Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for The Flash Season 8, Episode 19.The Flash Season 8, Episode 19 ended with a shocking cliffhanger — Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash’s (Tom Cavanaugh) evil avatar is back in circulation to take down Barry Allen/The Flash (Grant Gustin). Oh, and Iris West-Allen (Candice Patton) died. You know, the co-leader of Team Flash, Barry’s wife and the show’s leading lady, she’s dead now. That should have been a bigger deal, but Iris’ demise, whether short-lived or not, was treated the same way as the character has been all season, as a plot point that appears and disappears according to the creators’ needs and is then forgotten. Barry has a split second to mourn her before the episode gets down to the real business, which is Barry’s longstanding feud with Thawne, and not his longstanding love for Iris. Admittedly, showrunner Eric Wallace has promised that Barry and Iris will have a “happily ever after," but it’s been a rollercoaster ride for Iris and fans of her character.
In a season that’s been about the main characters leveling up, watching Iris turn into a shadow of herself has added insult to injury. The show has made the right decision to lean away from Barry and give the rest of Team Flash, Cecile Horton (Danielle Nicolet), Allegra Garcia (Kayla Compton), Chester P. Runk (Brandon McKnight), Caitlin Snow and Frost (Danielle Panabaker), the chance to shine and star in their own arcs. The ensemble has also increased to include guest appearances by Barry and Iris’ future children, Nora West-Allen/XS (Jessica Parker Kennedy) and Bart Allen/Impulse (Jordan Fisher), not to mention the addition of Meena Dhawan/Fast Track (Kausar Mohammed), who has already become a powerful speedster in three episodes. I mean, even Eobard Thawne (Matt Letscher) leveled up personality-wise for a couple of episodes, but Iris — leading lady Iris — can’t even finish a sentence before she vanishes into thin air.
What’s frustrating about the treatment of Iris is that this is a character who means so much to a still largely underrepresented community in superhero television. Candice Patton stepped into relatively unknown territory when she got the role of Iris West, a character who has historically been a white woman in comic books. Superhero properties have dabbled with color-blind casting, but usually for supporting roles like Lawrence Fishburne as Perry White (Man of Steel) and Billy Dee Williams as Harvey Dent (Batman Returns). Back in 2014, the creators of The Flash made the bold decision to create a more inclusive landscape for Central City, and Patton has paved the way for more Black actors to join the beloved genre in leading roles. But that doesn’t mean the show has always known what to do with her character. Despite fending off unwarranted racist vitriol for eight seasons (rather, seven seasons and a handful of episodes), Patton has not received the support that she’s deserved from the writers.
Iris was introduced as little more than Barry’s love interest, out of reach because she was with another man, Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett). Her career as a reporter and editor only rears its head when needed for plot purposes. Her strongest season was when Iris was trapped in the Mirrorverse and Patton got to flex her villainous muscle as Mirror Iris. That’s a sad indictment of Iris’ story arc.
But, despite the false starts, Iris had grown to be an almost equal partner to Barry in the show, which is why her lack of screen time and characterization so many years into the show’s run is particularly shocking. And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen an Arrowverse show sideline an actor of color — Echo Kellum, who played Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific on Arrow, and Carlos Valdes, who was part of the main cast on The Flash as Cisco Ramon/Vibe, are two actors among others who almost disappeared from their shows, leading to them eventually leaving the properties. It’s a concern that Patton’s status for The Flash’s ninth season return is still in the air.
Iris’ time sickness has been a long-drawn-out B-plot throughout Season 8 and the character herself has been absent for a large chunk of the episodes. The time sickness storyline came out of nowhere at the end of the previous season, and it eclipsed Iris’ entire development in Season 8. Instead of driving change through her work at The Central City Citizen, Iris has spent the majority of her curtailed screen time grimacing from invisible pain and looking terrified. The only bright spark was her brief investigation in Coast City with fan-favorite character Sue Dearbon (Natalie Dreyfuss). That tangent highlighted how poorly Iris’ character was handled in the season. We needed more editor-in-chief of The Central City Citizen-Iris, rather than science-fiction plotline-Iris.
What’s worse is, Iris’ prolonged illness wasn’t handled well diegetically either. Her family are concerned about her only when the plot requires it, otherwise, they hardly even mention her or worry about her. Seeing the toll that Iris’ time sickness has on her family would have helped establish a connection to her character when she wasn’t on screen. This was a lost opportunity to develop the emotional stakes throughout the season. And Iris’ arc is the only one that’s suffered from a lack of emotionality. The Deathstorm arc, the death of Frost, and the whole of “Keep it Dark” tugged at our hearts. With every episode it’s more and more obvious that Iris has become an afterthought on The Flash.
Iris had been missing for four episodes (flashbacks aside) before her return in “Negative, Part One,” so one would have expected that she’d finally overcome this niggling illness. Instead, Barry discovered that the time sickness wasn’t even about Iris, she was simply meant to be a sacrifice. The optics of that twist are regressive. It’s 2022, and the protagonist’s wife is killed to progress his storyline — didn’t we leave fridging in the '90s?
Given the importance of Iris, this is a particularly poor move by the creators. She’s not only the leading lady, but Iris is an integral part of Black representation in the superhero genre. Despite her character being inconsistently written over the course of the show, she’s been a visible part of the show and has had a positive impact on the Black community. And sidelining the main Black protagonist, and then killing her off, does her and the community a disservice. It’s possible there are behind-the-scenes reasons for the lack of screen time, but without that context, there’s no clear reason why Iris has become a supporting character instead of a lead.
The Flash Season 8 has had several strong episodes that have shone the spotlight on the ensemble cast rather than just Barry Allen. The show has introduced a new South Asian speedster and brought back Sue Dearbon for a few memorable scenes. As much as viewers can applaud the show for spreading the focus to more characters, it has come at the cost of Iris’ screen time, character development, and, now it seems, her life. Eight seasons of fans asking the creators of The Flash to do right by Iris and Candice Patton, and this is the route they go with?