The DC TV Classic That Ended 35 Years Ago Today—And How Fans Finally Got Their Ending Decades Later
Long before cinematic universes, television made superheroes appointment viewing: Batman brought Adam West to primetime in 1966, Wonder Woman crowned Lynda Carter in 1975, and The Incredible Hulk roared into living rooms soon after.
Quick trip in the time machine: 35 years ago today, a very 1990 version of The Flash ran its last lap on CBS. If you remember the foam muscles, the moody lighting, and the whiplash scheduling, you remember exactly why it got canceled and why it still matters.
Before capes took over everything
Long before anyone said "cinematic universe" with a straight face, TV was already workshopping superheroes. Adam West brought Batman to American primetime in 1966. Lynda Carter carried Wonder Woman through three seasons starting in 1975. Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno split the difference as Banner and Hulk for five seasons. Saturday mornings had their own wave too: CBS rolled out The New Adventures of Superman in 1966, and by 1981, Spider- Man and His Amazing Friends was dabbling in a shared-world vibe that basically predicted where Marvel would go decades later. In that mix, CBS took a big swing in fall 1990 with The Flash.
The 1990 CBS Flash: big suit, big budget, brutal time slot shuffle
Developed by Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo, the series put John Wesley Shipp in a sculpted red suit as Barry Allen and spent real money doing it—over a million bucks an episode, which was serious cash for the time. The show ran 22 episodes and then—poof—ended on May 18, 1991. The problem wasn’t the pilot buzz; it was the network playing musical chairs with its time slot, which is how you train your audience to miss your show. Result: one season, done.
That premature stop meant barely scratching the surface of the Flash’s Rogues Gallery. Still, the thing looked and felt cinematic in a way network superhero TV hadn’t really nailed yet. It set a bar that later DC shows took seriously. And eventually, one of them paid it back pretty loudly.
The CW picks up the baton
When The CW launched The Flash in 2014, the network was building what became the Arrowverse. Arrow had already hit big in 2012, but it needed a second win to prove the whole grand plan could hold. The Flash delivered exactly that and then some—184 episodes across nine seasons, wrapping on May 24, 2023, which makes it one of the longest-running superhero shows ever.
- Arrow (2012) kicked things off; The Flash (2014) cemented the strategy.
- The universe expanded with Supergirl, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman, and Black Lightning.
- Annual crossovers pulled fans across multiple networks and series like an event comic in TV form.
John Wesley Shipp’s victory lap
From the jump, the CW series treated the 1990 show like a respected ancestor. It pulled back familiar faces—Mark Hamill returned as the Trickster, Amanda Pays as Dr. Tina McGee, and Alex Desert as Julio Mendez. They weren’t carbon copies; they were multiverse-flavored takes that nodded to the past without being stuck in it.
The biggest salute? Making John Wesley Shipp part of the core fabric. First, he played Henry Allen, Barry’s imprisoned dad, a recurring emotional anchor across multiple seasons. Then they leveled him up to Jay Garrick, the elder Flash from Earth-3 who became a mentor to Grant Gustin’s Barry. And during the 2019–2020 Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, Shipp suited up again as Earth-90 Barry Allen—an explicit fold-in of the CBS series to the Arrowverse multiverse. That story ends with Earth-90 Barry sacrificing himself on a cosmic treadmill to stop an anti-matter wave, which finally gave that abruptly canceled 1990 storyline the heroic ending it never got to earn the first time.
Where to watch
The 1990 season of The Flash is available to buy on digital platforms. The CW’s The Flash is streaming on Netflix.