REVIEWED: SEASON 6 (EPISODES 1 – 3) | WHERE TO WATCH: NOW TV, SKY GO

Back for a sixth season, Barry Allen is still the dumbest fastest man alive, and now he and Iris have to deal with losing a daughter they haven’t technically conceived yet. No matter, though, because the Crisis on Infinite Earths is coming, and The Monitor (the god-like figure tasked with avoiding that particular catastrophe) shows up early in the season to tell Barry Allen that The Flash has to die so that everyone else can live. Happy days!

For the rest of Team Flash, life goes on; Cisco took the metahuman cure last season but is sticking around as the techy brains of the outfit, while Caitlin has decided to let (not Killer any more) Frost take over her body for extended periods of time. Ralph, meanwhile, is still searching for a missing woman named Sue (a lovely tease for comics fans), Joe has been promoted to Captain, and Cecille has decided to use her powers for good, as the first public defender specially dedicated for metahuman suspects.

And there’s new metahumans about, with a teenage ne’er-do-well joining Iris at the Central City Citizen, and Mohinder from Heroes as a scientist friend of Caitlin’s, who is secretly using dark matter to try and cure his terminal disease.

This far into The Flash it’s hard to imagine new viewers picking up the story, which is not only soaked in time travel and alternate Earths but also requires a massive suspension of disbelief to dismiss the concept of a man who can outrun a nuclear explosion (sometimes) not being able to solve everything in seconds. But for returnees – and The Flash still maintains a core following in the US of a few million viewers – there’s plenty to care about, including yet another Harrison Wells, even if the prospect of Barry and Iris moping about his inevitable demise (on top of their Nora-guilt) could turn milk sour.

By this point, you know what you’re getting with The Flash, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. It’s a soap opera about a loose family of friends, some of whom happen to have superpowers, and the terrible decisions they make. Whether Barry dies in the Crisis – which is taking place across all five Arrowverse shows in December and January – or not, the show should get a soft reset as a result, and if we’re going to tread water until we get there, then there’s worse company than Ralph, Cisco, and the rest.