Yet when it came to The Flash that proved frustratingly impossible. Or at least implausible considering the allegations and legal entanglements the Flash actor Miller found themselves in by 2023. Whether general audiences were fully aware of Miller’s troubles or struggle with mental health is difficult to say, but the fact of the matter is WB wisely decided The Flash’s biggest lead should not promote the film, and its second biggest lead, Michael Keaton, chose not to. Newcomer Sasha Calle gave it an impressive college try, but she played a character audiences were unsure about—a Supergirl from a different universe who may not appear in another DC film—and didn’t have the resume of working in previous DC films.

In other words, Miller’s absence created a black hole in the marketing campaign around The Flash that nobody was able to fill. That is a pretty major problem right there, but it’s not the biggest…

WB Already Signaled This Was the End of the Line

In January 2023, new DC Studios co-head James Gunn boldly announced the first slate of what he dubbed the new DC Universe. There would be a new Superman movie with a new actor and timeline, then tentatively titled Superman: Legacy; there would be TV shows in live-action and animation; there would even be a new Batman unrelated to either Ben Affleck’s character in the DCEU or the one played by Robert Pattinson in The Batman; and there would be a new Supergirl movie called Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

When asked whether Calle might play that Supergirl, Gunn at the time was vague and perhaps evasive. It left room for fan speculation, as well as intense skepticism. And that was in regard to The Flash’s biggest new addition to the DC Extended Universe. Meanwhile it was already confirmed by then that Henry Cavill was done as Superman, Gal Gadot seemed unlikely to play Wonder Woman again as she seemingly said goodbye to the character on social media, and Affleck had spent the past half-decade with one foot out the door.

The entire lineup of the DCEU’s once glistening Justice League was going, going, gone, and whatever promises The Flash made about the next era of the onscreen DC universe seemed illusory at best. And so they were. House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock is now Supergirl, Gunn and Muschietti are both allegedly creating a new Batman for The Brave and the Bold, and David Corenswet’s Superman presumably hails from a far sunnier Krypton than the bleak hellscape Michael Shannon represented in The Flash.

Like Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Aquaman 2, and the rest of the 2023 DC slate, The Flash arrived two years ago as a lame duck, a new phenomenon in cinema created by the industrial scale at which superhero flicks are now churned out. Admittedly, a movie should be enjoyable unto itself as a complete experience. And whatever else you might think of The Flash, we do concede it is a self-contained story with a beginning, middle, and end. However, it is also a piece of a studio’s grander marketing strategy, and for the last 20 years Marvel, Disney, and sure enough the DCEU have trained media-savvy fans to anticipate each film as a pseudo-commercial for the next two or three in the pipeline.