How The Flash Sets Up James Gunn and Peter Safran's New DC Universe

The past decade of DC films have been incredibly unique, with the canon and the response from fans changing essentially from film to film. This year is expected to represent an interesting turning point for the onscreen franchise, with James Gunn and Peter Safran stepping in to run DC Studios, "resetting" parts of the canon going forward. That future has put an interesting anticipation on The Flash movie, which finally speeds into theaters this weekend, and has been hyped as blowing the door open of the DC multiverse. So, does The Flash "reset" the DCU, and what groundwork does it lay for what Gunn and Safran have planned in the future? Obviously, major spoilers for The Flash below! Only look if you want to know!

The answer is... not a lot. While we still don't know a lot of the specifics around what Gunn and Safran are making, there is nothing in the text of The Flash that sets up the ten DCU projects that have already been announced. While the film ends with the surprise return of George Clooney's Bruce Wayne / Batman, there is no current indication that he (or a younger, deaged-via-Lazarus Pit version of him) could appear in the forthcoming The Brave and the Bold. The only element of The Flash that could possibly dovetail into the new DCU is the arrival of Kara Zor-El / Supergirl (Sasha Calle) — Calle has openly expressed a desire to reprise her role in Gunn and Safran's planned Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow movie, and there is nothing in the text of The Flash that could prevent that from happening. We only meet Kara on an altered version of Barry Allen / The Flash's (Ezra Miller) DCEU, where she dies multiple times in a fight against General Zod (Michael Shannon), and she is not resurrected in the Clooney-starring DCEU in the film's final scene. So if DC Studios wanted to have Calle return to the role for Woman of Tomorrow (something that a lot of fans would probably endorse, considering how little she's in The Flash), there is nothing preventing her from also being established as the DCU's version of Kara.

On a larger multiversal level, The Flash doesn't definitively do anything that ushers in Gunn and Safran's new DCU — there isn't a complete status quo shift on display, like in the Flashpoint comic storyline that the film pulls inspiration from. (Barry's time in The Flash's final universe seems so ordinary, in fact, that the sudden reveal that his Batman has been replaced by Clooney is essentially an punchline.) Despite the high-stakes plot of the film, The Flash's version of the multiverse is surprisingly self-contained — the "Chronoball" framing device it uses to show the relationship between time travel and the multiverse doesn't exist in the comics, and the cameos from other Earths almost-exclusively consist of deepfaked versions of former DC actors who haven't played their roles in several decades. In a roundabout way, this creative choice could actually work in the favor of Gunn and Safran's DCU, as it narratively and somewhat-literally seals Barry's DCEU off on its own. The Flash's post-credits scene, which shows Barry and Arthur Curry / Aquaman (Jason Momoa) hanging out outside of a bar, could potentially seal off the forthcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in this new-old DCEU as well. With Gunn hinting just this week that August's Blue Beetle movie will fold into the new DCU, before the new franchise fully begins on the big screen with a recast Man of Steel in Superman: Legacy, that might end up being the case.

The Flash is now playing exclusively in theaters.