The long-awaited introduction of Sue Dearbon on The Flash is a big deal for fans of the show for many reasons and thankfully, her small-screen debut did not disappoint, giving us an episode that both played up her charming chemistry with Ralph and slyly subverted some of the worst aspects of her character’s comics story. But Sue’s arrival isn’t just a great piece of highly anticipated fan service. No, it’s also a significant part of a much larger, long overdue trend. Because as we head into the back half of Season 6, The Flash is finally telling stories about its female characters, and the show has rarely felt so exciting to watch.
Despite its success as a lighter alternative to the grimdark feel of some of the other Arrowverse series, The Flash has never quite known what to do with its women. For the initial seasons of its existence the show only really had two of them in the first place, and frequently regulated both Iris West and Caitlin Snow to the sidelines of other people’s stories. Iris, unfortunately, spent a lot of time waiting for Barry to save her from various threats, while Caitlin seemed to exist only to take part in doomed love affairs and spout science babble every so often at STAR Labs.
As the series went on, The Flash eventually added more female characters to the main canvas, but continually struggled to give them anything of real significance to do. Many were little more than love interests, and the long-promised storylines for Iris and Caitlin seemed to never really materialize in any significant way. Iris was largely forgettable as Team Flash leader during Barry’s Speed Force-induced absence, and even though the introduction of Caitlin’s icy meta alter ego Killer Frost was exciting, the show couldn’t really decide on basics like how her powers worked.
In earlier seasons, the show regularly failed the Bechdel test simply because its two leading ladies never talked to one another. (Even though they worked virtually in the same room most of the time!) And when The Flash remembered to have things like very special girl power episodes, they involved strange, out of character decisions like Iris’s bachelorette party being attended almost entirely by people she barely knew. Even the first time the series gave us a primary female villain was something of a flop, as Grace Gibbons’ Cicada 2.0 turned out to be on the world’s dullest revenge quest.