By tying all the DC films together into a multiverse, The Flash DCEU movie is copying the model for The CW's Arrowverse (and that's a good thing). Since it was announced in 2014, The Flash has gone through several different scripts and filmmakers. It's now moving towards a June 2022 release date, with Andy Muschietti (IT: Chapter 1 & 2) as director, Christina Hodson (Birds of Prey) as writer, and Ezra Miller reprising his role as Barry Allen from Justice League.
The Flash will be a loose adaptation of the 2011 comic book crossover Flashpoint by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert. In that story, Barry travels back in time to stop the Reverse-Flash from killing his mother, but ends up creating an alternate reality known as Flashpoint. For the movie adaptation, Michael Keaton is reprising his role as Bruce Wayne from Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns. He won't be the only Caped Crusader in the film either, with Ben Affleck now confirmed to appear as the DCEU's Batman in The Flash.
While the idea of a DC multiverse is new to the big screen, it's been a key element of the mythology for the Arrowverse's Flash TV show for years. This was also the plot device originally used to bring Supergirl into the Arrowverse, prior to the series moving from CBS to The CW in season 2. The plan is to use this model to "fix" the DCEU's continuity issues, much in the same way the Arrowverse bridged the gap between DC's films and TV properties with its Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover last season.
Muschietti has confirmed The Flash DCEU movie will unify the DC multiverse. As he explained it, the film's story "implies a unified universe where all the cinematic iterations that we’ve seen before are valid." That includes every screen version of DC's characters past and present, particularly superheroes who have been played by multiples actors (either in movies or TV shows) like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and The Flash. In the context of The Flash, Muchietti says these different iterations will all exist within the "same unified multiverse," even if they don't all exist on the same version of earth.
This also means other characters from DC movies past could potentially cameo in The Flash DCEU film along with Affleck and Keaton, be they Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman from Batman Returns or even Ryan Reynolds' Hal Jordan from the misbegotten Green Lantern (as unlikely as that is). Affleck, specifically, should have a key supporting role to play in The Flash movie. His version of Batman is the original one in the DCEU, as well as the character who recruited Barry in the Justice League DCEU film. With his future uncertain, The Flash could serve as a proper sendoff to Affleck's time playing the vigilante (or, at the least, a better one than he got in Justice League's theatrical cut).
This idea of a DC cinematic multiverse all goes back to Crisis on Infinite Earth. A loose adaptation of the comic book arc of the same name, the crossover established several DC films and TV shows as being part of The Flash multiverse, from Burton's Batman to DC Universe's Titans and Swamp Thing. It even brought Grant Gustin's The Flash from the Arrowverse face to face with Miller's Barry Allen for a super-secret scene that was only incorporated at the last minute, and at Warner Bros.' request. Speaking at DC FanDome on August 22, DC CCO Jim Lee confirmed this is where Miller's Flash gets his superhero name in the DCEU, ahead of the events of his solo movie.
From a storytelling perspective, Crisis on Infinite Earths proved to be extremely useful for the Arrowverse. In addition to changing things so Supergirl is now set on the same version of earth as the other Arrowverse shows, it officially made Black Lightning (which had been the red-headed stepchild of The CW's DCTV universe up until then) part of the franchise and set the stage for future crossovers. The fact the scene with Gustin and Miller's duals Flashes was added at WB's request confirms the studio was rightly bullish about the crossover's chances of success, and hoped to apply it to the DCEU moving forward.
In the almost three years years since Justice League disappointed both critically and commercially in November 2017, the DCEU has undergone some major changes. Rather than continuing to emulate the MCU's interconnected storytelling approach, the recent DCEU films have all been much more loosely connected. Downside is, this also raises questions about the franchise's larger continuity and how movies like this year's Birds of Prey fit into the previous canon of Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad. Further complicating matters, last year's Joker doesn't appear to take place in the same continuity as films like Batman V Superman at all (and only came out three years after Jared Leto played Joker in Suicide Squad).
By embracing a multiverse model, the DCEU no longer needs to worry about making its different pieces fit together. Instead, its differences can be attributed to the multiverse, which explains how there can be multiple screen versions of Joker and Batman (including, Robert Pattinson's upcoming take on the vigilante) running around at the same time. This has already allowed the Arrowverse to bring in or acknowledge other DC films and TV properties without having to come up with a more convoluted explanation for how all these DC superheroes can exist at the same time and not contradict their individual mythologies.
On top of all that, a multiverse allows the DCEU to play to something it's had to overlook so far: nostalgia. The Flash will be a test-run for this when it brings Keaton's Batman into the fray, allowing him to share the screen with another DC superhero (or possibly superheroes) for the first time. This also means older DC movie characters could get a second chance at success in the DCEU, much like the Arrowverse brought back Matt Ryan's John Constantine when his TV show was ingloriously canceled after a single season on NBC. The possibilities go well beyond fan-service too, opening the door for storytellers to play in the DC sandbox in the future without having to worry about how well (or not well) their vision aligns with everyone else's.
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