I have always considered The Flash Season 3 to be the worst season of the show. In fact, it wasn't even really until Season 7 that it had any real competition. Still, when I thought it was the worst season, I had it firmly as a 6/10 and thought that it was a mess, but there was more good than bad. Truthfully, I don't know if I can say that anymore. The Flash Season 3 is about many things. Heartbreak. Love. Power. Love conquering hate. But mostly importantly, and this is the one thing that the season is consistently about, Season 3 is about wasting potential. From the very first episode, it's clear the show doesn't really feel interested in following through on anything. I still think that "Flashpoint" is a solid enough premiere, and probably the best version of the story, but that's not saying much considering I think the story itself is quite bad. Point is, the show speeds (no pun intended) through something that could have easily lasted four or five episodes and instead we're back into the normal status quo. I wouldn't be as upset if the show didn't undo Barry's development at the end of Season 2 JUST to do this story, and then do nothing with it. The first half of Season 3 struggles to come up with a compelling status quo for the show. We have Alchemy creating metas that had powers in Flashpoint, which is a cool enough idea, and Alchemy looks and sounds cool, but nothing really amounts to anything. He just belts out nonsense dialogue about being a "savior" and then gets clowned on. Meanwhile we deal with Killer Frost rearing her ugly head for the first time on Earth-1. I will say, some of the drama we get with Caitlin is interesting enough, but I find her "if I use my powers I'll turn evil" struggle to be extremely dumb. It gets worse in the second half, but all of the groundwork is here in the first half. Things take on okay turn around Episode 10 as the plot shifts from Alchemy to being about saving Iris from being murdered. I like the idea of Barry and company trying to change the future by stopping threats. It's a cool idea to make some filler episodes feel relevant, but it's underdeveloped and never really feels as interesting at it should. To make matters worse - "saving Iris" is a boring plot line anyway, because it takes all of the grit out of Iris, forcing her to just stand there and be helpless. The show tries to give Iris some agency, I won't ignore its attempts, but they're just as hollow and underdeveloped as the rest of the season. She decides she wants to leave a legacy worth leaving in one episode and then the next is just back to being a goal for Barry to achieve. And then... there's Savitar. This is by far the worst villain of the show. I know people hate Godspeed, Cicada, Devoe, and of course the Speed Force - but Savitar has something that none of those had...the potential to be the best villain of the show. And around every corner, they squander that and deliver a villain that's just not good. He's barely in the season and when he does show up, absolutely nothing happens of consequence. He finally escapes the Speed Force and locks Wally away. Cool. Shit's gonna be rocking now, right? No. Wally is out the next episode and Savitar doesn't show back up until Episode 20 when he reveals his identity to be future Barry Allen. There's so much interesting material to sift through about Barry fighting a literal dark version of himself, and we have... 3 episodes to do it. Worse yet, Episodes 21 and 22 are almost entirely devoid of Savitar. While both are great (with 22 being one of the absolute best of the show), they suffer from not diving into Savitar in the way he needed to be dived into. And then there's the finale. This is a season that I don't think could have been saved from a great finale, but it would've allowed me to swallow it easier. Instead, we get what is probably the worst episode of the show. A finale that tempts you into thinking you're getting something great with the redemption of Savitar, only for him to just completely go off the rails and become a mustache-twirling villain again. I wouldn't hate the final 20 minutes of the season if it were, you know, good. But Savitar's plan is stupid, the action is some of the worst of the show, and the conclusion with Barry going into the speed force is so stupid. And none of this is even talking about all the bad character work and drama that exists in this season. Don't get me wrong, this is CW's the Flash. Drama is always gonna be here, and more often than not, it's going to be bad. But my GOODNESS. It's so bad here. It's forced, it's dumb and episodes like "The Wrath of Savitar" exist to show you that this season is content with 30 minutes of cyclical drama and THEN it'll do something cool. In fact, let's talk about it. There are at least two episodes of this season that could've been very cool, but neither of them work as well as they need to because the first 2/3 are filled with pointless drama. The first of which is episode 6 "Shade". It has a cool idea of Wally being targeted by Alchemy and the climax involves him leading the cops to Alchemy for a jump on him. Dope idea, right? Too bad the first 30 minutes are about bad romance drama and "movie in the park", even worse is the show's adaptation of Shade. I'll literally cry of anger if I talk about him longer. "The Wrath of Savitar" is very similar. Wally is targeted by visions of Savitar that try and manipulate him and make him go against his team to stop Savitar by himself. Great idea! Unfortunately, the first 30 minutes are full of bad drama. Notice how both episodes are focused on Wally? It's almost like he's completely underutilized in this season! Are there good aspects of Season 3? Yeah, a few. For one, Savitar looks and sounds awesome. He looks terrific and I love a lot of his style. Unfortunately, he still sucks. I think this season visually looks great. The cinematography is pretty nice and the colors look the best they have. It's a visually popping season, while also being fairly subdued. There are also a hand full of great episodes, but most of them don't contribute enough to the season to add to the quality. The Flash Season 3 is a disappointing slog made all the worse by missing pretty much all of the potential it had right out the gate.