It's been six months since Barry Allen's victory over Savitar and his sacrifice to the Speed Force for the greater good. His team attempts to move on with their lives, including safeguarding Central City, yet secretly hoping for the scarlet speedster's return, which grows even stronger with the escalating threat of the metahumans and the other unknown dangers emerging from the shadows. Even if their wish is fulfilled by some miracle, will it be the same Flash who is lost to them? And will this reborn hero become great enough to finally claim his destiny as The Fastest Man Alive as he prepares for the grand battle of 'The Fastest Man Alive vs. Fastest Mind Alive'???!!!!
For recap, see Recap.The Flash 2014.
Tropes in The Flash (2014) Season Four:
- An Aesop:
- The early episodes of the season have the message that couples counseling is a perfectly normal thing. Barry and Iris attend counseling after the problems that have arisen due to the trauma they experienced last season, despite as well as Barry's very natural aversion at first. A reminder that even the most loving of couples can still have issues, and that a third person advocate can help resolve those, diminishing the negative stigma usually associated with counciling.
- Joe's continued mixed emotions to Cecile's surprise pregnancy, partially ecstatic at being a father again and partially anxious about having another baby at his age. Barry and Cecile remind him it's a very normal and relevant reaction at any age, so he therefore has no reason to feel guilty, with Cecile admitting she's been feeling the same, and it's all right to lean on his loving family for aid and support in raising and caring for the soon to be Baby Horton-West.
- The horrors of human trafficking are demonstrated, simply in a case of Show, Don't Tell. They show Weeper's plight as a human commodity to Amunet, and Iris, Caitlin/Killer Frost, Felicity and others' pitying reactions instead of harping on how slavery is wrong. Additionally, the fact that the Weeper is male while Amunet is female, as well as the disgustingly sexual undertones of the entire scene, firmly avert Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male and demonstrates that males really can be in danger of human trafficking too.
- "Fury Rogue" addresses constantly that one should give themselves the time to grieve the lost loved ones, which is an important message.
- Affably Evil: Amunet Black. Even while she's selling meta-humans into slavery, she smiles and laughs, having the time of her life. It makes her someone fans just Love to Hate.
- Arc Words: "We are The Flash". This also serves as the title for the season finale.
- Artistic License – Music: In 4x22's opening scene, the "Hallelujah Chorus" having noticeable edits even though it's playing In-Universe can be forgiven per Rule of Drama. DeVoe's terrible attempts at "conducting", on the other hand, can not. Twice during this scene, he conducts a piece that is written in four - the first time, he's off rhythm and conducts it in five, and the second time it's in two.
- Big Bad Ensemble: DeVoe will be the main villain, as he got to bring Barry back for some reason. Amunet Black is also a contender, although DeVoe proves to be the bigger threat between the two.
- Bloodless Carnage: The ARGUS guard who has a grenade blow up in his own hand leaves a remarkably intact corpse.
- Broken Aesop: Ralph convinces Joe that it's wrong to use fake evidence to clear Barry, by planting fibres to "prove" that Marlize planted DeVoe's body in Barry's apartment. A few episodes later, Ralph uses fake evidence to clear Barry, by impersonating DeVoe and "proving" he's still alive.
- Came Back Strong: If the promo and Word of God is anything to go by, this will the unstated result of Barry Allen/The Flash's epic rebirth and return to his superhero ways.
- Supported by Grant Gustin and Word of God's EW interview:
Grant: “Initially, Barry is pretty scrambled when he comes out of the Speed Force,”. “He’s not himself, he’s talking nonsense. The way I see it, when he was in the Speed Force, he experienced his whole life laid out in front of him from start to finish. So in some sense, he comes out very wise, kind of knowing everything, but he has no understanding of what he’s seen, so he comes out very jumbled and talking what he thinks makes complete sense, but just nonsense to the rest of the crew.”EP Andrew Kreisberg: “The most important thing about Barry this year is that the experience of being in the Speed Force was a bit of a baptism for him. The premiere episode is called ‘The Flash Reborn’ and Barry, in a way, has been born again. His experience in there has really washed away a lot of his sins and cleansed him of a lot of his doubts, his fears, and his guilts, and it really is leaving him free and clear to just have an open road and a fresh start. He really loves being The Flash again.”Grant: “A huge weight has been lifted and he’s forgiven himself again of all the mistakes he made the last couple years and people that he’s hurt,” Grant agreed. “He’s ready to move forward with the team and move forward with Iris [Candice Patton] and be happy Barry again and save Central City.”“I’m having fun with it, just getting to laugh things off a little bit more again as the character,”“When we see a bad guy that rolls around, a villain of the week, it’s not such a daunting task. We can have a little bit of fun taking down these guys now.”Andrew: “It’s not in the titles, but every one of these shows – whether it’s Supergirl, Arrow, or Flash – it really is like Arrow Begins, Flash Begins, and Supergirl Begins,”“Now it’s season 4 and he’s really become The Flash in the comic books, the one who really is in full mastery of his skills and has the emotional maturity that he has in the comics.” - Create Your Own Villain: Team Flash learn that by springing Barry back from the Speed Force, they essentially recreated the antimatter wave like the Particle Accelerator accident from Season 1, and with it a new batch of metas that will wreak havoc. What they don't know for now is that someone spurred them into doing so anyway.
- Cryptic Conversation: Pretty much anytime DeVoe and Marlize talk to each other.
- Dark Humor: In a Call-Back to an early season 1 episode, a mugger attempts to rob and shoot Ralph and Barry. Due to Ralph's elasticity, the bullets rebound into the mugger, effectively shooting him in the leg and the ass. The entire scene is somewhat hilarious to watch as the mugger in question writhes on the ground in obvious pain.
- A Day in the Limelight: The girls of Team Flash have one in the titular "Girls Night Out" where things go awry during Iris' bachelorette party. Barry doesn't even wear the Flash suit during this episode (mainly because he spent it absolutely smashed at his own bachelor party).
- Demoted to Extra: Jesse Quick and Jay Garrick, show up only once this season — "Enter Flashtime".
- A Glass of Chianti: Clifford and Marlize often celebrate their individual victories with glasses of champagne. Clifford also secretly puts a Fantastic Drug—secreted from a metahuman he created—into his wife's drink to suppress her humanity from rebelling against his increasingly monstrous behavior.
- Happily Married: Barry and Iris, following Crisis on Earth-X.
- He's Back!: We'll see Barry Allen so much sooner than we think.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: Big Bad DeVoe's ultimate Evil Plan, called "The Enlightenment", remains a mystery throughout much of the season.
- In Prison with the Rogues: a short arc of several episodes has Barry ending up imprisoned in Iron Heights after being framed for the murder of DeVoe; the same prison where all of the metahumans he catches are incarcerated. Since nobody knows he's the Flash, he is initially put in a regular cell. Then warden Wolfe discovers he is the Flash and has him locked in the metahuman wing with power dampeners, where he's celled up with the bus meta rogues he had been rounding up in that season. They however don't know yet that he's the Flash. After Barry learns that Wolfe is Evil All Along and plans to sell all the metas to Amunet, he uses his scientific skill to break him and all the other metas out before Amunet arrives. The metas eventually confront Wolfe and since they had reached an area outside of the Power Dampener's range, they're all ready to take revenge. So to save his own skin, Wolfe reveals to the metas that Barry Allen is the Flash and he was the one who locked them all up to begin with, causing the metas to all turn on him. Barry is only saved by Becky Sharpe who had a Heel Realization and turns against the other bus metas using her luck manipulation. Unfortunately, the success is shortlived where DeVoe himself shows up and kills all of the bus metas by draining their powers, while taking Becky's body for himself.
- Left the Background Music On: DeVoe uses Kilg%re's powers to make the Hallelujah Chorus play in the background during his massacre of the ARGUS guards. He even spends a large amount of the "fight" conducting the piece.
- Lighter and Softer: After the dark tone brought by Zoom and Savitar, the series takes on a campier tone than even the first season. At least at first; as the season progresses it gets darker, though not as dark as the previous season.
- Older Is Better: Cisco created a new Flash suit for Barry and upgraded it with every piece of technology he could fit, most of which even Barry didn't know about (including such things as an Iron Man-esque palm mounted energy weapon, inflatable feature in case of water, lockdown to prevent his identity from being exposed, self-destruct). That made the suit a MASSIVE liability when confronting Kilgore, a Technopath who promptly took control of the suit and even turned Barry into People Puppets. When they resolved the problem, Barry asked Cisco to remove everything but the essentials like tracking, monitoring vitals and communication.
- Orcus on His Throne: For most of the early part of the season, all DeVoe has ever done to oppose Team Flash is with his remotely-controlled Samuroid, and nothing else. He doesn't need to lift a finger, because apparently everything that Team Flash have done is All According to Plan (his, that is).
- Product Placement: This season is sponsored by Microsoft, so Everyone Owns A Surface. More than that, a number of the earlier episodes included bonus "Stretched Scenes" that nominally feature Ralph, but actually place a Surface front and center as a Similar to the Show ad.
- Revisiting the Roots: The series is lighthearted as before, Barry's forensic knowledge has more emphasis and the team returned to Barry, Cisco, Caitlin, Joe and Iris with the addition of Harry and Ralph.
- Running Gag: In the earlier episodes, "This house is bitchin'." Revealed to be Arc Words connected to Barry and Iris's future daughter, Nora.
- Sanity Slippage: As DeVoe goes through bodies and gains more superpowers, he slowly loses any morality and conscience he still had left and becomes a full-fledged Sadist who goes out of his way to torture and murder anyone who happens to be remotely in his way.
- Self-Made Lie: "Mixed Signals" features a trio of programmers whose claim to fame is an app they created and sold to a tech company, earning them billions. It turns out they stole the idea from their colleague Ramsay Deacon, whom they omitted from their history. When Deacon gets his Technopathy powers, he kills one of the programmers and spends the episode hunting down the other two. The Flash eventually saves both, but not before Deacon forces one of them to admit on live camera that he and his colleagues stole the app.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Barry Allen and Ralph Dibny blatantly hate one another, yet their rivalry is largely Played for Laughs.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: This is something of a recurring theme for the season. Even by the standards of the show’s villains, Amunet is depicted as especially heinous for kidnapping and selling metahumans. DeVoe ends up taking this trope to its natural conclusion by pulling a Grand Theft Me on multiple people, subjugating their consciousnesses, for his own benefit. And then it turns out that he’s been drugging his wife into compliance to keep her working for him.
- Story-Breaker Power:
- As of "Enter Flashtime", Barry demonstrates he is now able to move so fast that even a nuclear explosion moves so slowly it appears it has stopped, with only people Barry touches or other Speedsters able to even recognize anything is happening. It really begs the question how anyone could possibly beat him or even inconvenience him at this point.
- DeVoe's entire character arc revolves around him gaining so many superpowers that absolutely nothing can physically stop him. By the end of the season he has 13 different superpowers, 11 of which can be used offensively. Marlize even explicitly states that he went as far as to choose those specific powers so none of Barry's allies (Green Arrow, the Legends, even Supergirl) could help stop him.
- To Be Lawful or Good: This argument is what got Ralph fired from the CCPD. Barry caught him faking evidence to ensure that a guilty man went to prison. Barry didn't see it that way at the time, and still doesn't agree with Ralph's more Anti-Hero approach to life.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Even before his transformation into the Thinker, Devoe was a very plain looking middle-aged man contrasting his attractive wife, Marlize. After his transformation, his body slowly detiorates due to his powers and needs the chair to even function properly. Further increasing this trope.
- Unholy Matrimony: DeVoe (aka "The Thinker") and his wife Marlize are this, with him having Super-Intelligence and her being a brilliant engineer who can bring his ideas to life. Deconstructed when DeVoe grows more and more unhinged, with Marlize becoming horrified by the man he's turned into.
