Justice League: How The Snyder Cut Sets Up The Flash Movie

After years of anticipation, the Snyder Cut of Justice League officially became a reality last weekend, cluing fans in on Zack Snyder's fully-realized vision for the DC Comics group. When the film was initially announced years ago, it was just one part of what had planned to be a Marvel Cinematic Universe-like cinematic slate, with it set to tee up individual films for the characters it introduced, including a solo film for Barry Allen/The Flash (Ezra Miller). In the years that have followed, The Flash movie has undergone multiple evolutions with different creative teams, before finally preparing to begin production in the coming months. And even though Zack Snyder's Justice League is being regarded as a one-off in the larger DC Films canon, it does some very interesting things to potentially set up The Flash solo movie. Spoilers for Zack Snyder's Justice League below! Only look if you want to know!

For starters, Barry's first scene in the Snyder Cut helps canonize one of the most-anticipated aspects of The Flash solo film, Kiersey Clemons' take on Iris West. The opening scene shows Barry and Iris' first meeting in Central City — culminating in him using his super-speed to save her from a car accident. While much of the moment takes place within the Speed Force, the two of them do share a glance before Barry speeds away. Not only does this meeting establish a new take on Barry and Iris' dynamic as relative strangers (as opposed to the lifelong childhood friends they are on The Flash TV show), but Iris briefly seeing Barry's powers in action gives her an incentivized reason to further research him.

There's also much more development tied to the relationship between Barry and his dad, Henry Allen (Billy Crudup, who will be recast in the role in The Flash), who is in jail for the murder of Barry's mother. The extended and new sequences add much more emotion to the idea of Barry wanting to prove his dad's innocence, down to him getting a job in a crime lab at the end of the film. With The Flash solo film expected to draw elements from the comic Flashpoint storyline — in which Barry accidentally unlocks an alternate future where his mother didn't die, but a slew of other problems arise — the idea of him starting out the film in a crime lab trying to prove his dad's innocence is definitely good foundation.

Plus, there was the blink-and-you'll-miss-it confirmation of the multiverse in Zack Snyder's Justice League, with Steppenwolf mentioning to Desaad that the Anti-Life equation can control life across the multiverse. For basically the past year, it's been confirmed that The Flash would deal with the live-action DC multiverse in its own way, including through the return of Michael Keaton's Batman. Outside of the DC TV shows, there had yet to be a modern-day DC film to properly acknowledge that fictional concept.

Zack Snyder's Justice League is now available to stream exclusively on HBO Max.