Is the Final Season of The Flash Sacrificing Story for Nostalgia?

The Flash returns for its ninth and final season next month with the last season of the long running The CW series ending not only Barry Allen's story, but also the network's interconnected universe of DC inspired shows. It's truly the end of an era and as such, it's no surprise that Season 9 of The Flash is set to feature numerous guest appearances. Stephen Amell and David Ramsey from Arrow, Nicole Maines from Supergirl, and Javicia Leslie from Batwoman have all already been announced as well as the return of Keiynan Lonsdale as Wally West just to name a few and fans are curious about potential other character returns as well. But while a finale as big as The Flash's is the place for a lot of familiar faces, it's starting to feel like the series could be coming close to trading story for nostalgia in its final run.

Fundamentally, the nostalgia versus story concern comes down to how much time, episode-wise, does The Flash have to wrap up its existing stories and planned new stories in a way that feels satisfying to fans. While previous seasons of The Flash have averaged around 21 episodes (the first four seasons had 23 episodes each while the most recent four have had between 18 and 22 each), the final season of The Flash will have a mere 13. That is quite a bit less time for story — and going into Season 9, there's a good bit of story to deal with.

The Flash still has stories it needs to wrap up.

Over the past few seasons, The Flash has set up the future for Barry and Iris in ways that are pretty easy to track. We know that they have children who are young adults 20+ years in the future which means that the present-day timeline is ticking down to the birth of Nora West Allen. The Season 8 finale also set up a couple of other storylines that presumably need resolution. The first is the Negative Speed Force and that mysterious blue crystal that showed up in a lab in 2049 that more than a few fans are convinced mean Cobalt Blue is coming. We also saw Cecile develop telekinesis as a new power on top of her empathetic capabilities. Most significantly, however, is probably Caitlin Snow's storyline. The end of the season saw Caitlin working with Mark Blaine to try to revive Frost following her death. The finale episode ended with the Consciousness Resurrection Chamber malfunctioning and opening to reveal someone inside identifying themselves as "a friend" — someone who doesn't seem to be either Caitlin or Frost.

Season 9 of The Flash also has some major stories planned.

That's what we have carrying into Season 9, but we also have some idea of what Season 9 will see as well. One of the early Season 9 casting announcements was that Richard Harmon had been cast as Owen Mercer/Captain Boomerang which made it clear well before the official synopsis that Barry will be facing a group of Rogues in the final season. There's also a new speedster wanting to build a time machine to contend with, as shown in the recently released extended season trailer, and the suggestion that the entire timeline could once again be in danger.

A lot of story and a lot of stars, just not a lot of time.

These are all big story elements and while aspects of them do fit in together — all good storytelling is like putting together a puzzle that has many pieces — adding various guests and cameos and such adds an additional burden on how to make it all make sense. In a regular-length season, it would be easier to map out how The Flash could make it work, but this isn't a regular-length season. How all these moving parts are organized has to fit into less time — something that itself may be even further complicated by the fact that The Flash is expected to follow previous seasons and be broken into at least two "Graphic Novel" storyline arcs.

Arguably, The Flash may be able to pull it all off. After all, the Arrowverse did manage to pull off a full-on Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover a few years ago so we know large storytelling with multiple character cameos in a compressed time frame is possible. Grouping returning characters could help — Ramsey, Amell, and Lonsdale are all seemingly appearing in the same episode near the end of the season — but the show will also have to be careful about how it divides up the episodes in terms of story, too. Maines is returning for what Wallace described as a "very special Season 9 episode" which will have Iris and Nia investigate their own mystery. While that sounds like a "standalone" episode, maybe the series is using this to better incorporate some of the loose threads as they race towards the finish line whereas in previous seasons it would have been more independent.

Thus far, the Arrowverse final season and series finale track record isn't great. Both Batwoman and DC's Legends of Tomorrow weren't really given the opportunity to have proper finales and while Arrow did have a planned final season and its finale offered fans a lot of closure for Oliver Queen's story, that overall ending was somewhat marred with the penultimate episode serving as a backdoor pilot for a spinoff that ultimately was scrapped. Then the actual finale left fans with a tantalizing Green Lantern tease for Diggle which didn't get resolved until Season 8 of The Flash, a resolution that didn't necessarily sit well with many fans. One could even argue that Arrow's final season more broadly suffered for its short episode length as well, though it managed its story well enough through the lead up to and execution of Crisis which helped. The Flash doesn't have such a large event to structure its end. Only time will tell if The Flash manages to pull off not just a solid final season but a strong series finale — and if they can balance the nostalgia and the story.

The Flash's final season is set to premiere on Wednesday, February 8th at 8/7c on The CW.