While we've come to think of shared universes as needing a single, consistent continuity, the DC Extended Universe doesn't have to be that. In fact, based on the way that the DCEU currently seems to be shaping up, Warner Bros. may be more interested in focusing on individual superheroes and their families, rather than trying to find ways for every movie to cross over and connect.
In the ten years since the release of Fantastic Beasts prequels.
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What the DCEU has learned, however, is that trying to maintain a shared universe can be a burden. The movies that have been best-received in recent years are the movies that largely stood alone, with only token nods to the rest of the DCEU, like overtaken by a Venom solo movie.
To Warner Bros.' credit, the studio seems to have realized that - for whatever reason - constantly setting up crossovers and team-ups isn't working for the DCEU, and pivoted accordingly. Joker may prove to be the exception to the rule, but it's still evidence that Warner Bros. is moving away from obsessing over connections, and focusing instead of strong individual movie pitches.
The DCEU can set itself apart by doing what the comics have largely done, and breaking down into a collection of smaller universes that each focus on a different DC "family" - like the Bat-family of Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl and other Bat-adjacent characters, or Shazam and the Marvel family, or the expansive world of Aquaman and the Seven Kingdoms. There's still potential for future crossovers, of course, but by dividing the DCEU up, the smaller sub-universes can be allowed to thrive and (in a worst-case scenario) be quarantined from one another, so that a individual movie can fail without affecting the larger universe.
Warner Bros. has a significant advantage over Marvel Studios at the start of the MCU, in the sense that the DCEU already has the full slate of DC Comics characters collected under one roof. By focusing on individual families - Supergirl and Superman, the Suicide Squad, Harley Quinn and the Birds of Prey - there's huge potential to build up strong brands with their own individual worlds and aesthetics. There's more than one way to build a shared universe.
