Iris West's recent physical absence from The Flash season 7 robbed the character of agency and damaged the show's efforts to develop her character.

Warning: Contains SPOILERS for The Flash season 7, episode 15, "Enemy At the Gates."

Iris West has been curiously absent from episodes of The Flash season 7, sabotaging the series' efforts to present Iris as an equal partner to Barry Allen. This absence was particularly notable in the case of the episode "Enemy At The Gates," given that the story was centered around Barry's efforts to confirm Iris' pregnancy. This led to numerous scenes where Barry Allen was required to talk into a phone to keep an off-screen Iris informed regarding the action of the episode, as she was said to be at home resting.

The second half of The Flash season 7 found Barry Allen and Iris West trying to start a family, after having accidentally spawned a number of spiritual children with their efforts to create a new Speed Force. This was largely played for laughs, with STAR Labs engineer Chester P. Runk accidentally stumbling across the two making love in the Starchive. This prompted Chester's suggestion the two take a vacation to be alone together, which led to Iris' absence from The Flash season 7, episode 14, "Rayo de Luz," and Barry only showing up briefly in the episode to explain why he and Iris were gone.

Iris' continued absence became unintentionally comic in The Flash season 7, episode 15, "Enemy At The Gates," as Barry tried to conduct a pregnancy test in secret; a necessary step given his secret identity and the fact that meta-DNA signatures could misrepresent hCG levels on a standard pregnancy test. This left Barry trying to get some time alone in either the bio-lab at STAR Labs or his own lab at CCPD Headquarters, only to be continually interrupted by various friends and the sudden arrival of multiple Godspeeds. All of this distracted away from what should have been a major character moment for Iris West, to the point that the pregnancy subplot seemed to be a distraction in the minds of the writers, despite being the focus of the season's storyline.

This issue was made more apparent in the episode's closing moments, when Barry finally did get a chance to conduct the test and said he was going to call Iris as soon as it was done. While it made sense for Barry to be careful about his comings and goings at superspeed while he was carrying the samples he needed for the test, by that point in the episode there was no reason for him not to simply run across town and tell Iris the test results in person, except that Candice Patton was not available for filming and Iris couldn't appear on camera.

It's deeply ironic that Iris West should be largely absent from an episode centered around her pregnancy, given the efforts of The Flash writers in the past to build up the character as an equal partner to Barry Allen. Unfortunately, those efforts have largely fallen flat, primarily being based around Iris making statements like "We are The Flash," while asserting her importance in Barry's life. Even the series' more recent attempts to give Iris her own storylines focused on her reporting and Team Citizen have been unsuccessful, due to most of these storylines being unrelated to the larger narrative of the series. Even when Iris' investigations were tied to the main story (as with her delving into the Black Hole crime syndicate in The Flash season 6) she was left being a damsel in distress for Barry to rescue, even if she was allowed the chance to show her strength and cleverness while trapped in the Mirror Dimension.

It's possible that the problems with "Enemy At The Gates" were unavoidable and the result of the complications brought on by filming during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the way the episode was written points to a larger problem regarding the way that the writers of The Flash regard Iris West and her agency. It's bad enough for the show's female lead to be replaced with a phone for the length of an episode. It's even worse when the male lead only speaks about the female lead, an allegedly strong and independent woman, in terms of needing to protect her and keep her safe in their home.

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