How The Flash Almost Had His Own (Bizarre) TV Show In Early 2000s - Screen Rant

While The Flash has been going for almost seven years alongside The CW's expanding superhero plans as part of the Arrowverse, the Scarlet Speedster was close to having a series in the early 2000s. Since 2014, The Flash has stood as one of Arrowverse's most prominent shows as Barry Allen and his team take on dangerous metahumans every week. Even though the comic book genre has expanded on TV over the years, it wasn't always like that back in the early 2000s. As networks and studios were still figuring out how to bring comic book properties every year, there were only a handful of TV shows and movies that featured superheroes.

In 2001, Smallville became the first comic book series in a long time to run on television, following the story of Clark Kent's young years before becoming Superman. The Superman prequel, starring CW alumnus Tom Welling, ran for ten seasons, becoming the longest superhero show of all time. In many ways, Smallville paved the way for the comic book TV era to exist the way it does today, including the Arrowverse. The Arrowverse even went as far as acknowledging that fact by making Smallville part of their Multiverse during Crisis on Infinite Earths. While The Flash has been on the air for seven years, the fastest man alive could have had his own show as early as the mid-2000s.

While The Flash ran as a series in the 1990s starring John Wesley Shipp (who has become part of the Arrowverse with his Barry Allen and Jay Garrick, who will appear in Stargirl season 2), CBS canceled it after only one season. However, in September 2003, via Variety, The WB (before it was The CW) was developing a new Flash series from writer/producer Todd Komarnicki (Resistance, Sully) for their 2004 fall slate. However, it wouldn't have exactly been like the CBS and CW versions of the Scarlet Speedster. While The WB's The Flash never went forward, there are multiple known details about it, making it one of the stranger comic book adaptations.

The Flash Wouldn't Have A Costume

Smallville fans will remember the almost-unbreakable rules of "no tights, no flights" that ran through the show until Clark became Superman in the series finale. However, that was a structure that The Flash was going with as well. The WB project was aiming for not having the titular hero in the iconic red costume and cowl. Even though it made sense not to have Clark don a costume during his teen years, Smallville eventually did begin to put him in proto-suits as he became Metropolis' The Blur. Clark was never born as Superman as that was an entity he created once he had gained more experience was at the point where he knew that an alter ego had to be created.

But The Flash would have been a different entity as he becomes the fastest man alive the day he gets his powers. There isn't that same build-up that there is to Clark's origin story. Even the Arrowverse iteration had Barry become The Flash instantly, despite his job. While it was never clear if The Flash would have avoided the costume altogether, it was a strange pitch from the get-go. Had the show moved forward and never had their Flash suit up even once, it would be a weird direction. But that was only the beginning of Komarnicki and WB's bizarre adaptation.

Time Travel Was At The Core Of The Series

Having the fastest man alive time travel is nothing new for viewers of Arrowverse's The Flash series. However, The WB's original project was going to put time travel at the center of the show, maybe even more so than The CW adaptation with Grant Gustin, who should appear in the DCEU. Former WBTV boss Peter Roth had envisioned the show to see our speeding hero travel in time as he would go into the past and future. The time travel element would allow The Flash to save countless lives while undoing any errors. Komarnicki had described the story being about a hero who was "aimlessly drifting through life and barely moving at the speed of life" until he gained the power to move faster than normal humans.

According to Komarnicki, The Flash would find himself missing the present while being somewhere in the future. Carolyn Bernstein, who was the VP of drama development at The WB, had described to Variety that The Flash would have weekly self-contained plots, while also keeping the element of ongoing serialized storylines. The Time Tunnel show from the 1960s was something they were looking at for inspiration. While Bernstein did talk about how the DC drama would be a weekly adventure series, we will never know if having a speedster time-traveling like in the Arrowverse every week would have worked. Even The CW's The Flash doesn't do that with their hero as time travel has been established as incredibly risky.

Flash Had An Odd Gotham Connection

Tim Burton's Gotham City in red and black like Matt Reeves's The Batman

While Flash fans know that Barry comes from Central City, the 2003 project would have been set in a different city altogether. Rather than be from Central City, this Flash would come from Gotham City. The series outline revealed that he would have just graduated from college before becoming a speeding superhero. Why Gotham was chosen as the location is a mystery in itself. It's possible they wanted to utilize a more famous location from the DC Universe as Gotham is definitely more familiar to mainstream audiences than The Flash's Central City is.

Whether or not The Flash would always be permanently set in Gotham City was never clear either. But given that he would constantly be traveling back and forward in time every week, it probably wouldn't have mattered. There is also the potential that at some point down the line, Central City would have somehow been incorporated in later episodes or seasons. But by taking place in Gotham, it would then have forced the creative team to establish if there was a Batman and if not, why there wasn't. Back then, there were even tighter rules from Warner Bros.'s film division about not wanting to see either an Arrowverse or DCEU style Batman on TV, which is slightly different today.

Never Specified Which Flash It Would Follow

With all the other bizarre elements that The WB was looking at with The Flash, they never even made it clear which speedster they were going to use from the diverse family of Flash characters. With a bare synopsis of the hero coming from Gotham City and consistently time traveling to fight crime, it was a very loose character description. The only other clue that Komarnicki had provided was that the character would have a "cool 21st-century mantra" to help guide his journey: "Live fast so others don't die young." It wouldn't be shocking if The Flash were going to be centered on an original character and not someone from the comics. While the mystery lead would go back and forth between the past and present, Komarnicki hinted that it would be a challenge for him, as he would let his own present life go past him, while he would use his gifts to help others.

While The Flash's main character was a mystery, there would be another big DC element part of the series. Bernstein had detailed that our hero would have a mentor who would train him, as it would help establish that there he wasn't the first person to take on the Flash name. It wouldn't be a stretch to guess that the mentor figure would have perhaps been Jay Garrick. The idea of using the Flash legacy made it sound like that the show would possibly incorporate DC's Flash Family, which has iconic characters like Barry, Jay, Wally West, Bart Allen, Jesse Quick, and many more. But whether or not that would have ever happened, will never be answered as The WB ultimately never went forward with the series.

Given how bizarre the entire idea sounded, it may have been for the best that The Flash didn't get greenlighted past development. Even though they were clearly using the source material to some extent, they would have never done it as well as the Arrowverse's The Flash show have for seven years. But it wasn't all bad for The WB as they did get introduce Impulse in Smallville season 4, where he was played by Kyle Gallner who became part of their Justice League years later. Had The WB's The Flash happened, it would have been intriguing to see if they were ever going to have anything to do with Smallville, despite how bizarre the pitch sounded.

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About The Author

Andy Behbakht (872 Articles Published)

Andy is a senior writer at Screen Rant as he has covered the world of entertainment journalism since 2010, mostly superheroes and comic book media. In addition to his work as a reporter, Andy co-hosts The Flash Podcast, Titans Podcast while running the entire DC TV Podcasts network. He is also the founder/editor-in-chief of The Marvel Report since Fall 2015.