First of all, let me say that the Crisis on Infinite Earth’s cameo of Ezra Miller’s Flash was amazing. It utterly and completely blew my mind to see these two iterations of one of my favorite superheroes on screen together. The interactions between the two felt very natural to both of their interpretations of Barry Allen and convergent of who Barry Allen is as a character. The confusion and investigation that Ezra Miller’s Flash demonstrated is entirely within the comics depiction of Barry Allen, meanwhile Grant Gustin’s Flash had the grim but ever hopeful determination that later flash comics depicted Barry Allen as. And the way they both geeked out on each other’s suits was hilarious and adorable! Calling one suit breathable and then the other safe feels very natural.

From what I understand, these characters were not meant to meet in the original planning stage of the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event. It was apparently a last-minute inclusion. According to an interview with Marc Guggenheim (Arrowverse Showrunner) conducted more Variety, Peter Roth (the Chief Executive of Warner Brothers Television) contacted Guggenheim very late in production asking if they could fit in an Ezra Miller cameo. According to the interview this was so late in the production cycle of the five-hour crossover event that they filmed the scene with a skeleton crew of the Flash TV show, despite this cameo meant to appear in the Green Arrow portion of the crossover. The skeleton crew and late inclusion weren’t meant to be part of a secret cover-up, it was simply the slapdash, haphazard inclusion of this cameo into the storyline.

I want to emphasize the fact that it was Peter Roth who contacted Marc Guggenheim asking for the inclusion of this cameo. Rather than the bottom up approach of a TV show requesting a big movie crossover, it was the chief of Warner Brothers Television asking a showrunner if it would be okay to squeeze in a Big Movie character into the TV show event. Guggenheim seems to have understood the gravity of the request, too as he leapt at the opportunity to include the cameo! Ezra took a quick trip to the filming location in Vancouver, spent a day or so filming, and left. No one had seemed to notice the Fantastic Beasts star’s little trip to Canada, and it was so late in production not many people even knew about it. And thus, one of the greatest television crossovers had a movie level surprise.

This is so explains why the conversation between the two Flashes really didn’t impact the plot of the crossover as a whole. They met, were confused by each other’s presence, made friends, and then Ezra Miller’s Flash literally disappeared, leaving Grant Gustin’s Flash to continue in his mission through time and space. But in this conversation we learned a few things about the DC film’s version of the Flash.

When Grant Gustin refers to the two of them as The Flash, Ezra Miller does not recognize the name. It grows on him, and you can see in his face how he likes the sound of it for his super powered identity. But from this we can learn that the Cinematic Flash is so early in his career that he hasn’t even picked out a name for himself. It will be interesting if this piece of inspiration will be referenced when we finally get the Cinematic Flash solo movie in 2022.

Another detail is their respective fanboying over each other’s suits. This actually speaks a lot to the difference in support the two heroes have. Television Flash has a whole support crew in the form of the STARS lab team. Cisco built every iteration of his suit, upgrading and improving it over time. Thus, Grant Gustin has a very practical, comfy, “breathable” suit. Meanwhile Cinematic Flash is alone. He built his suit from scratch, how he got his hands on pieces used in making the space shuttle might be answered in his solo film, although being able to move as fast as he does it’s not hard to conceive of various ways he could have earned the money to purchase them. Indeed, it is probably this circuitous paper trail that Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne was able to track Barry Allen down. His suit is based on practicality, things put together by someone who has to experiment and learn on his feet what his Super Suit needs.

Cinematic Flash is not entirely alone, his appearance here in this crossover is after the Justice League movie at the least. As he is disappearing he mentions Victor. This is most likely a reference to Victor Stone, also known as Cyborg. Saying that he “… told Victor this could happen” as he fades away implies that he has discussed with his fellow Justice Leaguer the possibility of alternate universes and time travel. We know the original script for the “Snyder Cut” Justice League Part 1 included quite a bit of time travel, culminating in the scene in Batman v Superman where the Flash appears to a sleeping Batman warning him of a future conflict, only to realize he went back in time to the wrong moment. From my understanding, the plot of Justice League Part 2 was supposed to include some calculation mumbo jumbo that results in two moment to which the Flash can jump backwards in time, and in one timeline the Flash appears as he did in Batman v Superman, and then in the movie that we would have gotten to see, Batman tells them to pick the other option because he lived through them picking the first option. But because none of this came to pass (At least an our universe) we have a Cinematic Flash who has never experienced this cosmic traveling before. Although he’s discussed it with Victor before, it would seem.

This is what leads me to conclude that the DC cinematic films, including Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, Wonder Woman, and the eventual Flash solo film (currently titled Flashpoint after a major storyline from the comics) do not occur in the same Multiverse as the Arrowverse shows. Instead, I believe that the DC cinematic films occur in their own multiverse that runs concurrent to The Arrowverse shows.

A major rewriting of the DC or Universe’s cosmology was written by Grant Morrison called Multiversity. This series was not a retcon of how the DC Universe’s history had unfolded like the Flashpoint storyline or the original Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline in the comics had done. Instead Multiversity created a map of the multiverse laying out various Earths in relation to each other, what each Earth embodied, and their positions within the “Sphere of the Gods”, a circle containing Heaven, Hell, Apokalypse, New Genesis, the Underworld, and Dreamland, among others. This implies that certain mystical aspects exist across all the various universes within this multiverse, for example the infamous Phantom Zone of Superman mythos is shown to be part of the Underworld and exists throughout space and time as a singular location, likely adding to the tortuous prison it is known to be.

At the end of the Multiversity storyline it is revealed that the entity behind the Eldritch forces eating away at the multiverse has done this before: “They feed and grow strong on the starry carcass of [their] previous victim — MULTIVERSE-2!”

Multiversity’s Big Climax!

The idea that there is a multiverse, and then another multiverse really shouldn’t be that esoteric of an idea. If there are multiple Earths within one multiverse, why wouldn’t there be multiple multiverses within the Omniverse? This has been borne out in the DC Comics since. There is the Dark Multiverse, a whole multiverse of timelines that are too horrible to exist. This is a meta-construct for DC Comics to release stories that actually are too horrible to exist. A world where Batman becomes the Joker is not a storyline the company can continue to print. One story within this world could work and provide a decent selling comic. But a whole world? It is best to just have that one story and let it die. Since it’s introduction The Dark Multiverse has allowed DC Comics to write new Elseworlds without the expectation that the world must continue beyond the story being told.

Returning back to the Cinematic Flash meeting the Television Flash! Grant Gustin appropriately states that “This should be impossible now” with an emphasis on now. At that point in the crossover all other possible Earths had been destroyed. There is no place for Ezra Miller’s Flash to come from. This rightfully frightens the Ezra Miller Flash and soon after the Cinematic Flash fades from existence. Or does he?

Based on the title of the solo Flash movie it’s conceivable that the DC Films do not exist in the same multiverse as the Arrowverse shows. Flashpoint was a storyline that rewrote the entirety of DC Comics history. It began the infamous New 52 era of comics, a hard reboot of the entirety of DC’s comic slate. With the solo Flash film reportedly titled Flashpoint, this implies a large cosmology that exists within the DC film’s existence.

The films may have their own rich multiverse of various stories to draw from. The success of the recent Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix is testament that multiple movies using the same characters can exist side-by-side and the audience is not even going up bat an eye (get it?). Matt Reeves is working on The Batman starring Robert Pattinson as a relatively young Bruce Wayne. Is this meant to connect to Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne seen in Batman v Superman and Justice League? Or perhaps this is its own universe, unconnected to the ones we currently know. This is its own Multiverse that is not intrinsically connected to the Arrowverse.

Cinematic Flash is able to cross between realities even after “all possible Earths in the Multiverse are destroyed” because he is not from any possible Earth in the Arrowverse Multiverse. He’s come from the Cinematic Multiverse, and returns there when his loose control of cosmic, temporal, timey-wimey travel gives out.

If any character in fiction is able to cross not just between worlds but between multiverses, it’s The Flash. Regardless of whether it is Grant Gustin or Ezra Miller beneath the mask.