The following contains spoilers for the end of The Flash.
The Flash is a movie in a very weird place. The DC Universe that it was born into is coming to an end in only a few more months. That wasn’t completely understood back when the movie was made. And yet, for so many reasons The Flash is actually the perfect movie to end the current DC Universe as we wait to begin the new one, which is why it’s all the more strange that The Flash is somehow not the last movie in the current franchise. Hear me out.
In a few months, we’ll see Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which is the last DC movie on the schedule under the old guard. In a couple of years the new DCU headed by James Gunn and Peter Safran will begin, and the characters of the current DC franchise are either being recast or entirely ignored, at least for now. So why the hell isn’t The Flash the note the studio decided to go out on?
The Flash Works Better If It’s The End Of The Franchise
When you come to the end of something, it makes a lot of sense to look back at where you came from. When the MCU came to the end of its Infinity Saga it told a story of time travel and multiverses that saw characters revisit places the story had been before, and The Flash does largely the same thing, taking us back to the events of Man of Steel, though in a slightly modified version.
Not only that, The Flash incorporates elements of DC movies past by bringing back Michael Keaton as Batman. Considering the modern comic book movie craze is in no small part indebted to that movie, it’s a fitting film to celebrate. In my opinion, Keaton’s Batman and The Flash working together are a perfect bookending of three decades of DC heroes on the big screen.
And then the ending of The Flash takes things even further back. We see and hear nearly every previous version of Superman and Batman on the big and small screen as the different universes collide. We see George Reeve as Superman and Adam West’s classic Batman, even Christopher Reeve’s Superman makes an appearance along Helen Slater’s Supergirl. It’s the perfect way to say goodbye to all of it before things start fresh in a couple of years.
Aquaman 2 And The Flash Could Have Easily Swapped Release Dates
Which raises the question, why was the decision made to release Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom after The Flash? Both movies suffered from various delays related to the pandemic as well as the general delays that come with every movie production. As such, both movies have largely been done for a long time. There’s no reason that Aquaman 2 couldn’t have come out first.
At one point it was absolutely the plan to release the Aquaman sequel before The Flash, but then the decision was made last year to shift the releases of Aquaman and Shazam!: Fury of the Gods, while leaving the release date of The Flash intact, so Aquaman and the Loast Kingdom went from coming out three months before The Flash to six months after.
James Wan has said the Arthur Curry-led film changed after the Gunn announcement. In addition, it's been rumored and it's possible that this decision was made because Aquaman 2 needed the extra time, but did it really need all the way until December? Couldn't it have moved to June and then The Flash could have been shifted to December? It's clear the studio has big expectations for Flash, and thus almost certainly wanted it in the prime summer slot, but big movies have made billions in December too, and if Flash is that good, it would have.
Even if the new Aquaman movie makes $1 billion at the box office as the last movie did, and even if it’s a truly great film in its own right, and even if some version of Batman shows up ---which may still be happening -- it’s still going to be just an Aquaman movie. In my opinion, that’s not how this version of DC should have gone out.
Maybe There’s A Reason Aquaman 2 Will Be The End Of The DCEU
Unless, of course, there’s a reason that those release dates were swapped around. While most of what we know about Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom would seem to indicate it’s mostly a standalone Aquaman movie, we haven’t actually seen anything from it, so maybe there’s something we don’t know about the project that will make it a fitting end of the DCEU.
Jason Momoa does appear in The Flash’s mid-credits sequence, in a scene that, while fun, doesn’t seem to add anything to The Flash’s ending. It wouldn’t be the first time that a post-credits scene was used strictly for laughs, but considering that the scene did include the lead character of the last movie, it’s maybe a bit surprising that the scene didn’t tease anything about the next movie or do anything with Aquaman that might set him up for whatever is to come.
Except maybe it did? Perhaps there’s more going on in that mid-credits scene than we think, and we just don’t understand it because we haven’t seen the new Aquaman movie yet, and it will all make sense. Avengers: Endgame wasn’t the end the Phase Three of the MCU, after all. That was Spider-Man: Far From Home, which sort of acted as a post-script on the events of the massive climax. Perhaps that’s what Aquman and the Lost Kingdom is being set up to be. Of course, we knew that Far From Home was not going to be the final MCU movie, so where the chapter ended was maybe less important. Aquaman won’t be the end of a chapter, it will be the end of the story.
Even when James Gunn and Peter Safran launch their new DCU, that doesn’t mean that the current era of DC films will be gone forever. In the same way that The Flash brought back so many classic versions of popular heroes, something similar could happen in the future of the DCU. Still, when we’re looking back on this particular era of DC Films years from now, many might not even remember that Aquaman 2 was where it ended. The Flash’s ending was so much more poetic.
