Warning! This post contains SPOILERS for The FlashThe Flash is finally here, introducing the concept of the DCU's multiverse and alternate timelines as Barry Allen attempts to change history. Starring Ezra Miller, The Flash discovers his ability to travel back in time. Seeing an opportunity to save his mother who was murdered when he was a child, Barry's hope to change his life for the better instead creates a brand-new timeline that threatens to destroy the world.
Loosely adapted from DC Comics' original Flashpoint storyline, The Flash's ability to alter time and travel to other universes is clearly established on-screen as he tries to undo his mother's murder. However, the DCU's multiverse and its alternate timelines are complex and anything but linear, much like the multiverse on the page. Here's how the multiverse works and its alternate timelines explained in the DCU.
How The Flash Travels Back In Time: Speed, Chronobowl & More
In The Flash's first act, Barry Allen explores his ability to run so fast that he can effectively time travel, much like he did in Zack Snyder's Justice League to help defeat Steppenwolf. Through the source of his powers known as the Speed Force, Barry can access what he ends up calling a "chronobowl". This allows him to view multiple different outcomes and timelines simultaneously, entering different points in time to alter events if he so chooses. However, just because Barry can travel through time doesn't mean his actions in the past create fully predictable outcomes once he returns to the present.
As confirmed by The Flash, the DC multiverse is not like the MCU's more linear multiverse where branch realities are created off of a main timeline. An alteration made by Barry not only changes his present and future but also past events prior to the change with retrocausalities. It's nearly impossible to predict what else may occur outside the most expected outcome. Case in point, Barry travels to the past to put a can of tomatoes in his mother's grocery cart, ensuring his dad never leaves the house when she's murdered. However, there are countless changes across this entire new timeline the Flash could never have accounted for.
Michael Keaton's Batman Spaghetti Multiverse Explained
While looking for Bruce Wayne to help after Flash meets his younger self, both Barrys encounter Michael Keaton's version of Batman rather than the version the main Flash is familiar with played by Ben Affleck. As such, Keaton replacing Affleck is the movie's primary example of an unexpected retrocausality created by Barry's actions. Likewise, this version of Bruce Wayne is actually quite familiar with the concepts of the multiverse, confirming that the DC multiverse and its timelines are far more intermingled and woven together rather than being linear, and he uses spaghetti as the perfect metaphor.
Just like spaghetti, there are points in which timelines are tangled, having points where they cross as fulcrums in the multiverse. These are referred to as "intersectional inevitabilities" where certain characters and events cannot be changed. As Barry describes it in The Flash, they're essentially moments of fate. As has been seen in other franchises, this concept resembles nexus beings/events in the MCU or Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse with its "canon events" being crucial to the multiverse's stability. However, the Flash discovers that these intersections cannot be altered no matter how hard he tries. He can't save his mom without destroying the entire universe in the process.
Each Timeline In The Flash Explained
There are effectively three main timelines featured in The Flash. The first is the main DC timeline audiences should be familiar with, containing the events of DCEU continuity beginning with 2013's Man of Steel. This is also the timeline in which Barry's mom was killed while upstairs in his room as a kid while his dad was gone at the store to pick up a can of tomatoes. As such, this is the timeline Barry attempts to alter, placing a can in his mother's cart earlier in the day so his dad doesn't have to leave.
The second timeline is the one where Barry's mom lives and his father isn't wrongly convicted for her murder. Barry grows up with both of them in his life. However, the entire universe is altered by this change, one where there are no metahumans to protect the world ahead of General Zod's invasion from Man of Steel. While Wonder Woman has yet to reveal herself publicly and Cyborg is still playing football, Aquaman was never born and Superman was killed as an infant by Zod. Likewise, this is also the reality where Michael Keaton is Batman, having retired after making Gotham one of the world's safest cities.
The third timeline is created after Flash reconciles the inevitability of his mother's death. Removing the can of tomatoes, Barry ensures his mom will still be murdered as she's meant to in the original timeline. However, Barry puts all the cans on the top shelf in the grocery store, ensuring that security cameras will pick up his dad's face, supporting his alibi in the present which leads to his release. However, this action made its own changes, such as actor George Clooney being Batman rather than Keaton or Affleck. While the rest of the League's whereabouts are unclear, The Flash's post-credits scene confirms Jason Momoa is still Aquaman.
Every Universe In The DC Multiverse Confirmed
Beyond the primary DCEU and its altered timelines, both versions of Barry Allen and Dark Flash witness other universes in the multiverse beyond their own. One of the first is a black and white DC Universe featuring a digital cameo from George Reeves' Superman from the 1950s. The world also features Jay Garrick, the Flash of DC's Golden Age. They also see the 1966 Batman television show universe featuring Adam West's Batman and Cesar Romero's Joker.
Another universe features a digital recreation of Christopher Reeves's Superman from the Richard Donner movies alongside Helen Slater's Supergirl from the connected 1984 film (which was originally meant to have an appearance from Reeves' Man of Steel). Nicolas Cage's Superman also has a universe, seen fighting a robot spider from the canceled Superman Lives movie from the 1990s, written by Kevin Smith and would have been directed by Tim Burton. However, many of these universes start colliding with each other as a result of Dark Flash and the primary Barry's actions in The Flash.
