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The following contains spoilers for The Flash, now playing in theaters.
The Flash -- specifically Barry Allen -- has always been first among equals when it comes to superhero speedsters. He helped launch the Silver Age of comics after his debut in the 1950s, and he's been a staple of DC's roster ever since. That's also made him a prominent figure in various television series -- both stand-alone and as a part of some version of the Justice League -- for decades, as well as a bevy of animated features. The DC Extended Universe introduced a new live-action version in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, with 2023's The Flash constituting his first solo movie.
And yet, despite that enormous pop-culture footprint, he's officially been outclassed (at least on the big screen) by his rival at Marvel. Quicksilver. More specifically, Evan Peters' version in the latter-day X-Men movies set a pace that even Barry Allen has been forced to acknowledge. The Flash's opening action sequence all but concedes the field to his rival.
Quicksilver Stole the Show in Two X-Men Movies in a Row
Along with his sister, The Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver fell into a strange position as far as IP rights go. The two characters belong to both the X-Men and The Avengers, which were owned by separate entities before Disney's monster purchase of Fox. As a result, two different versions of Quicksilver appeared on the big screen within a short period of time, with Peters arriving in 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past and Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing him a year later in Avengers: Age of Ultron for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Peters had the inside edge from the beginning, not only because he was first out of the gate but because of the film's showstopping effects sequence centered around him. In an effort to break Magneto out of prison, he takes out an entire room full of guards. Their movements, and the rest of the world, slow to a crawl as the hero zips around the space: moving bullets safely out of the people's way and arranging for his statue-like foes to knock themselves unconscious. Two years later, he actually topped it with a similar sequence in X-Men: Apocalypse as Quicksilver clears Xavier's school ahead of an imminent explosion while Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" pulses on the soundtrack.
Peters added a fun-loving performance to the mix, but the scenes themselves so perfectly captured the character that other movie speedsters just can't keep up. Johnson's performance in Age of Ultron is arguably a good deal closer to the character in the comics (Peters admittedly brings a reasonable amount of Barry Allen into his Pietro Maximoff), but failed to leave the same impression. His death at the end of the film essentially conceded the field to Peters, with The Scarlet Witch essentially splitting Magneto's kids between the two franchises.
The Flash Openly Acknowledges Quicksilver's Influence
The Flash all but admits the same thing in its opening action scene. A maternity ward full of babies is jettisoned out an upper-story window: complete with a horrified ward nurse and an adorable therapy dog for good measure. Barry saves the day basically by arranging them in a row and getting them to drop onto a dolly. The scene is amusingly staged and works well for the purposes of the movie, but the shtick is no different than Quicksilver's. The world turns to stone, and Barry pushes the various pieces around until they come out right. Like the Eurythmics scene, it involves saving multiple innocents more or less in one go, and like the Eurythmics scene, Barry uses the environment around him to make his task easier.
Days of Future Past nailed the concept to the wall, and the fact is that subsequent versions can only hope to repeat the trick with a few new wrinkles. It's unexpected considering how much bigger The Flash is as a character than Quicksilver (and there are troubling undertones considering that both of his big film appearances were directed by Bryan Singer, who stands accused of systemic abuse). But the fact remains that he left a singular impression so strong that even Barry Allen has to operate within its shadow. Peters remains the movie speedster to beat.
The Flash is now playing in theaters.