Headscratchers / The Flash (2023)

Why didn't Barry try to acquire Kryptonite?

• Barry knows fine rightly that they have no chance whatsoever against the Kryptonian invaders without Kryptonite so why doesn't he at least suggest acquiring some?
  • In Batman v Superman, Lex was able to get kryptonite from the wreckage of the world engine that was in the Indian Ocean. Simply put, there wouldn't be any kryptonite around yet for Barry to use in the battle. Traveling forwards in that timeline would only lead him to a world conquered by Zod.

Why do Zod's troops fight with small arms?

• Why do Zod's troops fight with small arms? As Kryptonians surely they have heat vision and the rest of Superman/Supergirl's powers thanks to Earth's yellow sun?
  • They are not yet accustomed to their new powers, so they fight in the same manner they were trained all their lives.
  • They're all wearing energy-shielded power armor which would block the sun's rays - perfectly logical for armor that would let them fight in places without any protective atmosphere.
  • This is more properly addressed in Man of Steel. It takes Kryptonians some time to properly adapt to Earth's atmosphere so that they can endure it without a suit and gain full access to their powers, and it takes even more time to learn how to properly use those powers and not be overwhelmed by sensory overload. As such, while the Krytonians in their suits clearly have superhuman strength, speed, and durability, it's not at Superman level, and they haven't mastered powers like flight or heat vision. In that movie, it's made clear that Zod is exceptional for being able to remove his suit and fight on par with Superman by the end of the film. On the other hand, as soldiers, they're no doubt highly trained and experienced with their weapons, and they're more than enough to handle the humans they had been facing before the Flash team arrived, so why depend on powers that they're not familiar with yet rather than weapons which they are?

Keaton's Batman and Time Travel

• How is it that Keaton's Batman is such an expert in Time Travel and the multiverse's nature?
  • He's retired after a long life of crime fighting, there's plenty of time for him to have had his own multiversal shenanigans and learn of its existence.
  • Or even if he hasn't had any personal experience...he's Batman. He WILL have done his homework on it or found someone who already did.
  • It's possible that this alternate universe version of Batman learned of what was happening with Zod and the arrival of the Kryptonians at some point prior to Barry I's arrival (in the days/hours leading up to Barry I/II arriving at Wayne Manor) and had time to wrap his head around it. (That or, due to his status as a slightly-kooky recluse when both Barrys first find him, he'd been away from society for so long that the concept of aliens from another planet suddenly showing up didn't phase him in the slightest.)
• The movies don't trust audiences to be able to deal with implications and subtleties, so they need to put in a character who just spells things out, nice and clear, no matter how much sense it makes for the character to know such things. Like in Endgame before, this results in characters being experts in how time travel works despite never having dealt with time travel before. They could express it as a theory or have them deduce it on the way from the data they have, but this would require more effort in writing instead of just handwaving it.

Bring me Kal-El?

• If Zod already killed Kal-El, and he wants Kara, then why does he ask the humans to deliver the former instead of the latter?
  • This requires some speculation but it appears Zod is 'going through the motions' of making a demand he personally knows Earth can't fulfill so he can justify ordering an attack. This makes sense if the other kryptonians don't know that he already found (and killed) Kal-El for nothing; he's keeping his gruesome failure to get the Codex a secret.
  • Zod's first introduction and demands through the hijacked TV signals only mentions of an alien living on Earth, it didn't specify exactly "who" it is (although the rest of the broadcast was not shown in the film proper). He would also have no way of knowing that Kara was captured and imprisoned since arriving, so for all he knows, Kara may have been living in disguise among humans for all this time anyway.

Burtonverse Keaton Batman?

• Is he even the same Batman from the 1989 film and its sequel?
  • That's clearly the implication, but if you want to imagine it instead as an alternate version that leaves the original film universe untouched then go ahead, that's what the multiverse is for.
  • No. Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) established the Burton films as happening on Earth-89, which is specifically shown to be a different world from the DCEU, by an appearance from Ezra Miller no less, but the film has him exist in an altered version of the DCEU timeline, which means he can't be Tim Burton's Batman.

Was the battle really that inevitable?!

• Couldn't the Flashes stay in that weird time dimension and train themselves to become more powerful than Zod? They couldn't go back a year before the invasion and recruit as many metahumans and supers as possible to fight the kryptonians? There's got to be other supers besides the Justice League members on earth.
  • Barry was in too far over his head to think and plan for something so grand. Also to take the statements about 'intersections' at face value, no matter how much he tried to 'fix' this new spaghetti-timeline, it would inevitably fail. The latter 1/3rd of the movie ends up being a demonstration of a sunk cost fallacy. Or to borrow from Wargames, the only winning move is not to play (around with time travel).

The mysterious guy's identity

• So if the old guy is Past Barry, what happened to our Barry from the present? We don't see two future versions of them. Did our Barry threw his arms up in the air and gave up on Past Barry's millionth attempt at saving them? Did Past Barry kill Present Barry at some point? Seems odd Present Barry would allow him to keep looping time for years and years and years.
  • For simplicity’s sake I’m going to call the original Barry Barry Prime in the one in the past Barry B. The old guy is an aged Barry B who is trying to save the planet from Zod but keeps failing because it’s a fixed intersection in all timelines. Barry Prime realized this and gave up trying to fix it. From there, before both Barry Bs were erased from existence, maybe Barry B killed Barry Prime, maybe Zod did, maybe an older Barry Prime just went back somewhere else to live his life. But either way he’s out of the picture, he’s not actively in the speed force fighting Barry B, and he’s no longer present in Barry B’s timeline.
  • Present Barry stopped going with Past Barry to try and change the battle’s outcome. He’d already given up on it by the time Old Past Barry appeared, and that’s what he was trying to explain to Young Past Barry each time he came back into the time travel bubble.

Barry's tooth

• At the end, shouldn't Barry's tooth go back to the way it was since he erased the events of the movie?
  • He erased the events from world history, but he himself still experienced them in his own personal history. At no point does he ever consider that changing the past will undo himself, and he has no problem interacting with his past self. If we change time travel to dimensional travel, Barry is essentially the sole remaining person from Universe A, injured in Universe B, and now is living in Universe C. So his tooth was still broken from his injury.

What's up with the ending?

• Specifically, this question refers to the reveal at the very end of the movie that George Clooney is now the main timeline's Batman. Now, it has been explained that Keaton's Batman was originally going to appear instead, but this was decided against with regards to the ending scene being used to set up the new Dc Film universe… so does that mean Clooney is going to be the official Batman of the DCEU from now on? Or is that just a one-off gag that has no bearing on future films — and if so, how will it be explained away, if at all, when it gets changed?
  • In all likelihood there is no more DCEU after Aquaman 2 and Blue Beetle. So it really doesn't matter, anything these movies have done will be irrelevant when James Gunn starts his universe from scratch. This was just one last gag.
  • The original ending was an overt indication that the universe was fundamentally changed, via Keaton stepping out of the vehicle and being hinted to be the new Batman of the DCU moving forward. (He would have passed over the mantle to Batgirl in the scrapped film of the same name, which would have had more overt indications that this was a new timeline, such as J. K. Simmons appearing as Commissioner Gordon alongside Keaton's Batman.) This was allegedly scrapped due to the prior WB regime / Gunn opting to make a clean break from the previous continuity. The second ending would have showed Cavill's Superman and Gadot's Wonder Woman, indicating clearly that Barry I was back in his original, unaltered timeline with no effects being getting his father exonerated. This was also scrapped on the basis of having a clean slate. There is no indication that Clooney has any interest in coming back as a new character, as of the film's release date, and the only thing it could be construed as is a final joke (though whether it means this timeline has gone back to "normal", but with Clooney having replaced Affleck's version, or Barry simply having leapt into the Batman & Robin timeline, is left unexplained and will likely never be answered.)
  • From what's been stated, Blue Beetle and Aquaman 2 will be set in the "DCU", the new film universe James Gunn and Peter Safran are heading. There is nothing, though, to say that the end of The Flash puts this Barry into that universe, nor that the end scene is set in that new world. It's seemingly likely that this new DCU will be largely devoid of any connection to the previous DCEU outside of maybe a few returning actors. It is possible that this would have been the case if the film did well enough to get a sequel, but considering its bombing hard and Miller's troubles and much of what's been said about if Miller will return are non-answers, it's very likely that Flash will be rebooted.

Grandfather paradox

• Barry and Bruce talk a lot about the idea of time travel, with it being clear they both have a good grasp of it. Barry even discusses the idea of time paradoxes and resolves to try to avoid making one. With that in mind, how did Barry never realise saving his mother would logically lead to a Grandfather Paradox? He went to save his mother because she died, if she lives then he doesn't time travel back in the present to save her, so nobody goes to save her, so she does die, and so on.
  • Well, if we take Barry’s cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019) into account, then this Barry is already aware that time works via a multiverse. This would preclude a Grandfather Paradox, which relies on time traveling upon a single timeline.

Alibi?

• How does the new video evidence prove Barry's dad's innocence? It shows that he was at the store shortly BEFORE his wife's death, but he obviously had enough time to return home and commit the murder since he did in fact get home in time to find her still alive and with the knife in her. The video provides no evidence that he didn't go home and stab his wife.
  • When he appears in the flashback distraught at her corpse, the implication is that he just got home and walked in, because he's still got his coat, boots, and hat on. Since he couldn't prove where he was, he couldn't prove that he wasn't home at all. With the new footage showing him at the store, it proves he was away from the house at the time of the murder and truly did just walk in on it as he claimed and as the police didn't believe.
    • How does it prove that he arrived just after the murder rather than in time to commit it? The scene shows him pulling into the driveway just as his wife screams. No one (except Barry, who as a child obviously wasn't considered a reliable witness) can possibly know when the murder occurred down to the exact minute, and I don't see how the video proves that he couldn't have arrived home a few minutes earlier.
    • His conviction seemed to hinge on the fact that he was there the entire time and the only suspect. Everything they had was circumstantial. Without an alibi, they have an unreliable witness/liar and a killer/liar. With it, they have two matching witness statements they have to take as fact.

Does Barry not know Wonder Woman's identity?

• When he tries to recruit the Justice League in the alternate timeline, Barry shows that he knows the identity of all of the male Leaguers, even to the point of knowing the name of Aquaman's father and knowing that Superman answers to both Clark Kent and Kal-El. But when he looks for Wonder Woman, he only searches for her alias, and never her cover as Diana Prince. It's possible that she wouldn't have existed in this timeline anyway, but was there ever anything to indicate that he didn't know her identity?
  • He knows her identity in the Snyder Cut and there's some bits of dialogue here and there which hint this movie follows that rather than the 2017 cut. What he likely doesn't know is where she is at any given moment since she doesn't have a base of operations like Bruce, Clark, Victor or Arthur. He also doesn't necessarily know that she works for museums like the Louvre or the Smithsonian.
  • I could be misremembering, but I believe when he finds the website for the elderly magician lady, he says something like, “She is definitely not Diana.” If that’s accurate, then he at least knows her real name if nothing else.
    • Yes, he knows her name, it's her location at that point in the timeline that he can't figure out.

How Does the Multiverse Work?

• When the Barries go to Batman, we are given a pretty straightforward explanation about time-travel and alternative timelines: you do not create a branching timeline, but move between two intersecting ones. This is used to explain the presence of Kara and Burton's Batman. It's a simple and practical explanation... that the film completely ignores after that. In the final battle, the younger Flash keeps going back in an attempt to undo Bruce and Kara's deaths, except he wouldn't be able to do that in the first place since going back in time does not modify the timeline, but just shifts them on a new one, meaning that they are abandoning ship not unlike Rick Sanchez, except this is portrayed in a heroic light. Similarly, it means that it's not possible to undo a change that happened, the new timeline still exists, however the movie acts like it's possible for the sake of wrapping things up.
  • This problem stems from DC over-complicating the original Flashpoint story, where Barry just traveled back to save his mother and then returned to his new present. It makes more sense to say it's normal time travel and just gloss over the explanation, which was probably made as a Take That! to Avengers: Endgame.
  • Are you sure this is truly a contradiction? The climax of the film makes it a pretty big plot point that, yes, there are indeed things that Barry can’t change using time travel.

Only one market camera

• So there was only one security camera in the supermarket that just happened to be looking at the pasta sauce section? None on the entrance/exit doors or cash registers? Business transaction records? The lack of evidence made sense originally in the comics, but this is the 2000s.

Kara knowing English

• How does Kara speak English when she only spent a brief time on Earth, and that was in a secret facility where the staff spoke Russian? Zod is at least explicitly shown to have a universal translator when he makes the broadcast and everyone on Earth hears it in a language they understand.

Batman understands time travel

• I can understand Batman(s) realizing you have to live with the past the way it's laid out, but how on earth is he so knowledgeable - and correct in the end - about the very specific subjects of time travel and multiverses?

Why doesn’t Barry just make his own sandwich?

• Considering the sandwich that he ordered doesn’t seem too complicated to make. Why not make it himself?

Name'k is very weak.

• It's like the writers forgot that this guy gave Superman a fight, but here Batman can knock him out with a simple bomb. What gives?

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