YMMV / The Flash (Infinite Frontier)

• Angst? What Angst?: In One Minute War, right at the beginning when the Fraction launch their attack, the twin cities are devastated with many of the Flash Family being right at ground zero, but the only angst that occurs is Barry grieving for Iris' apparent death. While its understandable Barry and even Wally would be more preoccupied with Iris, given what she means to them, there's little to no addressing of any of the massive civilian casualties, despite Jesse, Bart, Ace, and Jay all directly being present to witness many killed while being unable to save them. Granted, the story ends with a Cosmic Retcon that undoes all the damage, but during the story and after it, no mention is made to the traumatising events, especially as they all effectively spent months fighting this war in their perspective.
• Anti-Climax: The end of One Minute War, including the defeat of the Fraction's Admiral, feels extremely rushed, with Barry leading the Flash Family into basically pulling a Flashpoint to undo the entire invasion, which basically only works at all because of a Contrived Coincidence that spooks the Fraction into backing away before they even invaded^note the Fraction's Admiral, revealed to be a natural conduit himself (and thus, immune to Cosmic Retcon time travel changes like the one Barry was pulling off) ends up getting into a fight with Wally, who was unaware of the plan, during which Wally ends up locking him into one of the Fraction's speed conduit battery prisons. As a result, when they reset things to before the invasion, the Admiral is still in the battery, seemingly disappearing, which unsettles the rest of the crew and prompts them to back off because something is clearly freaky with earth; had Wally not done this, the plan wouldn't have worked as the Fraction would have just continued their invasion again. It's strongly suspected that the story was meant to run a few issues longer, but Jeremy Adams had to wrap it up quicker in order to have his run end for #800 so that Si Spurrier could take over, and the result is everything being compacted. The following arc, where Wally and Linda's newborn son is kidnapped by Granny Goodness, similarly ends up feeling incredibly rushed, as there's only two issues left for the story.
• Awesome Ego: It takes a bit for his confidence to return, but Wally West is the Fastest Man Alive and still absolutely loves it. He races dinosaurs, punches out Nazis, kicks giant alien butt, utterly demolishes an Alternate Universe version of the Legion of Doom, all the while barely able to contain how much he's enjoying it. This is when he's trying to retire; when he has his He's Back! moment, he practically taunts Savitar over who's the real chosen one of the Speed Force. For the rest of the run, Wally remains endearingly confident and assured of himself, while enjoying every moment of being a hero.
• Awesome Moments: The He's Back! moment in the finale of the first arc, which gives both a reminder of how cocky Wally is but also how utterly deserving he is of said cockiness. In the end when Wally mockingly tells Savitar he'll give the evil speedster a headstart, Savitar realizes he's way out of his league and races out of there...only for Wally to catch him with no effort at all.
• Character Rerailment:
  • Wally West is finally happy again, but what's more he's once again as fully formed as he was pre-The Flash: Rebirth. He's got the Deadpan Snarker charm, love of his powers, overconfidence and brashness he's always had while also maintaining the character growth he underwent, while still acknowledging his mental health struggles that he's had since Barry's death. In other words, he's neither defined solely as a jokey non-serious character nor a punching bag woobie, able to balance both, as he did during the height of his popularity.
  • Barry Allen is once again written as a 40-something father figure to his adult nephew, and is primarily characterised as a good natured, dorky scientist. This is a great return-to-form for Barry himself, who during the time he spent as the lead of the title again, he was primarily characterised by his new, Darker and Edgier origin and written more as a police officer solving a case instead of a scientist, much to the chagrin of anyone who knew his character well before that.
  • Heat Wave is once again a Badass Normal Anti-Villain, after the Rogues were controversially reinvented as unstable metahumans, and Rory himself in particular being depicted as a barely-contained psychopath.
    • The Rogues as a whole, later, when they're given a paid position as law enforcers on behalf of the mayor's office. Besides the fact they seem to have collectively been restored to Badass Normal types with fancy gadgets, but its specifically mentioned they've largely retired from crime and Wally's dynamic with them is firmly Friendly Enemy territory, with the antagonism coming off more as mutual teasing while they still decide to give going straight another chance.
  • Odd case of it with Gregory Wolfe, it's revealed that much of Wolfe's Flanderization was due to being chosen as the avatar for the Lords of Order, who connect to his draconian view of order and take it up a notch. Some of his previous continuity snarl is excused as him losing much of his memory while their thrall, while he once more demonstrates his long-forgotten metahuman powers in order to keep Blacksmith in check.
  • Minor case with Pied Piper, in that its once more Wally he's best friends with rather than Barry, is seemingly no longer with Captain Singh (at least, David isn't present with him at Wally's barbecue later, and no mention is made of him), and his comments about the benefits offered by Michael's company indicate where his politics lie. It's mostly notable for the fact he actually initially appears in the run as a minor background villain, but Adams wrote him back into the story with actual presence to mediate this.
• Estrogen Brigade: Wally's always been regarded as an attractive guy, but there's been a lot of commentary from the fandom about just how attractive he is in this run in particular. The time-jumps lead to a incidents of Wally being near-naked twice (firstly during the caveman jump, then when he returns to the present and is Naked on Arrival), or him in outfits that emphasize his looks (Bart's outfit, which is very skin-tight and looks even moreso on Wally's full-grown figure), or he just pulls off amazingly (the stolen SS uniform he wears while in Jay's form, and Jesse's Liberty Belle get-up when he jumps into hers, both of which result in Good-Looking Privates). What's more though, the fact Wally's fatherhood status is emphasized, particularly when he meets a full-grown Irey in his second-last time-jump and can barely hold back Tears of Joy at seeing his daughter, which to many makes him officially a DILF.
• I Knew It!:
  • Some fans were calling the reveal that Wally didn't cause the Speed Force explosion at Sanctuary after the first issue, given how easily it explains what happened, which didn't even make sense within the story it was being told in. That and how many people dislike Heroes in Crisis.
  • Linda's powers being due to pregnancy. It was the most common fan theory on social media as to where the powers came from, especially as genre works have often done similar plots, so when the second annual ends with a heavily hinted realisation of the source of the powers, few were surprised.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Linda Park-West has Green Arrow, Barry Allen, and Mister Terrific utterly terrified when they have to tell her about Wally's condition. The result of this was a lot of jokes about how much of a Badass Normal she is (which is somewhat justified when one remembers Terminal Velocity (DC Comics)).
  • Jesse Quick, while also crossing into Memetic Psychopath, thanks to how she deals with the goons in the Mad Max-style Alternate Universe. It's such an awesome takedown that people less familiar with Jesse immediately became fans and talked up how badass she was, while also commenting on her evident lack of a Thou Shalt Not Kill rule given there was no way the goons could have survived.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: A small case during The Search for Barry Allen, as Max Mercury and Jesse Quick are paired to work together and they spend the adventure engaging in Casual Danger Dialogue and working together. To readers unfamiliar with the characters, their banter ends up reading as flirting; to be clear, Max was a mentor figure to Jesse's father and has always been portrayed as a Parantal Substitute who she sees as like her grandfather.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Calling Barry Allen The Scrappy would be an extreme, but he was controversial among fans because of his Creator's Pet status, his Character Shilling, and his personality change and de-aging that depicted him as a late-20s man defined entirely by his childhood trauma. His appearances in the main title depict him more explicitly as Older and Wiser, he's no longer the sole focus, he's not heavily shilled (and in fact, admits to many of his own mistakes and encourages Wally), and zero mention is made of his dead mom, instead focusing his characterisation on his love of science and his family.
  • Similarly, Wallace West. While dislike of him declined after Wally's reintroduction, there was the general opinion that he just didn't add anything to the family or have much to do beyond angst about his daddy issues. However, Adams gives him the new role as the Straight Man to Wally, and leans into the cousin relationship between the two... by having them bicker and tease each other, which also separates him from Bart Allen. His scenes with Wally are very well-liked, and are a far cry from the Rebirth era Wallace, since he's actually getting attention from a Flash, and shows that he can be a good sidekick when given the chance, especially when it's as hands off as Wally's mentoring is.
• Salvaged Story:
  • The opening arc serves as one for Heroes in Crisis, revealing that Savitar trying to escape the Speed Force caused the explosion that killed everyone at Sanctuary, rather than Wally losing control of his powers.
  • Jeremy Adams does this for himself in regards to Pied Piper, after initially having him appear as one of many brainwashed villains without Wally commenting on the fact his best friend was part of the mob trying to kill him. Adams, having been unaware of how important Piper was to Wally in previous runs until he was informed of it online, wrote Piper back in later, with the two commenting on the previous interaction and both musing how things were so hectic in that moment they didn't even have a chance to directly address one-another.
  • Warden Gregory Wolfe, the Warden of Iron Heights, has been subject to a lot of Flanderisation since he was first introduced as well as had bizarre Continuity Snarl in play. The run reveals he was chosen as an avatar of the Lords of Order, and his past behaviour is due to them basically hollowing out his mind and he wasn't always the one in the driver's seat. His secret metahuman powers are also once more depicted, after they were forgotten about in favour of depicting him as having Fantastic Racism against people with powers (and said fantastic racism never comes up).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • During the montage of Wally manifesting in the bodies of different speedsters, at no point is Bart's cousin XS from Legion of Super-Heroes featured.
  • Similarly, and as noted below, neither Max Mercury nor Jesse Quick played a big role despite the love letter nature of the first arc to the speedster legacy. This unfortunately continues into the rest of the run, as while most of the rest of the family get focus in other books, neither Max or Jesse get notable appearances in any other books and remain the least used speedsters in the family.
  • During One Minute War, all the Speedsters are united to fight off the Fraction...except Avery Ho, Godspeed, and Meena Dhawan; Avery and August at least get their own short adventures in a tie-in issue, fighting the Fraction forces elsewhere, but Meena's not even mentioned.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In an Offscreen Moment of Awesome sort of way; in the second-last issue of the first arc, Wally has a montage of jumping into other speedsters during interesting times, specifically Max Mercury in the Wild West, Wallace West in the present, Jesse Quick during her Liberty Belle days, Barry during the Silver Age, etc. Though the potential for Arc Fatigue was a risk if they continued, one can't help but wonder what happened in some of those, particularly since only Max and Barry's incidents have any plot indication (Barry's was during the time he encountered Mopee, Max's was something involving buffalo). Jesse's incident especially raises the implications about the Gender Flip of that jump and how that worked, never mind the fact it was a missed opportunity to showcase the 2000s-era JSA again.
  • The introduction of a caveman Flash in the first issue brings with it the confirmation of pre-Max Mercury speedsters, which had been indicated once in the past but had yet to be explored. This arc provided the perfect opportunity to explore such a thing, but alas the caveman Flash is the only pre-Max speedster we see and Wally only ever jumps into existing Flash characters.
• Unexpected Character: #799 features the return of three characters no one ever expected to see in anything, including one who technically wasn't born. Granny Goodness had in her possession Robert Long (Donna Troy's son who originally died in a car crash with his dad and sister), Cerdian (Tempest's son who was killed in the Spectre's rampage during Infinite Crisis), and Mister Terrific's son (with Granny implying she stole him from Paula Holt's womb as she was dying).
• WTH, Costuming Department?: Jesse Quick has never had great luck with settling on a costume that looks good and is universally liked^note even her most popular and well-regarded look has a Broken Base attached to it, but her current suit featured in this run hasn't changed matters. It seems they tried to de-emphasise her sexuality by getting rid of the shorts and leotards she used to wear, but instead she's got the orange Painted-On Pants that just emphasises her ass even more, while the rest of the outfit seems to be a mix-and-match of elements from her previous looks, few of which go well together.

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