Impulse season 1
| Impulse | |
|---|---|
| Season 1 | |
 Promotional poster | |
| Showrunner | Alex Brow |
| Starring | |
| No. of episodes | 3 |
| Release | |
| Original network | |
| Original release | January 14, 2026 – present |
The first season of the Australian superhero television series Impulse developed for the streaming service ScreenFlix is based on the DC Comics character Bart Allen / Impulse. The series is produced by Mob Productions and is set within a standalone corner of the DC television landscape. The season follows Bart Allen, a troubled teenager with a history of foster care and disciplinary issues, who begins manifesting unstable super-speed abilities linked to a covert human experimentation program known as Phase Two. As Bart struggles to control his powers, he becomes the focal point of a growing temporal conspiracy centered on Central City.
Alex Brow serves as showrunner for the season and also contributes as a director and writer, overseeing the series’ serialized narrative and grounded tone. The season emphasizes psychological instability, experimental ethics, and the consequences of manipulating time, distinguishing it from more traditional superhero series.
Jordan Fisher stars as Bart Allen / Impulse, alongside Candice Patton as investigative journalist and legal guardian Iris West, and Jesse Plemons as Marcus Vail / Slipstream, a former test subject whose emergence exposes the existence of metahuman experimentation. The season also features David Harbour as Dr. Calvin Decker, a court-appointed psychologist with ties to Phase Two, and includes recurring and guest appearances from Isabela Merced, Thomasin McKenzie, Jack Dylan Grazer, Noah Jupe, and Giancarlo Esposito.
Development on Impulse began in 2023, with the creative team aiming to present a darker, character-driven approach to speedster mythology. Filming took place throughout 2024 and 2025, concluding in September 2025. Production focused on practical effects, controlled visual distortion, and restrained use of CGI to convey temporal instability rather than spectacle-driven action.
The first season premiered on January 14, 2026, and will consist of eight episodes. A second season is in development, scheduled for 2027.
Episodes[edit | edit source]
| No. overall | No. in season | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | "Pilot" | Freddie Goodwin | Alex Brow | January 14, 2026 | |
| Bart Allen, a teenager with a history of foster care and disciplinary problems, transfers to Central City High while living under the supervision of Iris West as part of a probation arrangement. He struggles to adapt to school life as he displays impulsive behavior and experiences brief moments in which he perceives events before they occur. As a series of high-speed incidents take place across the city, Bart experiences physical distress and fragmented memories connected to a childhood experiment intended to enhance human reaction time. During a derailment at a downtown transit hub, Bart uses superhuman speed to rescue civilians, revealing his abilities. He later confronts the perpetrator, Slipstream, at an abandoned rail yard, where Bart gains control over his speed and defeats him. Following the incident, Bart attracts public attention, while Iris begins investigating signs of metahuman activity. Elsewhere, unidentified observers refer to Bart as "Subject A-17," confirming that the experiment achieved its intended results. | ||||||
| 2 | 2 | "Sealed Records" | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | January 21, 2026 | |
| Bart struggles to conceal his powers as stress triggers involuntary time skips that leave him disoriented and injured, prompting Iris to mandate sessions with Decker, who questions Bart about the transit hub incident and his memory of the experiment. At school, Max and Eli help cover for Bart’s sudden disappearances, while Nora investigates Slipstream’s arrest and discovers his record was sealed within hours. Elsewhere, former S.T.A.R. Labs contractor Lena Harlow steals experimental technology that allows her to duplicate herself across brief moments in time, adopting the alias Afterimage and attempting to recover missing files labeled “Phase Two” from a closed lab. Her actions activate alarms across Central City and provoke a severe reaction in Bart, who tracks her to an abandoned research facility despite Iris’s warnings. There, Bart recognizes locations from his fragmented memories and learns from Afterimage that Phase Two was intended to stabilize test subjects by merging multiple timelines of the same individual. Bart disables Afterimage’s device, though she escapes with partial data. In the aftermath, Iris confronts Bart about the risks he is taking, while Decker secretly reports Bart’s activity as unstable. That night, Bart experiences a vision of suspended test subjects and learns that Phase Two was designed not to save him, but to complete the experiment. | ||||||
| 3 | 3 | "Glitch in a Stream" | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | January 28, 2026 | |
| Bart begins losing entire minutes at a time, reappearing in unfamiliar places with no memory of how he got there, while Iris grows alarmed after footage shows him frozen in place as time moves around him. Decker intensifies their sessions and confirms that the chamber from Bart’s visions is real and active, even as Max and Eli’s attempts to study Bart’s spikes cause him to briefly phase out of existence. When a destabilizing metahuman called Fracture emerges—leaving buildings trapped in overlapping moments of destruction—Bart feels his powers resonate and tracks him to an unfinished high-rise caught between collapse and repair. Fracture reveals he is a failed Phase Two subject and claims Bart was meant to be the central anchor strong enough to survive what the others could not. Bart pushes his speed further than ever before to prevent disaster, trapping Fracture in a stabilized loop long enough for police intervention, but the effort floods him with fragmented memories of the experiment. As Bart weakens, Decker confirms to a hidden overseer that Bart has reached the threshold Phase Two requires, and time freezes around Bart as the chamber fully materializes, calling him back. | ||||||
| 4 | 4 | "Phase Two" | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | February 4, 2026 | |
| Bart begins experiencing uncontrolled time freezes that leave the world locked around him while he alone remains conscious, snapping back without warning and pushing his body past safe limits as Iris discovers his neural activity is accelerating toward collapse. Decker abruptly halts their sessions, raising Iris’s suspicions, while Max and Eli determine Bart’s freezes are triggered whenever he resists a growing pull toward the city’s industrial outskirts. A metahuman called Deadlock emerges after stealing experimental containment tech, using the ability to lock areas into rigid temporal blocks that even Bart’s speed cannot fully penetrate. When Deadlock attacks a power substation, Bart confronts him and learns he was an early Phase Two subject discarded once his power stalled, with Bart engineered to survive what others could not. Bart defeats Deadlock by forcing an unstable temporal overlap, but the effort pulls him fully into the chamber from his visions, where he sees more living subjects suspended than ever before. The voice reveals Phase Two is no longer theoretical and that Bart’s resistance has only hastened it, before Iris drags him back to reality after six missing minutes, as Decker confirms preparations are underway and the chamber overlays Bart’s room, announcing that Phase Two has already begun. | ||||||
| 5 | 5 | "Convergence" | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | February 11, 2026 | |
| Bart begins experiencing overlapping timelines while fully conscious, witnessing multiple outcomes of single moments before reality stabilizes, which Iris determines are forced synchronizations drawing him toward alignment. Decker returns under the pretense of concern and encourages Bart to embrace the episodes, while Max, Nora, and Eli notice him anticipating events seconds before they occur. A metahuman calling herself Parallax commits a series of precisely coordinated robberies; able to perceive branching outcomes simultaneously, she proves nearly impossible to stop. Bart tracks her to a downtown data vault, where she reveals the chamber is a convergence engine designed to collapse divergent timelines into a single controlled reality and that he is the only subject capable of surviving the merge. During a fractured confrontation that plays out across multiple variations, Bart learns to anchor himself emotionally through memories of his friends, allowing him to outmaneuver Parallax and let her escape after she warns the activation will erase countless alternate lives. Meanwhile, Iris uncovers records showing Decker helped design Phase Two’s conditioning and selected Bart for his psychological detachment, admitting the process is intended to prevent a temporal collapse centered on Central City. When the overseer initiates the first convergence test, the city flickers between realities as Bart is overwhelmed by every suspended subject converging on him, and he realizes he is no longer merely the runner but the center of the phenomenon. | ||||||
| 6 | 6 | TBA | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | February 18, 2026 | |
| 7 | 7 | TBA | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | February 25, 2026 | |
| 8 | 8 | TBA | Alex Brow | Alex Brow | March 4, 2026 | |
Cast and characters[edit | edit source]
Main[edit | edit source]
- Jordan Fisher as Bart Allen / Impulse
- Candice Patton as Iris West
- Jesse Plemons as Marcus Vail / Slipstream
Recurring[edit | edit source]
- David Harbour as Dr. Calvin Decker – a court-appointed psychologist monitoring Bart’s stability
- Isabela Merced as Lena Harlow / Afterimage – a former S.T.A.R. Labs contractor capable of duplicating herself across brief moments in time
- Thomasin McKenzie as Nora Keene – an investigative journalist intern assisting Iris West
- Jack Dylan Grazer as Max Calder – Bart’s best friend at Central City High
- Noah Jupe as Eli Brooks – a quiet classmate who becomes aware of Bart’s unexplained absences
Guest[edit | edit source]
- Giancarlo Esposito as Director Hale – a senior official overseeing Phase Two of the experiment
- Shohreh Aghdashloo as Dr. Samira Vos – the lead scientist behind the original reaction-time experiments
- Bill Skarsgård as Evan Cross / Fracture – a failed Phase Two subject whose powers trap structures in overlapping moments of collapse and repair
- Boyd Holbrook as Grant Hale / Deadlock – an early Phase Two test subject capable of locking areas into rigid temporal blocks
- Anya Chalotra as Mira Kade / Parallax – a metahuman able to perceive branching outcomes and select the most favorable result
Production[edit | edit source]
Development[edit | edit source]
Impulse was created by Alex Brow and Mob Productions, who developed the series as a grounded superhero coming-of-age drama centered on speed as a destabilizing force rather than a power fantasy. Early development began in late 2023, with Brow positioning the project as a response to what he described as “over-mythologized superhero origin stories,” instead favoring a framework that treated superhuman ability as an uncontrolled consequence of institutional experimentation and systemic neglect.
The initial premise was built around the idea of impulsivity—both neurological and moral—and how enhanced reaction time would affect identity, accountability, and choice. Rather than framing speed as a visual spectacle, the creators focused on its psychological cost, exploring how temporal distortion, heightened perception, and constant anticipation could fracture a young person’s sense of self. Brow has stated that the goal was to depict speed as “a condition before it’s a power,” one that isolates its subject long before it empowers them. Central City was selected as the primary setting to anchor the series within a familiar urban framework while allowing narrative flexibility around law enforcement, research institutions, and surveillance infrastructure. The city was intentionally depicted as over-systematized and reactive, mirroring the way Bart Allen himself is monitored, evaluated, and categorized. Rather than inventing a fictional city, the production leaned into Central City’s existing associations with scientific advancement and forensic oversight, reframing it as a place where experimentation is normalized and quietly buried.
Development materials emphasized restraint and continuity over episodic escalation. The season was structured to function as a complete psychological arc while leaving investigative and institutional threads unresolved. Mob Productions assembled a detailed season bible mapping Bart’s physical limits, recovery thresholds, and neurological side effects to ensure consistency in how speed was portrayed across episodes. Pre-production began in early 2024, with the creators finalizing the full season outline prior to casting. This approach was taken to prevent narrative drift and to ensure that character decisions were driven by established thematic outcomes rather than performance-based adjustments. According to Brow, once the season structure was approved, “nothing fundamental moved—only how clearly we let the audience feel it.”
Two weeks before the premiere, Mob Productions announced "ScreenFlix", a streaming platform.
Writing[edit | edit source]
The writing of Impulse season 1 followed a closed, character-first structure, with each episode advancing Bart Allen’s psychological progression rather than escalating external threat. Alex Brow served as lead writer and narrative architect, while Mob Productions oversaw continuity and long-term franchise planning.
The writers’ room prioritized cause-and-effect realism, grounding every manifestation of speed in physical exhaustion, sensory overload, or emotional consequence. Superhuman moments were framed as reactive rather than heroic, often occurring before Bart understands what he has done. Dialogue and scene construction were intentionally sparse, allowing silence, sound distortion, and fragmented memory to convey information typically delivered through exposition.
Institutional presence—law enforcement, research facilities, and unnamed oversight bodies—was written as procedural and indifferent rather than overtly villainous. The series avoided a traditional “big bad,” instead presenting antagonism as systemic pressure: surveillance, containment, and the reduction of individuals to data points. Slipstream was introduced not as a mirror villain, but as a cautionary endpoint—someone further along the same path Bart has just begun.
Influences cited during development include grounded science-fiction thrillers, character-driven crime dramas, and coming-of-age narratives that emphasize internal conflict over spectacle. Rather than drawing from traditional superhero media, the writing leaned toward stories about experimentation, consent, and the long shadow of institutional decision-making.
Exposition was deliberately fragmented, delivered through partial files, offhand remarks, and sensory flashbacks. The season was designed so that key answers—particularly regarding the origin and purpose of the experiments—remain withheld, reinforcing the idea that understanding lags behind experience. The writers described the season not as an origin story, but as “the moment before one,” where becoming something larger begins with barely surviving what was done to you.
Casting[edit | edit source]
Casting for Impulse began in mid-2023, following several months of internal character development and tone calibration by the creators. From the outset, the casting process was guided less by star power than by an emphasis on emotional restraint, subtext, and the ability to communicate fear and dislocation without overt exposition. The creative team described the series as one in which “most of the terror lives behind the eyes,” and auditions were structured accordingly, often favoring quiet scenes, extended pauses, and moments of internal conflict over traditional dramatic beats.
Jordan Fisher was cast as Bart Allen / Impulse after zero time due to his appearance in the 2014 series The Flash; and that the team felt he would continue to be "perfect" for the role. In December 2025, it was announced that Danielle Panabaker would reprise her role as Caitlin Snow in multiple episodes. Candice Patton was cast as a new version of Iris West.
Filming[edit | edit source]
Principal photography for the first season began in October 2024 and concluded in September 2025. Although the series is set in the American Midwest, filming primarily took place in British Columbia, Canada, with additional location work in Washington State.
Release[edit | edit source]
The first season of Impulse premiered on ScreenFlix on January 14, 2026. It is scheduled to conclude on March 4, 2026.