Worlds collide in 2023's "The Flash," and the DC Multiverse will never be the same again.
If all the alternate universes and time travel shenanigans seem impossible to keep track of,
this is your guide to the ending of Barry Allen's big adventure. Major spoilers ahead.
"The Flash" is an elaborate, dimension-hopping adventure that all starts with one choice:
Barry Allen's decision to run back in time and stop his mother's murder. The trouble is
that Barry's choice sets off a chain reaction that brings him back to an entirely different
present — one in which a younger version of himself has not yet become the Flash,
Superman never made it to Earth, and General Zod is about to attack the planet.
To save the world, Barry has no choice but to team up with his younger self, an aging,
alternate-reality Batman, and a Kryptonian warrior named Kara. At the same time,
he's constantly facing a difficult truth: he has to go back and let his mother die,
or the world will never be the same again.
This all culminates in a showdown that pits Barry and his friends against Zod,
Barry against his own alternate self, and Barry against his own emotions. The choices
he makes have consequences that impact not just his reality, but everyone else's.
When we meet the prime version of Barry Allen in "The Flash," he's been a superhero for a
while — and it's clear that he has some standing in the wider superhero community. He's a member of
the Justice League, an ally of Batman, and a guy who's got more than a few fans out on the street.
"Oh my God! Flash! Aaahhhh!"
"Hi…"
"I love you!"
"Thank you!"
"Patching you in to Mr. Wayne."
"No, please don't…"
Despite the fame, though, he's still fixated on one key part of his life. For years,
Barry has worked tirelessly to find any bit of evidence that could get his father out of prison.
It's been years since Henry Allen was wrongfully arrested for the murder of his wife, and Barry's
life as a crime lab scientist is almost entirely motivated by his quest to exonerate his dad. The
problem is that it's just not working. No piece of evidence ever seems to be enough, including
surveillance video that would have put him at another location when Barry's mother was murdered.
When that video doesn't prove to have enough evidence, Barry makes a raging
sprint and accidentally discovers a way to roll back time and change the past. From there,
his plan comes together very quickly — which helps explain why it has so many unintended
consequences, and why it's so hard it is for him to make the choice that he does.
By the end of the film, as Zod's battle rages around him, Barry comes to a very
difficult conclusion: he can't save everyone. It's a lesson he learns when,
in the midst of turning back time to try and save both Supergirl and Batman from death in battle,
he realizes that they die in pretty much every scenario. That version of Earth is doomed, and
it's all because Barry went back in time to begin with. It's a lesson underlined by what happens
to his alternate Barry, who goes back to try and fix things so many times that he turns monstrous.
Full of heartache, Barry makes the hardest possible choice. He goes back in time again
and changes reality back to the one in which his mother is murdered and
his father is imprisoned. It's an important decision in his larger journey as a hero,
and it proves his maturity when it comes to understanding the greater good. It's
also an important emotional climax, in which Barry finally realizes what both versions of
Batman tried to teach him: our tragedies make us who we are, whether we like it or not.
Barry's alternate self joins the action in "The Flash" several years earlier than his Prime
universe counterpart, and it shows. He's not just more immature than the Barry we've come to know,
but he hasn't even gotten his superpowers yet — and when he finally does get them,
he doesn't exactly prove himself the most capable. It's for these reasons that Barry
doesn't tell his younger self the reason why he came back in time to begin with — that is,
until the alternate-reality Barry overhears him.
This information changes everything for the younger Barry. While the Prime Barry spends
the film coming to the realization that he has to let go of the past in order to save the future,
the alternate Barry thinks that if he can stop tragic events from happening by reliving them
over and over again. As a result, he runs himself right into becoming a supervillain,
altering reality so many times that he risks destroying an entire multiverse of worlds if
they collide. But as he meets his end at his own future self's hands, his last act is to sacrifice
himself to save his Prime counterpart. Despite everything, he manages to go out as a hero.
When we meet the alternate universe's version of Batman, his crime fighting
career is already over. He's living alone in a dusty, rundown version of Wayne Manor,
with nothing to do all day but drink and grow out his beard. As he explains to the Barrys, it turned
out this way because he did his job a little too well: Gotham City no longer has a crime problem,
and they no longer need Batman. As a result, this version of Bruce Wayne is a lost man,
someone with no real sense of purpose now that his singular mission is seemingly complete.
Meeting the two Barrys, and eventually Supergirl, helps Batman see a new path
forward for himself. He's so reinvigorated that he eagerly shaves, straps the suit back on,
and goes into battle alongside his new friends. It's a fight he clearly relishes — partially
because he's never fought alongside metahumans before, but mostly because he has a purpose again.
"You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts."
As the climactic battle rages and the Barrys' time-traveling proves useless in changing the
outcome, it's clear that Batman is meant to die trying to save Earth from General
Zod. It's tragic, but not for Bruce Wayne himself. For him, it's a good way to go
out — doing something to help others, fighting evil for as long as he can, as hard as he can.
By the time we meet Supergirl in "The Flash," she's been locked up and drained
of her energy for years. She's furious at humanity — so when Barry comes knocking,
she's not sure why she should fight for them.
Kara's mind changes thanks to the kindness and persistence of her new friends and rescuers,
and she starts to grasp what the stakes of the conflict truly are when she realizes
Zod's intentions. In this universe, she's the Kryptonian refugee who contains the genetic
key to the future of her species. Her cousin, Kal-El, was apparently a spare who died when he
was a baby. When Zod hints that he might have been the one who killed the child,
Kara flies into a rage, ready to battle to her last breath. Unfortunately for her, though,
this is the universe where Zod wins. No matter how hard she fights, she ends up dead at Zod's hands.
Sadly for Kara, that's the end of her character arc,
but her presence in the film and the hard lessons taught drive Barry to go back in
time and restore his own past. Now that we've established a multiverse within DC,
though, it feels like Kara could re-emerge — likely with a more hopeful narrative.
Throughout "The Flash," the Prime Barry Allen is subjected to occasional visits from a dark
character in black who seems to have all of his speed, but none of his morals. The villain's
overall look and his status as a fellow speedster suggest the arrival of Savitar,
a DC Comics villain who appeared as an alternate Barry Allen in the "Flash" TV series.
At the end of the film, this Savitar-style monster does indeed appear as another version of alternate
Barry: specifically, another version of Barry's alternate ally, who's spent years running through
the multiverse trying to reverse time and defeat Zod. In the process, he's had Kryptonian metal
embedded in his body time and time again, turning him into a scarred fiend who's in constant pain,
but is still convinced that he can fix everything if he just keeps running.
This version of Barry is ultimately killed when his own past self, the alternate Barry,
sacrifices his life to save Prime Barry. His presence acts as a cautionary tale for Prime
Barry, who realizes at long last that he has no other choice but to embrace his own past,
pain and all. Savitar doesn't exist for very long in "The Flash" film,
but his actions and his monstrous appearance teach a very important lesson.
At the end of "The Flash," Barry Allen realizes the only way to save the present is to go back
in time and restore his original reality — but that doesn't mean that he doesn't
change anything. While his mother is doomed to die, Barry still finds a way to save
his father by altering the grocery store surveillance cameras to show him in clear
view. That's the final piece of exonerating evidence that gets Henry Allen out of prison.
"You can be whatever you wanna be. You're brilliant, man. Absolute best of the best."
Father and son are finally reunited after far too long apart. What's key,
of course, is that Barry's father doesn't actually know that his son is the Flash,
or that he managed to engineer his release beyond his work at the crime lab. It'll be
interesting to see if future films ever give us a glimpse of how the pair's relationship evolves.
The last time we see Prime Barry in the main narrative of "The Flash,"
he's just managed to free his father — but there are still a few dangling
threads at the end of the film. For one thing, there's Iris West,
Barry's old friend who seems to have taken a liking to him. In the comics,
they end up as a couple, and Iris' nephew, Wally West, becomes a new Flash further down the line.
Is there romance budding? Only time will tell — if another "Flash" film comes to pass, that is.
Then, of course, there's the matter of Bruce Wayne. As Barry leaves the
Central City courthouse, he's greeted by Bruce's car — but it's not either
of the Bruces he's met. In his place is yet another Batman,
suggesting that something in the multiverse has been broken by Barry's rescuing of his father.
Over the course of its runtime, "The Flash" deploys two very big cameos that are worth
breaking down. At the very end of the film, Barry learns that his universe's new Bruce
Wayne looks just like George Clooney, who previously played the Caped Crusader in 1997's
"Batman & Robin." Though it's gotten something of a reappraisal in recent years, that film has long
been a subject of mockery for its campy tone. By introducing him at the last minute, "The Flash"
gives Clooney a small measure of redemption, while also throwing the audience a big laugh.
"I want a car! Chicks dig the car."
"This is why Superman works alone."
Then there's another crazy cameo in the multiverse sequence, during which we also see
Supermen resembling George Reeves and Christopher Reeve. There's another Superman that appears,
though — he's fighting a giant, alien spider creature while sporting long hair and a determined
expression. On a closer look, it's revealed that this Superman looks exactly like Nicolas Cage.
It's all an elaborate nod to "Superman Lives," an abandoned Superman project
from the 1990s in which Cage would have played the character for director Tim
Burton. The spider creature in particular is an abandoned concept from that film — but
somewhere out in the multiverse, Cage got to be the Man of Steel after all.
Near the end of "The Flash," we see the massive DC Multiverse as worlds
start to collide. Over the course of this sequence, we glimpse several different Earths,
all with their own metahumans fighting various battles. Just as Batman warned
earlier in the film, Barry's insistence on creating more and more inflection points
has led to a tangle of alternate worlds, all of them now in danger.
What we do know, based on the film's ending, is that Prime Barry's decision to go back and fix
his original timeline brought some stability to the universe again. What we don't know just yet is
what those actions mean for the wider multiverse. Do those worlds still exist? And if so, are they
at all aware of each other? Is the upcoming DC Universe also a part of that multiverse?
These are lingering questions that aren't quite answered — not even in the post-credits sequence.
After the main narrative is over, "The Flash" shows us a brief post-credits scene in which
Barry and Aquaman come stumbling out of a bar. Barry's been chatting with Arthur about what
he just experienced — particularly how there are different Batmen in different universes.
Meanwhile, Arthur is a little too drunk to keep track of it all. It's a fun little scene, but it
doesn't answer any of the questions that viewers have been left with since the ending proper.
"What the hell is this?!"
Does the Bruce Wayne of Prime Barry's world look like George Clooney now,
or did Barry go back and find a way to restore the Ben Affleck version to the timeline? It's
not exactly clear — but Barry does refer to all the alternate Batmen in the past tense, so maybe
it's all changed after all. We'll just have to wait for more DC adventures to know for sure.
In the months leading up to the release of "The Flash," fans became aware of some major changes
over at DC Studios, as co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran have taken over as masterminds of
the future of the DC Universe on the big screen. Gunn has been pretty clear that
he intends to produce many new stories from scratch — and that includes the casting of a
new Superman. What we still don't know is how this will affect characters like the Flash,
Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and other established DC heavy-hitters.
It's pretty clear from the way "The Flash" ends that, if they so choose,
Gunn and Safran could continue telling stories with these characters in several ways. They
could simply say that the Earth that Barry went back to when he released his father from
jail — the present — is now a different world with alternate versions of certain heroes,
like George Clooney as Batman. Or they could start from scratch and pick and choose which actors to
bring back. However it works out, "The Flash" definitely leaves some major possibilities open.