Over the last few years, James Gunn has become an integral component to the DC Comics media machine. It started out with him directing The Suicide Squad and then delivering the Peacemaker spinoff series, and now he’s co-running DC Studios with Peter Safran and is gearing up to direct Superman: Legacy, one of the many upcoming DC movies that are officially slated. Funny enough though, a fan has pointed out a fun Easter egg in The Flash that points to Gunn existing in the DC Extended Universe too, and the filmmaker responded to this.
The @HeroesUnbound Twitter account shared a behind-the-scenes photo from The Flash of director Andy Muschietti with actor Ian Loh, who plays Barry Allen as an adolescent, on the set of Barry’s bedroom from his adolescence. As they pointed out, the younger Barry has a Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed poster hanging up, and like its 2002 predecessor, James Gunn wrote the sequel. So after he saw this Easter egg making the social media rounds, Gunn responded with these two words in his own tweet:
I’m canon?
Yes, sir, you are indeed canon to the DCEU. I’m even willing to go a step further and classify the entirety of your filmography, minus the DC projects and Guardians of the Galaxy entries for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as canon in the DCEU. As such, it’s entirely possible that when Barry Allen got older, he checked out the Gunn-written remake of Dawn of the Dead, or maybe he saw Gunn make his directorial debut with Slither. But then one could fall down the rabbit hole of envisioning where Gunn’s career would have taken him in a reality where he didn’t helm any superhero movies, but hey, that’s not a bad thought exercise.
The inclusion of that Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed poster also works nicely with the timeline established in The Flash of when Nora Allen died. Per security footage of Henry’s father, Henry Allen, at a grocery store while his wife and son were still at home, we know that an intruder broke into their household and fatally stabbed Nora on June 14, 2004. The second of the live-action Scooby-Doo movies was widely released on March 26 of that same year, so that leaves more than enough for the adolescent Barry to have seen the sequel and hang up its poster in his room. Now I’m wondering if Scooby-Doo 2 might have been more positively in the DCEU than in real life, resulting in Scooby-Doo 3 being made not long after.
Alas, this James Gunn Easter egg in The Flash comes as the DCEU continuity is winding down, with Gunn and Safran now putting together the new DC Universe franchise. With Blue Beetle now confirmed to be part of the DCU, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will be the final DCEU entry. In 2024, the animated Creature Commandos series will be the first full-fledged DCU project to come out, but the DC Studios heads consider Superman: Legacy’s 2025 arrival to be the “true beginning” of this new shared universe. Other movies on the franchise’s Chapter One slate include The Authority, The Brave and the Bold (directed by The Flash’s own Andy Muschietti), Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Swamp Thing, and the TV lineup includes Waller, Lanterns, Paradise Lost and Booster Gold. Perhaps anyone of these projects could throw in their own Gunn-centric Easter egg to confirm he exists in this reality too.
As mentioned earlier, James Gunn is both writing and helming Superman: Legacy, which opens on July 11, 2025. Casting for the movie’s Clark Kent and Lois Lane is narrowing down, and there have also been some contenders reported for the Lex Luthor role. While we wait for more news on that project’s development, break out your Max subscription to view all sorts of past DC movie and TV offerings.
