The Flash Star Ezra Miller Teases Origin Story and "Big" Barry Allen Arc After Justice League
The Flash is a time-traveling adventure and origin story for speedster Barry Allen (Ezra Miller), who took his first steps as a superhero in Justice League. After making a lightning-quick cameo in Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Barry finds his footing when Batman (Ben Affleck) recruits him and other super friends to form the Justice League and save the world. But when Barry travels through time and the Speed Force to save his murdered mother, Nora Allen (Maribel Verdú), The Flash becomes a race against time that could have unintended consequences to Barry's timeline — and the entire DC Multiverse.
Barry has a "very large and powerful arc" in The Flash, Miller said during an appearance at virtual DC FanDome China. "I think this is a story that precipitates a lot of change for Barry Allen in more ways than one. I think it really carries him from being sort of the person who we met in the Justice League films."
After tapping into the Speed Force to reverse time in Zack Snyder's Justice League — deemed non-canon by Warner Bros. brass — the Flash is still developing the metahuman abilities he used to help save the world from warlord Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) in Justice League.
"[The Flash] takes him from that place of a young person who has come to his powers but doesn't quite know how to manifest them, who's joined a legion of superheroes but doesn't quite know his place in the context of it, and it takes him from there to really, in my mind, being Barry Allen. Being the Flash," Miller said. "I think in some ways, it's an origin story, and a coming-into-his-own story, so it's a big one. A big arc for Barry."
At the heart of The Flash is an emotional story about a boy looking for his mother, said director Andy Muschietti, bonding Barry to the orphaned Batmen of two universes: his own (Affleck) and another (Michael Keaton's returning Batman).
"Mainly the emotional aspects of the story were very compelling to me. Obviously, it's a superhero movie, it's a big spectacle adventure, but what really brought me into it was the emotional power of it," Muschietti said. "There's an emotional message in the story, it's also a time-traveling story which is always very attractive to me. Time travel has something that is inherently compelling in general, but this one is very special because it's a very intimate conflict. It's about a boy who is looking for his mother, and that's what was so attractive to me, that emotional drive."
Starring Ezra Miller, Ben Affleck, Sasha Calle, Kiersey Clemons, Maribel Verdú, Ron Livingston, and Michael Keaton, Warner Bros. and DC Films' The Flash opens in theaters on November 4, 2022.