What happens in The Flash ending? We’ve all been waiting a very long time for The Flash, with Ezra Miller now finally suiting up for a solo adventure in which their main co-star is another version of themselves from a different timeline. If you’re lost now, just you wait.
Yup, the DC Universe is doing time travel and the multiverse now as well. The Flash release date marks the arrival of one of the final new movies before James Gunn takes over the best DC characters, and there’s some bold storytelling going on as Barry Allen travels back in time to save his mom and unwittingly gives General Zod the chance to enact the evil plan he failed in Man of Steel.
So let’s dive into the chaos of a new contender for the list of best time travel movies – check out our The Flash review to see where it stands – and give you The Flash ending explained. It’s fair to say there’s a lot to get into and, of course, there will be loads of spoilers ahead.
How does The Flash end?
The Flash ends with Barry Allen returning to his own timeline and clearing his dad’s name. But everything isn’t quite back to normal because it turns out that George Clooney is now Bruce Wayne.
Much of the final act of The Flash is devoted to the giant battle between our team of heroes and the forces of General Zod. Things look pretty hopeless for The Flash cast because Bruce Wayne has been blown up in his ship, and Zod has stabbed Kara Zor-El to death, stealing the Kryptonian genetic code in the process.
The younger incarnation of Barry is determined to travel back in time to fix this, but his repeated attempts to change history fail over and over again. The older Barry states that the events of the battle are an “inevitable intersection” of timelines and will always happen.
This doesn’t stop younger Barry, who continues to travel in time until the spiky, malevolent form of Dark Flash emerges. It turns out that Dark Flash is the younger Barry after being torn apart by his determination to save everybody through time travel. He was responsible for creating himself by shunting the older Barry Allen into his younger timeline earlier in the movie. Still with us?
All of this time travel leads to the CGI spectacle of the entire multiverse splintering, so we get glimpses of multiple Superman actors and Batman actors. There’s an unmistakeably Adam West-era Batman, Nicolas Cage as Superman fighting a giant spider, and Christopher Reeve’s Superman shows up with Helen Slater’s Supergirl – via the medium of uncanny valley CGI, of course.
The arrival of Dark Flash shows the younger Barry the horror of what we will become if he continues to try to save everybody. Guilt-stricken, he takes a killer blow from Dark Flash in order both to save the older Barry and ensure that Dark Flash is never created. The spiky baddie dusts away, Thanos-style, as he is erased.
The older Barry realizes that his return home is an “inevitable intersection,” and reluctantly, he goes back to the day his mother visited the supermarket. He has an interaction with her, in which she seems to recognize him, and they embrace.
Barry then secretly takes the tin of tomatoes from her trolley, ensuring that his dad would have to go to the supermarket later and wouldn’t be present when she was killed. Thus, the “normal” timeline is restored, or so we think.
Barry then returns to his own timeline on the day of his dad’s court case. We learn that Barry had moved the tomatoes in the shop to a higher shelf so that his dad would have to look upwards and into the security camera. This confirms his alibi, and the court believes that he didn’t kill his wife. Barry’s good day continues when he asks Iris West to dinner, and she accepts.
He then gets a call from Bruce Wayne, and while they’re talking as if they’re old friends, Wayne arrives outside the court in a fancy car. But Barry declares, “who the fuck is this?” when he sees that the Bruce Wayne stepping out of the car is actually George Clooney, appearing in the role for the first time since Batman & Robin – notoriously one of the worst movies ever made. Time travel is messy.
What happens in The Flash post-credits scene?
The post-credits scene at the end of The Flash follows Barry Allen as he attempts to explain time travel and the multiverse to a very drunk Aquaman (Jason Momoa).
In the brief and comedic scene, we rejoin Barry as he tries to explain to a very inebriated Arthur Curry about the multiple versions of Bruce Wayne he has met, as well as the multiverse of different possible worlds.
It’s fair to say that Aquaman doesn’t listen very much to what Barry is saying, and collapses in a puddle to sleep there. He gives Barry one of his Atlantean rings. Seeing as the Aquaman 2 release date is next up in the calendar of DC movies, this suggests that there might be some cross-over between the events of The Flash and James Wan’s upcoming sequel.
So that’s every step of the marathon that is The Flash ending. We’ve also explained where The Flash fits in the DC timeline and answered the question, ‘How fast is The Flash?‘
But for more DC, find out about five things we want to see from James Gunn’s DCU and learn how The Flash actually adds James Gunn to the DC Universe.
If your eyes are firmly on the future, we’ve got everything you need to know about Gunn’s Chapter 1 Gods and Monsters slate, as well as detailed guides to the Superman Legacy release date and the Lanterns release date.