The hype train for The Flash TV show had already left the station when the well-received trailer was released last month. So when positive early reviews for the Arrow spinoff started popping up online - even from DC cynic Mark Waid - well, that was just the icing on the cake. The fan consensus, it seems, is that it's a good time to be a fan of the fastest man alive.Though The Flash won't debut on The CW for another few months, media to promote the show will likely be rolled out from here until the premiere date. Today, we have the first video featurette - showcasing S.T.A.R. Labs - and a (very long) plot synopsis.

The featurette (above) is primarily an interview with Tom Cavanagh (Ed), who plays Harrison Wells, the head of S.T.A.R. Labs. The other employees at S.T.A.R. are Caitlin Snow (Danielle Panabaker) - who eventually became Killer Frost in the comics - and Cisco Ramon (Carlos Valdes) - better known as the superhero Vibe. S.T.A.R. Labs takes care of Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) after he's struck by lightning and falls into a coma.

Flash TV Show Teaser Trailer

Wells, Snow, and Ramon all know that Barry is a meta-human with superspeed, and they more or less will function as his gang of helpers, a la John Diggle and Felicity Smoak on Arrow.

As for the plot synopsis, check it out below:

Barry Allen was just 11 years old when his mother was killed in a bizarre and terrifying incident and his father was falsely convicted of the murder. With his life changed forever by the tragedy, Barry was taken in and raised by Detective Joe West, the father of Barry’s best friend, Iris.

Now, Barry has become a brilliant, driven and endearingly geeky CSI investigator, whose determination to uncover the truth about his mother’s strange death leads him to follow up on every unexplained urban legend and scientific advancement that comes along. Barry’s latest obsession is a cutting edge particle accelerator, created by visionary physicist Harrison Wells and his S.T.A.R. Labs team, who claim that this invention will bring about unimaginable advancements in power and medicine. However, something goes horribly wrong during the public unveiling, and when the devastating explosion causes a freak storm, many lives are lost and Barry is struck by lightning.

After nine months in a coma, Barry awakens to find his life has changed once again – the accident has given him the power of super speed, granting him the ability to move through Central City like an unseen guardian angel. Though initially excited by his newfound powers, Barry is shocked to discover he is not the only “meta-human” who was created in the wake of the accelerator explosion – and not everyone is using their new powers for good. In the months since the accident, the city has seen a sharp increase in missing people, unexplained deaths and other strange phenomena. Barry now has a renewed purpose – using his gift of speed to protect the innocent, while never giving up on his quest to solve his mother’s murder and clear his father’s name. For now, only a few close friends and associates know that Barry is literally the fastest man alive, but it won’t be long before the world learns what Barry Allen has become…The Flash.

It'll be interesting to see how well The Flash does as a series. Arrow, of course, has been a huge success for The CW, and it initially pulled that off as sort of a TV version of Christopher Nolan's Batman. The Flash is being positioned as an anti-Arrow, in that it will forgo the grime and grit and darkness in favor of a fun, more lighthearted tone, though obviously with a style not too dissimilar from its parent show.

This is, in a way, new territory for DC and Warner Bros. The last live-action superhero story that they put into production that wasn't "superheroes in the real world" (or something along those lines) was Green Lantern, and we know how well that turned out. Could a successful Flash TV show - with more whimsy and joy than Warner Bros. is used to - mean that we could see more lighthearted superhero adaptations down the line?

What say you, Screen Ranters? Are you looking forward to The Flash on The CW? Drop us a line in the comments.

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The Flash airs Tuesdays @8pm on The CW this fall.

Follow me on Twitter @benandrewmoore.