider-man web sling.
Coming out of The Red Death storyline, fans proposed a much better concept that should have been done for telling the characters story, and frankly the show should have done it: Use Oliver Queen to play the Red Death for the entire season, rather than Batwoman for a 5-episode arc. Oliver Queen had been established as The Arrowverse's 'Batman', so the show could have still pulled off an amazing "comic-accurate" version of the character, with an emotional connection to Barry, that could have last throughout the entirety of the condensed final season.
Plus, am I the only one who would have wanted to see a Red Death suit with a broken arrow, rather than the bat symbol with lightning striking down the middle? That would have been super cool!
The episode Oliver Queen appeared in this season was great, but when you really put all the cards on the table, using him in a more effective and emotional way against Barry sounds so much better.
Who was a villain on 'The Flash' you believe had so much potential only to be wasted by Eric Wallace?