Flash Must Zoom: Extended Flash Trailer Teases 80’s Character Elements. Maybe.

So last night, during the Arrow season finale, they showed the first teaser trailer for The Flash, which will be starring this season’s Arrow guest star Grant Gustin reprising his role as Barry Allen, only with a much larger paycheck and a spiffy new red body condom.

What’s that? You were busy watching the Boston Bruins get knocked out of the NHL playoff last night, and therefore you were too busy crying to catch the Arrow finale? Well, here you go.

Not a bad job, as teasers go: it focuses on the character whose show you’re currently watching, it ties the two characters together into a shared universe, and it gives Flash a sense of fun that was missing from the pulpy, hard-boiled first season of Arrow.

But still, it doesn’t exactly do much besides show off the costume and give an idea of what Flash’s power effects might look like in action. It certainly doesn’t tell you anything about the show itself, beyond the fact that the lead guy seems to be having a blast with his superpowers. And that he has a taste in red leather that would make him very, very popular in certain niche adult Web communities.

Well, the good news is that The CW has released an extended trailer for the show… and there is a lot to be excited about. Particularly if you are a fan of old school, just post-Crisis, Mike Baron Flash.

Okay, let’s start with the stuff that spoke to me: Flash’s speed seemed to top out around 700 miles per hour, which was Wally West’s top speed after Crisis On Infinite Earths, and which was a power level that always spoke to me. Mike Baron’s depiction of a Flash with serious limits, including a jacked metabolism that required a lot of food and sleep, always made a lot more sense to me than a dude who just has the ability to hit the speed of light and then spend the night running down crime scenes like he’d spent the night, well, watching shows on The CW.

Second, that Scooby Gang with the female scientist reminded me a lot of Tina McGee, and damn if the dude in the wheelchair didn’t scream Speed McGee after a breakdown following some speed experiments.

Sure, these are minor points and characters that no one has given much of a shit about in almost a decade, if not longer. And God knows that a speed limit, metabolic factor and Tina McGee didn’t do much to save the Flash TV show from back in 1990. But this stuff matters to me, and maybe only to me. Mike Baron’s 15 or 16 issues at the start of the second volume of The Flash made me fall in love with the character. They represent a high point for The Flash for me, and seeing even the chance that elements of that interpretation might make this show make me really excited for it for the first time.