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The CW’s The Flash reached its Season 1 finale this week and it was awesome. Just plain awesome. Faced with the prospect of resetting the timeline to save his mother at the cost of erasing the relationships with his friends and family, Barry Allen was put through the emotional wringer and we went along with him. There were tearful conversations with loved ones, a painful moment of loss, and one of the most gratifying villain takedowns in recent memory. How did the showmakers pull it off? By embracing the comic books that the Flash comes from.

Most comic book superhero shows are based around the idea of a person becoming a superhero, the origin story. Smallville shows a teenage Clark Kent becoming Superman, but they purposefully never showed him in full costume until the final shot of the last episode. Gotham explores the iconic city before Batman was around, instead focusing on the career of Jim Gordon and the beginnings of Gotham’s many infamous villains, all while little Bruce Wayne deals with darkness and no parents. Daredevil received the high-quality treatment of a cable show, but even that was more “Daredevil Begins.” Likewise, Arrow took its time building up to Oliver Queen becoming a hooded archer that goes after evil people who have failed. this. city. And while he has embraced being “The Arrow,” he has yet to call himself Green Arrow, as if that’s too cheesy a name for a guy who runs around with Speedy and Black Canary.

All of these shows, for one reason or another, downplay that they are superhero shows. Not The Flash. He gets his super-speed powers, takes on a villain who can create tornadoes, saves people in danger, and wears a full costume complete with little lightning doodads on the sides of his head. He doesn’t do this throughout the first season -- he does it all in the first episode.

Comic books have an unlimited budget as far as “special effects” go. In fact, there are no special effects in comics; the only limit is the artist and writer’s imagination. TV doesn’t have that luxury, yet The Flash has managed to give us a new super-powered villain every week or so, plus keep Flash’s superpowers looking impressive as he blazes a trail of lightning across the screen.

After running at high speeds, Barry always skids to a stop like a kid in socks sliding across a waxed floor. And surely that’s the point: it looks fun to have those powers; it looks fun to be the Flash. You wouldn’t say that about Arrow -- have you seen his scars? It was the co-writer of the current Flash comic, Robert Venditti, who said that as children we don’t start out wanting to have the power of flight or to shoot laser beams or anything like that -- we want to run. We want to run as fast as we can and even though our parents told us to walk we still want to sprint to wherever we’re going just because. The Flash captures that rush and that exhilaration of speed. It’s always been that way in the comics, and now the fun of being the Flash has been captured on screen.

Speaking of running fast, the show truly did something special in a scene where Dr. Wells was giving Barry a pep talk so that he could accomplish an incredible feat with his speed. During it, he mentioned the “Speed Force” -- a term of pseudo-science from the comics created to explain where the Flash gets his powers, and one that sounds so geeky when you say it aloud that you’re likely to have suspenders magically appear on your person the moment the words leave your mouth. Yet during that scene, actor Tom Cavanagh removed his glasses, took his voice down to a raspy whisper, and closed his eyes, lending the uber-nerdy concept such gravitas that it became inspirational poetry. For comic readers, it was on par with a religious sermon. If you didn’t read the comics yet felt a tingle during that scene, you’ve been indoctrinated -- may the Speed Force be with you, always.

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