#('you' in 'if you're trying to sell me etc.' means showrunner-you not ficwriter-you. ficwriters can sell me a lot. the show couldn't)

[purplecyborgnewt]

Who is the flash character who is the most underutilized/which character should have had more episodes?

Hartley. I'm living on this hill, might as well die on it.

He had so much of his plot and personality developements happening offscreen. Turned good offscreen, worked with Team Flash offscreen, then turned bad offscreen, got a boyfriend - and not just a boyfriend - a boyfriend who's supposedly Love Of His Life! - offscreen... Roderick's cute, I don't mind him existing, but he started as a sexylamp in a glass coffin and didn't really progressed much from there after waking up. If Hartley got more screentime, more story - onscreen story - maybe Roderick would become more than a Mandatory (Not-Het-For-A-Change) Love Interest Out Of Nowhere. Maybe I'd even start to care about him for his own's sake, not just because he's someone Hartley cares about... Or maybe I'd keep feeling conflicted about him. We won't know, because their whole alleged Great Love Story happened offscreen. No flashbacks (beside one to the tragic incident on the bridge), nothing. He's a cute blank slate. Great for ficwriters who are afraid of fucking up and making a character OOC, I suppose. Look, I'm myself the person who's always afraid of fucking up and go too OOC - that's why I barely write serious fics and pretty much never publish them anywhere. Nonetheless, if you're trying to sell me this dude as Love Of Hartley's Life, I'd like something... more substantial.

They also randomly gave Hartley powers, then either forgot about those powers or quietly retconned them away.

All the Rogues were either underutilised or mishandled by the show tbh (or were both mishandled and underutilised). Hartley is the one I always have to stop myself from ranting about until I just run out of words.

And while we're at it: unpopular opinion - "should this Flash character have been on LoT instead" pretty much always gets "no" from me. LoT took two iconic Rogues and killed one of them (the exact one with the most fans, to be honest - sorry, Mick). Killed Stein in the way that still infuriates me. Somehow killed Mattobard twice. (Fine, so the things didn't go all that great for him when he returned to his own show either. When the fans who liked how Mattobard looked in 3.01 were saying we want to see him with a beard again, we meant his actual facial hair, EW.) Miraculously didn't mansge to kill Wally, but still. They all "should" have been getting better writing and more screentime on their own show. Alas, that wasn't meant to be.

(EW claimed lately that if he got another season he'd totally bring back everyone-everyone-everyone. Yeah. Sure.)