The Flash Season 1

The Flash began with sweet but socially awkward nerd Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), a CSI for the Central City Police. Though a nice guy, Barry had his hands full, what with being in love with his foster sister/best friend Iris (Candice Patton), and trying to investigate his mother’s mysterious murder 15 years earlier that his father (John Wesley Shipp) had been wrongfully imprisoned for.
An accident at the local science lab caused a cloud of energy to hit the entire town, putting Barry in a coma for 6 months and eventually giving him — and many others — super human powers. Now the fastest man alive, Barry teams up with the remaining three scientists, Cisco (Carlos Valdes), Caitlin (Danielle Panabaker), and Wells (Tom Cavanagh), at the defunct STAR Labs to protect the town from these newly minted bad guy meta-humans.
The angst
Of course, that didn’t stop Barry’s personal problems. His beloved Iris ended up dating her cop father Joe’s (Jesse L. Martin) partner Eddie (Rick Cosnett), a guy too nice to hate. And like in any good superhero story, budding reporter Iris was obsessed with the new hero in town. She not only had a blog dedicated to him, but she was the one to name the mysterious streak The Flash.
By the end of the season, Iris was a full-employed journalist at Central City Picture News. Though Barry had admitted his love for her, Iris felt conflicted and decided to stay with Eddie. The love triangle may have been tedious and annoying, but we all saw an end in sight. Also, the angst did lead to a drunken night of karaoke with Caitlin, for which we can all be thankful.
The baddies
Over the course of the season, Barry fought all kinds of crazies with various comic book origins. Guys who controlled the weather, who could clone themselves or turn into poison gas or electrocute people. Women who could explode things or teleport. Shape-shifters, bullies made of steel, a bratty former scientist who uses sound waves as weapons, and two terrorists that were barely veiled copies of the Joker.
Most of those baddies ended up in the heroes’ slightly illegal underground meta prison. Since due process may not exist in Central City.
In these battles there were some truly memorable moments, like when Barry and his friends had to face a telepathic gorilla named Grodd left over from an experiment at STAR by the US government.
But the best rogues were by far the trio of Leonard Snart (Wentworth Miller), Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell), and Lisa Snart (Peyton List), AKA Captain Cold, Heat Wave, and Golden Glider. Those three were no end of trouble to the STAR squad, kidnapping various team members and, in the finale, letting all of the imprisoned metas loose.
The friends and friends who were secretly foes
Not all the metas were evil, though. There was Dr. Caitlin Snow’s fiancé Ronnie (Robbie Amell), a scientist who was assumed dead after the particle accelerator explosion that gave Barry his powers. But instead Ronnie was empowered and fused with another scientist, Dr. Martin Stein (Victor Garber).
The team eventually found the pair and helped them separate, though they could unite to form the fire-powered nuclear crime-fighter Firestorm. Unsurprisingly, that put quite the strain on Caitlin and Ronnie’s relationship.
Then there was Dr. Wells, Barry's mentor — and nemesis.
During the season, we found out that the wise, apologetic, wheelchair-bound Dr. Harrison Wells (aka Eobard Thawne) was really a time-traveling speedster who had gone back in time to kill the Flash but had instead killed Barry’s mother. Thawne lost his powers and was stuck in our time after failing to kill Barry. He killed and took over the life of the real Harrison Wells, creating the technology the he knew would eventually turn Barry into the Flash.
Thawne was just one aspect of time travel in the show. Barry's speed caused him to travel in time, inadvertently saving Cisco's life after reversing time just after Wells killed him for discovering the truth. Not to mention that someday Barry knows he will travel back in time to fight Wells on the night his mother was killed. Confused yet?
The finale
Then the season finale happened. By then the team had discovered via Cisco's lost alt world murder memories that Wells was really the Reverse-Flash, and that he’s gotten his speed powers back. Wells kidnaps Eddie and reveals his status as a time-traveler. And to add that not only is Eddie his ancestor, but that Iris eventually marries Barry. Ouch.
At the same time, Wells has set the defunct particle accelerator to come back online. Barry has to enlist the Rogues trio to help them get the prisoners to a real jail safely so they won’t die, but Snart and his friends betray the already betrayed heroes and let the villains free.
Before Barry can really deal with that situation, he and his friend Oliver/The Arrow (Stephen Amell) and Firestorm fight Wells, finally taking him down and bringing him in. But Wells isn’t done. He tells Barry everything about his past, and offers to help him save his mother. They can make a wormhole with the particle accelerator that will let Barry go back in time to save mom and Wells can go forward and get home. After some conflicted dithering — and an utter lack of sci-fi time-traveling knowledge — Barry agrees. Just after a quickie cute wedding between the star-crossed Caitlin and Ronnie, Barry uses his speed to make a wormhole and heads back to the worst night of his life.
Luckily future Barry, in the past, motions to current Barry not to intervene. Instead he gets to be by his mother’s side as she dies, assuring her that he’s fine in the future. Oh time-travel, making us cry.
With renewed purpose, Barry goes back to stop Wells from getting away. The two fight an the wormhole begins to destabilize. Wells is about to kill Barry and win the day when Eddie arrives and becomes the hero. He shoots himself, knowing that as a Thawne ancestor he has to reproduce for Wells to exist. The villain disappears as Eddie dies, a sobbing Iris at his side. At least the love triangle is over? Sorry, Eddie.
As the episode and the season end, the wormhole returns as a black hole, and Barry must speed into it to stop it.
We don’t know much about where the next season will take us, but we can guess it will involve more time-travel and a lot more running.