The Fastest Man Alive finally arrived this year with his own film,The Flash. After nearly a decade of setbacks and delays and controversies, the film didn’t receive as much of a warm welcome as Warner Bros would’ve liked, as even though anticipation was high for the return of Barry Allen (the controversial Ezra Miller), the popular Speedster also known as The Flash, the eponymous film built before release as “the greatest comic book movie ever” opened with disastrous results, even giving last year’sBlack Adama run for its nonexistent money.
Even thoughThe Flashfulfills its role as the harbinger of James Gunn’s rebooted DC cinematic universe, perfectlysetting the new DCUand more, it seems that Barry Allen couldn’t manage to set up a sequel for himself, even though the film obviously leaves a lot of big things unresolved to be picked up in another movie. There are plenty of likely reasons whyThe Flashhas performed so terribly for weeks now, being a box office bomb, so there’s realistically no chance of any return for Barry Allen, and because of that, there are a lot of things we will never have cleared up. Here are the biggest questions that will never be answered aboutThe Flash.
Update June 21, 2025: This article has been updated with even more questionsThe Flashleaves unanswered.
How Did Kara End Up Imprisoned?
Looking for Superman, Bruce, and the Barrys (that right there sounds like an awesome jazz band), learn of a Kryptonian pod in Siberia under the control of the Russians. The tean rescues the Kryptonian inside, but instead of freeing the famous Superman Kal-El, they find his cousinKara Zor-El (Sasha Calle). We learn that Kara was originally sent in stasis to protect the infant Kal, who was the key to rejuvenating the sterile Kryptonian race. However, she was intercepted by Zod, who took and killed Kal, leaving Kara for dead.
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After that, Kara’s story isn’t expanded on much more outside of her origin. TheFlashpointcomic that the film is based off of has Superman captured and experimented on when he arrives on Earth. In this version, he’s a government project constantly kept in a weakened state, as a part of Project: Superman. The film looks to be taking inspiration from this story, replacing him with Supergirl and revealing that her pod landed in Russia.
Yet it was never addressed just how Kara ended up imprisoned by Russians and how they could control her. She would have been extremely powerful due to the Earth’s yellow sun, but the movie doesn’t explain any of this.
Why Did Keaton’s Batman Retire?
The return of Michael Keaton as Batman for the first time in over thirty years was largely the driving force of the film’s marketing. It was an exciting moment to see him don the cape and cowl for (most likely) the last time in his acting career. Perhaps the most interesting part of it all is seeing how his universe’s Gotham City differed from that of the Tim Burton-directedBatmanmovies. Through Barry’s time travel shenanigans, he accidentally ends up rewriting both the past and present, revealing a new face for Bruce Wayne. This seemed to be a completely separate universe from the Burton films, with different architecture in the city to add proof to that, but the most jarring change was that this Batman had actually retired.
When the film picks up with Keaton’s Batman, he’s no longer acting as the caped crusader and seemingly hasn’t for years. He’s living a life as a recluse and has no interest in putting on the costume again when the two Barry’s ask for his help. It’s one of the biggest mysteries in the film and something that seems important to learn to give Keaton’s Batman more depth, but the answer never arrives. Director AndyMuschietti was asked about thisand said he thought that Batman had accidentally killed someone, but that story never made it into the final cut of the film. WithBatgirlcanned for a tax write-off, it seems like we’ll never learn the canon reason.
How Do Barry’s Powers Work?
Before meeting alt-Bruce, Barry – still falsely believing he canmaintain the timeline– helps his younger self gain his powers to keep things as similar to his time as possible, but somehow, older Barry loses his powers when the younger gets his. It seems like when the lightning bolt passed through Barry to his younger self, it transferred the powers between the two, but the film never specifically calls that out.
After meeting Kara, Bruce fails to recreate the event to give Barry his powers back. Kara, though, flies Barry into a storm, so he gets struck by a regular lightning bolt and simply regains his powers without any extra trouble. There’s no explanation as to why Barry loses his powers or how he regained them without the chemicals that mixed with the lightning in Barry’s original accident. Since the DCEU completely skipped over Flash’s origin, it’s impossible to look back and figure out how his powers work. This mystery makes things a little hard to follow, as there aren’t any set rules to explain things. How Barry’s powers work is unclear and will likely never be cleared up for us.
How Does the First Dark Flash Exist?
While General Zod’s invasion is what gets the story moving, he isn’t the main villain of the film. That title would be saved for the Dark Flash, a twisted version of Barry who never learned his lesson and was determined to rewrite a fixed point in time. He makes his presence known in the third act of the film as it’s revealed that he was the future version of alt-Barry that main Barry created and has spent thousands of years trying to undo Bruce and Kara’s deaths.
Outside of his brief role at the end of the movie, he makes an even shorter appearance towards the start of the film. When Barry is originally traveling back to the future after stopping his mother’s murder, he’s abruptly pushed out of the speed force by the Dark Flash in the year 2013, on the day of Zod’s invasion. It’s an interesting moment, but after learning about Dark Flash’s true origin, it raises some questions.
If Barry creates his alternate 2013 self, how is the future Dark Flash version of his 2013 self able to push Barry out of the speed force before he’s ever created? Time travel is a story element that often makes things confusing, and here it creates a paradox. That version of the Dark Flash has to be different from the one at the end because he can’t exist without Barry creating him in the first place. Perhaps it’s another version of Barry who creates another Dark Flash by pushing the main Barry out of the speed force earlier to try and stop the fixed points before they happen, but there’s no clear answer. The film does everything to say they’re the same character, thus creating a paradox that makes no sense.
What Does Clooney’s Batman Want?
After the crazy time-traveling and dimension-hopping battle of the Barrys, Bruce, and Kara against Zod, our Barry returns home after fixing the timeline to find that it’s not actually fixed. Barry removed the tomato can, allowing his mother to die, but shifted evidence to allow his father to avoid prison.
Despite small changes like this completely rupturing the timeline to start the events of the film, Barry felt this change would, hopefully, lead to a future with his father still in his life, although his mother would be gone. Of course, this was not the case, and the last scene of the film lets us know just how significant a change Barry actually made with his move at the grocery store.
Related:The Flash: Biggest Plot Holes, Explained
Near the end of the film, at his father’s trial, Barry sees his rich batty mentor step out of a limo but sees a brand-new face he’s never seen onBruce Wayne (George Clooney), who is apparently very familiar with Barry and asks a favor of him before the credits start rolling. This is a call back to Clooney’s run as the caped crusader, which resulted in one of the most poorly received Batman films of all time,Batman & Robin.
Unfortunately, we’ll never know what this other alternate Bruce wants afterThe Flash’spoor performance, as even though there is apotential spin-off planned, it’s not likely not to happen either, just like Barry’s sequel.
What Universe is Barry in at the End of the Movie?
Since Barry put the tomatoes on the top shelf, he inadvertently created yet another timeline at the end of the film. It still bears some resemblence to the universe he’s used to, but the reveal of George Clooney’s Batman shows that not everything is how it seems. The film ending in a new timeline creates a ton of questions as to the continuity of this universe. With JamesGunn making it clearthatThe Flashwould pave the way for his new DC universe, it creates the big question of if that’s what Barry created at the end of the film.
Only that’s where things get even more confusing, as Gunn already confirmed thatClooney won’t be the Batman of the new DC Universe.The Brave and the Bold, also directed by Andy Muschietti, is going to have a new actor wearing the iconic cape and cowl and not rely onThe Flashat all. So, if Barry didn’t reset the timeline to the new universe’s continuity, where did he end up? It’s made known that he isn’t in the DCEU’s Snyderverse, and he isn’t in Gunn’s DCU either, so it would seem like Barry is in a new timeline altogether that won’t be revisited in the near future.
The ending of the film changed several times in production, with each ending revealing something different about the universe, showing that not even the creative team behind it was certain where Barry ended up. With different drafts having Henry Cavill’s Superman alongside Sasha Calle’s Supergirl and another having her joined by Keaton’s Batman, it was always up in the air with things constantly changing. Now that the universe is on the verge of being rebooted, it seems that audiences will never find out just where Barry ended up.
Who Killed Barry’s Mom?
The biggest question left unanswered, obviously for a sequel, was the murderer of Barry’s mom inThe Flash. The entire film revolves around his mother’s death and father’s imprisonment because of it, but the movie carefully dances around who actually did kill her. Barry puts his energy into preventing it from happening in other ways, since he doesn’t want to make a direct impact on the timeline. While it makes sense for the film’s time travel logic, it leaves a huge mystery that makes things feel a little unsatisfying. There are different answers depending on the comic series or television series, but the film never even offers any suspects.
The director does explain it was the Reverse Flash, also known as Zoom, who recreated Barry’s accident in the future and wanted to erase him from history. Professor Zoom is the Flash’s greatest villain and has always been tied to this moment in one way or another. Zoom started out as a fan of the Flash in the future, but upon learning that he was destined to become his great adversary, he became obsessed. It drove him to madness as he was fueled by rage and jealousy, and he dedicated his own life to ruining Flash in any way he could. This would have been explored in the sequel, but we can assume that will never happen.
