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The following contains spoilers for The Flash, now playing in theaters.
The Multiverse remains in vogue for comic-book movies, despite a few minor hiccups from the Marvel Cinematic Universe which embraced the notion in a big way starting with Loki Season 1, Episode 6, "For All Time. Always." The Flash leans heavily into the notion and has great fun with it all: notably Michael Keaton's widely praised return as Bruce Wayne. Unfortunately, it relies on problematic tropes to do so, and its ideas act more out of expediency than careful thought. They're not hard to forgive -- The Flash is nothing if not entertaining -- but they also have the added challenge of arriving in the wake of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. It's hard to compete with the animated feature's superior ideas.
The Multiverse has been a staple of comics for decades, with both Marvel's What If…? and DC Elseworlds lines delivering unique variations of their best-known heroes. The MCU is doing terrific things with it, with the seemingly endless array of spare Kangs the chief nemesis of Phase Five, and the likes of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness exploring the storytelling possibilities of infinite realities. Spider-Man has proven a magic touch with the concept, both in the ongoing Spider-Verse animated movies and the triumph of Spider-Man: No Way Home. The Flash has no such ambitions, and given the dual challenges of wrapping up the DCEU and addressing the ongoing issues of star Ezra Miller, it simply doesn't have enough energy to compete with the Spider-Verse's conceptual brilliance.
The Flash Relies on Problematic Tropes and Dodgy Logic for Its Multiverse
The Flash is one of the final films in the DCEU before the upcoming DCU reboot replaces it all. That provides a number of unexpected benefits: it's playing with house money, creatively speaking, and director Andy Muschietti invests it with a go-for-broke energy that makes it an entertaining ride. In the process, however, it plays very fast and loose with its comic-book logic. Conceptually, time travel works in a manner expedient to the story: bringing Keaton in for a curtain call, for instance, and affecting things that happened before Barry arrives to alter the future. Keaton gives a suitably elaborate explanation involving a bowl of pasta to make it work, but the mechanics of it all are only there to make the story function. A more organic explanation -- strong enough to support multiple projects like the MCU -- simply wasn't in the cards.
On a more problematic level, the film hinges on "fridging" a number of characters to make its Multiversal plot works. That starts with Nora Allen herself, whose death leads to her son becoming The Flash and the rise of a brighter reality. It also extends to Kara Zor-El and Keaton's Bruce Wayne, both killed with shocking casualty in the film's climactic battle with General Zod. Their deaths are necessary only because the film's Multiversal logic demands it: otherwise, Barry wouldn't be forced to undo it all by letting his mother die. All of it casts a pall over the movie's otherwise light and comedic tone, for the sake of the mechanistic needs of the time travel plot. It goes so far as to repeat their deaths multiple times, as the two Barrys repeatedly fail to stop Kara from being stabbed. The impression is far uglier than the film likely intends.
The Spider-Verse Handles the Multiverse With More Flair
Though only loosely connected to the MCU, 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse became the harbinger of the Multiverse, as it introduced mainstream audiences to Miles Morales for the first time. In the process, it provided an adroit summation of how its Multiverse worked, complete with a variant version of Peter Parker to serve as Miles' mentor. It gives a strong set of rules for its multiple realities to adhere to, such as the notion of "Canon Events" which cannot be changed without threatening a given reality, then hangs the plot around it, instead of twisting its rules to fit its story. That gives it a much better set-up than The Flash, which pays off in a more mature look at the inevitability of death.
In the process, it directly confronts the "fridging" trope that The Flash embraces, as Miles defies the Spider Society in an effort to save his father from doom. He also risks the Multiverse in the process but remains unshaken in his belief that a solution can be found. The outcome has yet to be revealed -- Across the Spider-Verse ends on a cliffhanger scheduled to be resolved in 2024's Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse -- but it strikes a far more hopeful note, as well as providing better dramatic fodder in a seemingly insurmountable challenge for its hero.
That all looks far sharper than The Flash, which does fine with what it has, but can't get out of its own way often enough to soar. Its Multiverse is functional but clunky, and its reliance on distasteful tropes reveals how much depends on its hand-waving logic. None of it proves fatal, but Across the Spider-Verse makes its problems stand out all the more. The animated feature treats its Multiverse as a landscape to explore rather than a problem to solve, and that makes all the difference.
The Flash and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are both playing in cinemas.