Iris West-Allen from The Flash
I’ve said it before, and I’m saying it again: playing the Love Interest to a superhero is one of the most thankless roles an actress can take.
It usually involves three of the most tedious tropes imaginable: Locked Out of the Loop (a prolonged period of time in which you can’t know his secret identity, even though everyone else does), Distressed Damsel (in which your connection to the hero means you’re constantly rendered a helpless victim) and The Caretaker (any relationship with a vigilante crime-fighter usually revolves around his needs, responsibilities and identity). And there’s always the constant threat of fridging in order to devastate and/or motivate him.
Candice Patton had even more on her plate when she took the role of Iris West, given the inevitable troll remarks over her race (the character has been traditionally depicted as white) and narrative baggage in the form of Iris and Barry being raised together in the same house as children, giving them a quasi-sibling vibe that many viewers used as a mark against the pairing.
Throw in plenty of Romantic False Leads that were usually pretty likeable, and the typical scenes in which Iris becomes frustrated at Barry’s furtive behaviour (even though the audience knew there was heroic reasoning behind it) and I wouldn’t have blamed Patton for casting nervous glances over at Arrow and the complete hatchet job they made of Laurel Lance, her leading lady equivalent.
The deck was stacked against her, and yet in Patton’s hands, Iris rose above it all.
Much of this has to do with her innate charisma, though it took a while for the showrunners to utilize her outside the boundaries of the typical unattainable love interest. They focused on her role as a daughter, sister and girlfriend, and dabbled a little with her interest in freelance journalism, though it wasn’t until season four that they settled her into the role of team leader at Star Labs: guiding Barry through his heroics via an earpiece, issuing orders to the rest of the team, and offering emotional or moral support wherever needed.
From this point forward, her stories improve exponentially, from a short stint as a speedster after gaining Barry’s powers (with very cool purple lightning) to re-establishing her newspaper and hiring staff, to meeting her time-travelling daughter from the future and grappling with her new role as a mother. She even had fun playing Millie Floss in an alternate-world, magic-infused crossover episode. Throughout it all she retains her integrity, her optimism, and her great love for her family. I don’t think she gets nearly enough credit as The Heart of this show, and it wouldn’t be the same without her.
There are many variations of Iris West out there, but Candice Patton has set a new precedent for how she’s portrayed, leading to the casting of another black actress (Kiersey Clemons) in the DC Cinematic Universe – whose scenes were cut from Justice League. Of course they were. But I’m hearing good things about Iris’s continuing role in the sixth season of The Flash, so hopefully she’ll continue to make her mark on the ever-expanding franchise…
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