The various movies and TV shows based on DC Comics have had a whirlwind of a week, with a lot of updates regarding their potential futures (or lack thereof). This began on Monday with the confirmation that The Flash will be ending with its upcoming ninth season on The CW, which will air on the network beginning in 2023. This final season will most likely serve as the end of a chapter for the network’s Arrowverse of shows, but there’s also been the question of if and how it will factor into the larger DC multiverse. In particular, one question has come up, considering the timing of things — could the final season of The Flash show dovetail directly into the upcoming The Flash movies?
The two current live-action versions of the Scarlet Speedster have been tied together almost from the jump — the pilot of the television series, which stars Grant Gustin’s iteration of the character, premiered just a matter of days before it was publicly announced that Ezra Miller would play an alternate version on the big screen. For years, fans had entertained the possibility of Gustin and Miller crossing over in some capacity, and they got their wish completely by surprise in early 2020, when Miller made a secret cameo in The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover. In the weeks that followed that episode, it became known that Warner Bros. itself had requested for Miller’s cameo to be included, and that The Flash movie writer Christina Hodson had “planned” for it when writing the film.
“I got a phone call from [Warner Bros. boss] Peter Roth saying, ‘I know you’re locked, but can you put Ezra into the crossover?'” crossover producer Marc Guggenheim explained at the time. “And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said, ‘How, you’re series wrapped? And you’re wrapped on the crossover.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I know, but if you’re telling me Ezra Miller can be in the crossover, I can make it happen.'”
“Of course, cause that would be too much of a surprise if I suddenly saw that on TV,” Hodson told ComicBook.com in early 2020.
since then, The Flash movie has completed production and moved release dates a few more times, currently aiming to bow in June 23, 2023. Rumors have also swirled that Gustin could be making a cameo in the film, especially as the project has been confirmed to be dealing with the multiverse. Depending on when The Flash TV show begins airing its thirteen-episode final season (and how many midseason breaks it might have), it could feasibly air its series finale before or right around when The Flash movie debuts, which will occur on the 21st week of the year. This would make Gustin’s potential cameo in the film take on a whole new context, one that’s probably different from how the cameo could have originally been written, but something that the writers of the TV show could still write towards when constructing the final season.
Of course, there’s also the question of whether or not that hypothetical Gustin cameo ultimately makes it into the final cut of The Flash, given the ever-evolving approach that Warner Bros. Discovery is having to its live-action movies. The very nature of The Flash the movie’s release has been debated about a lot as of late, especially amid an ever-growing list of offscreen allegations about Miller, but the studio recently confirmed that they are standing behind the film and planning on releasing it. So, we’ll ultimately have to wait and see if that cameo does come to fruition, and eventually bring the bizarre journey of the onscreen Barry Allens full circle.
The Flash The TV show is set to debut in early 2023 on The CW. meanwhile, The Flash movie is scheduled to be released in theaters on June 23, 2023.