Two Flashes, One Crisis: What Ezra Miller’s Cameo on The CW Says About How Far the DC Universe Extends

By JB Augustine

·January 15, 2020

If you missed the final two hours of Crisis on Infinite Earths then you missed the single biggest thing to ever happen in the history of DC’s film and TV Multiverse.

The Flash paid a visit to The Flash. No, I don’t mean John Wesley Shipp came back. Something more crucial and reality-shaking occurred that even the most accurate Reddit spoiler failed to mention.

Ezra Miller, the current cinematic Barry Allen lying in wait for his first solo feature, made a cameo and interacted with Grant Gustin. Part 4 of Crisis saw Gustin’s Barry use the Speed Force to traverse time and reality. In one scene, he finds himself in STAR Labs and turns around, and is greeted by the presence of Miller in costume who asks Gustin if he’s cosplaying.

It becomes clear to them they are Barry Allens from different universes. With that, everything comes screeching to a halt for audiences in the single most audacious WTF moment. Before they depart, Miller says he told his friend Victor – yes, probably Stone – this could happen.

https://twitter.com/DRMovieNews1/status/1217261600073297925?s=20

While what point and what cut of Justice League Miller’s Flash jumps in from is unclear, it’s official: DC’s film and TV universes coexist in the same stream of realities. This is unprecedented.

We knew they were acknowledging other continuities and pulling out all the stops, but this is something else. Someone from the current crop of box office attractions, who usually get special treatment, deigned to make a cameo on TV – TV that, even as good as it gets, is still called JV.

Sure, it was a gag and likely won’t be fully explained or revisited but this has major implications. Warner Bros. is no longer downplaying or segregating their CW TV shows in spite of their success. Truly, they are being rewarded after all this time.

The DCEU is still a thing until further notice so what this means for it is confusing. It makes Flashpoint, the premise of Andy Muschietti’s movie, sound beside the point. Yet I applaud the decision to place Ezra Miller in Crisis.

It’s more than we’ve seen from Marvel. They can’t get their act together through the whole Spider-Man/Sony situation. They can’t decide if the Spider-Verse villain movies are MCU or not and we have to wait until Morbius to see if they call their own bluff.

Nice surprise to see Michael Keaton reprising Vulture in your Morbius trailer. Is he going to be in it or are you yanking our collective chain? Will it even mean anything?

Back to DC, it’s interesting how things change. Casting Ezra Miller met some pushback when he was announced for Batman v. Superman. Stephen Amell thought at the time it undercut Grant Gustin who was just getting started.

Miller was nonetheless enthusiastic and saw the potential. He had what could be described as a fanboy moment in the company of MTV in 2015 when he was doing press for Zack Snyder’s movies.

Here is what he had to say back then, auguring this week’s bizarre outcome:

“I think it’s awesome. And come on, we’re the Flash! It’s parallel universes! Grant Gustin is the Flash and I’m the Flash, don’t you see? It’s the event horizon, we crossed it baby! Grant and I are chillin’. We’re gonna have a race, it’s gonna be dope. Like Jay Garrick and Barry Allen back in the day, it’s gonna be dope.”

It seems he’s wanted this for a while and his efforts may have swayed the studio. How far they take it is another matter.

So what then do we make of the Flashpoint in Muschietti’s film? As I alluded to earlier, it looks beside the point now. If rumors are true and The Flash reboots everything cinematically, what are you trying to reboot when the Multiverse was already restarted?

What it could be is they are pulling what Fox did with X-Men after the disasters of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins. WB wants to erase traces of things not received very well and I don’t mean the continuity created by Snyder. That’s not what all the hints and allegations over the past year should lead one to believe.

If the rumors are true, Warner is working into the night to finish the Snyder Cut in time for HBO Max’s launch. The Cut’s existence should be beyond dispute at this point and it was the theatrical version of Justice League that left fans wanting. Maybe the latter is what WB would rather forget, only desiring the best out of their DC properties to build the HBO Max brand.

Building that brand could entail bringing everything DC under one Multiverse because WarnerMedia demands it – coming to their senses thanks in some small way thanks to Ezra Miller. At the same time, they’ll be catering to their most vocal fans who spent 2019 showing passion for Zack Snyder’s vision.

WarnerMedia could be listening. They see what works and show signs of reading their audience. Don’t forget, they re-upped their deal with Arrowverse producer extraordinaire Greg Berlanti and are giving him free rein to further shape the DC landscape on HBO Max.

And what the future looks like under Berlanti’s guidance is right there in a short scene shared by Grant Gustin and Ezra Miller. Two parallel universes not only colliding but uniting as one, equal in importance. In a nutshell, what’s it all mean for the DCEU? A level playing field.