The Flash’s Team Citizen story and characters have become a problem in season 7, and one that can be fixed if the show takes inspiration from the Arrowverse’s newest series, Superman & Lois. The Flash has suffered from a number of issues, with this being one of the biggest that needs to be solved ahead of season 8.
Sometime after Iris (Candace Patton) founded the Central City Citizen newspaper, the concept of “Team Citizen” really began to take off early in The Flash season 6. With Kamilla (Victoria Park) and Allegra (Kayla Compton), Iris had her own small group of characters to work and interact with, and they existed separate from Barry (Grant Gustin) and his allies, who fought metahuman criminals as Team Flash. While Barry and the others focused on keeping Central City safe from major threats, Iris and her friends have spent most of their time on their investigative activities as reporters. The three characters were heavily involved in the conflict with The Flash season 6’s Black Hole villains, where they looked into Joseph Carver (Eric Neninnger).
According to The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace, part of the point of the show having its Team Citizen story was to create a diverse “fully realized, fleshed out” team and give them a sizable share of the spotlight. Unfortunately, this hasn’t really worked out in the best way – especially in season 7. While newer characters like Chester (Brandon McKnight) have received a fair amount of praise, Team Citizen hasn’t gotten the same level of positive reception, and what that likely stems from is their importance (or lack thereof) to the show in season 7. Apart from the show briefly touching on Iris’s Mirrorverse trauma, their stories don’t hold the weight that they could. The Flash could develop these characters in a much more interesting fashion if they had their own arc, such as a mystery that had to be solved over the course of several episodes. The show started off on the right course with Black Hole, but has veered off since then.
Superman & Lois, on the other hand, has handled this much better with Lois Lane (Bitsie Tulloch). True to the show’s title, the series gives equal treatment to Superman (Tyler Hoechlin) and his wife, who gets more than enough to do, despite the fact that she doesn’t possess superpowers of her own. In Superman & Lois, she doesn’t need them. Her reporter skills and nose for mystery are all she needs to have an impact (and save Superman in the process). From week to week, Superman & Lois has advanced its Morgan Edge plot with Lois – possibly even more than Clark himself – being at the forefront, working alongside Chrissy (Sofia Hasmik) and Lana (Emmanuelle Chriqui) to get to the bottom of what Edge (Adam Hayner) is up to in Smallville.
Admittedly, it is more important for Superman & Lois to maintain this balance since being about both characters is at the heart of the series, but The Flash still has a lot to gain if it's to move in a similar direction by doing more with Team Citizen. It lost Kamilla, but it could move forward with Iris and Allegra in The Flash season 8, and possibly bring in a new character to help move things forward.