The Flash will be one of DC’s big movies this year, and according to James Gunn, it’s going to change everything. Everyone had been waiting for Gunn to make an announcement of where his new DC universe would be headed, and now that he finally has, we know that The Flash might just be the crux on which the DC universe changes. The Flash movie had been planned for a while before James Gunn and Peter Safran took their respective offices, but now it looks like Gunn is going to use The Flash to connect the DCU in a kind of reboot.

If The Flash really is going to change the DCU, how can we tell which direction it will go? Gunn’s announcement showed us ten new projects aside from the upcoming DC films we already knew about. The projects themselves don’t reveal much about the DCU, but the storyline of The Flash might give us a hint at where Gunn’s plans might take us. The Flash’s plot hints at a comic book storyline that set off a major chain of events in DC Comics. If we base our assumptions on The Flash taking its cues from DC Comics’ Flashpoint event, we might get a peek into the future of the DCU.

The Flash and Its Story

The Flash
Warner Bros. Discovery

Right now, The Flash has no official synopsis from Warner Bros. Discovery. But based on an early version of the film’s title, and rumors about the movie while it was in production, it’s a safe bet to say the plot will be something akin to DC Comics’ Flashpoint event. In that event, Barry Allen, the Flash, wakes up in a universe that is not his own. He discovers that, by using the speed force to go back in time and prevent the death of his mother, he has created an alternate timeline. The world had been ravaged by war, and the fates of many superheroes had been changed.

Related: The New DC Universe: Breaking Down the First Ten Projects

In the comics, this led to a very dark timeline in which there had never been a Justice League, and Superman was raised as a secret government project. The Earth was experiencing World War III as the Atlanteans and the Amazons were locked in a deadly combat that was destroying most of Western Europe. The Flash will probably follow this storyline, though not exactly. It’s a big hint that the IMDb page for the movie has both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton listed as playing. We won’t spoil anything for you, but in the trailer, when we see Barry Allen confront Batman, the man under the mask isn’t who you’d expect.

Where The Flash might deviate from the comic book storyline is in its exclusion of Wonder Woman and Aquaman, and its inclusion of General Zod. Though it will be good to see Michael Shannon trying to conquer Earth again, it’s not the big, world-destroying conflict fans of the comics might have expected to see. So, we can tell, the DCU will remain a little bit different from the comics. And it might be even more different than that. Because The Flash was not part of James Gunn’s new plan, he’s likely to use the event as more of a nexus point for change rather than the cornerstone of his DC canon. The DCU would be very different if it were based on the Flashpoint timeline.

The Future of the DCU

Ezra Miller
Warner Bros. Pictures

Superman, Batman, the Flash, these are all big DC characters that we know are going through massive changes in the coming years. But the 2023 movie The Flash still plays off of the old paradigm for the old DCU. So, this is probably the last time we’ll see Ben Affleck, Michael Shannon, and Ezra Miller in a DC film. When Barry Allen comes back to his home universe there might be some differences moving forward. Whether the DC writers will make light of this moving forward remains to be seen, but when this big universal change happens, the memories of some of our favorite heroes may change in the same way they did in DC Comics.

Related: Here Are the Writers Who Will Shape the DCU Future

After Flashpoint there was an event called Rebirth. Essentially, the event reset all the characters in DC to a pre-Flashpoint aesthetic that combined elements of what they were like before with added changes from what DC considered good consequences of other reboot events. What we got was basically DC handpicking what they wanted out of the last 50 years of comic book history. We might see something like this happen in James Gunn’s universe. Moving forward, parts of the old world might stay, and parts may be reset. We know there will eventually be a new Batman, and Wonder Woman’s timeline will be reset. But it seems these characters aren’t a priority to the new DCU.

Upcoming projects are focusing more on things we’ve never seen before. The Flash may change the memories of some superheroes and real events with others. But it won’t be the start of James Gunn’s new story for the DC universe.