Iris West started on The Flash as a journalist, and it’s time for her to get back to it.
In The Flash‘s first season, Iris was a hardworking journalist. Her strength of spirit and tenacity made her a natural fit for the field dedicated to uncovering and reporting the truth for the public good.
But after learning that Barry is the Flash and her fiance, Eddie, died to stop Eobard Thawne, her narrative started shifting from an individual character who happens to be in a relationship to a character’s whose sole purpose is to be in a relationship with the protagonist.
WestAllen’s season 4 catchphrase — “We are The Flash” — epitomizes the way Iris stopped being a character in her own right in favor of being a love interest. The introduction of her daughter from the future only threatens to continue that pattern. But it shouldn’t have to.
The Flash‘s fourth season made a few weak overtures to taking Iris back to her journalistic roots; she returned to working on her blog about The Flash and crowdsourced sightings of Clifford DeVoe ahead of Barry’s final showdown with him. On the whole, though, she did not have much to do besides marry Barry.
Yes, she got an episode where she accidentally took Barry’s speedster powers, and this episode did the most work for her in a while. However, there was not much follow-up to that episode. She remained behind the desk at S.T.A.R. Labs, supervising the work of all the talented people around her rather than playing her part.
The Flash has struggled in its treatment of its female characters, failing to give them story arcs that give them agency in the way the stories for the male characters do. And Iris’s treatment has perhaps been the worst. Her story in season 3, let’s remember, was knowing that she was likely to die in the season finale.
But why this lack of agency? Iris is a reporter, and the skills of a reporter — digging into stories, cultivating sources, getting to know the city and its beats — could be quite beneficial to Team Flash, especially as the team digs into their meta of the week or season’s Big Bad.
Moreover, following Iris in the field would allow us to see Iris’s skills and get to know Central City as a character rather than spending the majority of each episode in S.T.A.R. Labs.
Perhaps most importantly, though, it will send an important message in a time when “fake news” is rampant, journalists are being shot in their newsrooms and the president is calling the media the enemy of the people.
The press is called The Fourth Estate because, in the United States, it stands alongside the three co-equal branches of government — its purpose is to hold those three branches in check.
According to the 2017 Gallup/Knight Foundation Survey on Trust, Media and Democracy, more than 8 in 10 American adults believe “the news media are critical or very important to our democracy.”
They believe that “making sure Americans have the knowledge they need to be informed about public affairs and holding leaders accountable for their actions” are among the media’s most important functions.
However, this same study also found that “Americans are more likely to say the media perform these roles poorly than to say they are performing them well.” Additionally, 43% of Americans have a negative view of the news media, 35% have a positive view and 23% are neutral.
Returning Iris to her roots as a journalist would serve as a form of representation — though rather than of gender, race or sexual orientation, it would be of a profession, one that is under attack by the current political climate.
Representation makes a difference; it humanizes people different from ourselves. And in many ways, journalists have been dehumanized more than most in the current political climate to the point of being murdered for doing their jobs.
To show Iris, a strong woman of color, as a competent, empathetic and strong journalist working to help a team of superheroes with her unique skill set would be a step forward — for journalism, for The Flash and for Iris as a character.
The Flash season 5 premieres Tuesday, October 9 at 8:00 p.m. ET on The CW.
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