After a hectic ride to production, The Flash teaser trailer finally debuted DC FanDome and revealed two Barry Allens will be in the movie. With the untimely collapse of Zack Snyder's vision of the DCEU, Warner Bros.' entire DC Comics film slate has been in a constant state of flux, and no character has experienced that chaos firsthand quite like The Flash. Changing hands from director to director (an incredible list of filmmakers including Robert Zemeckis, Matthew Vaughn, and Rick Famuyiwa), the project finally ended up in a stable spot with Andy Muschietti directing, hot off of delivering a box office smash to Warner Bros. with the It movies.
Although the project has taken many different forms, it seems like this particular cinematic incarnation will be a loose adaptation of the 2011 Michael Keaton's return as Batman as well as Sasha Calle's debut as Supergirl, viewers were also shocked to see a second, alternate version of Barry Allen.
The alternate version of Barry makes perfect sense with the Flashpoint-influenced storyline, however. Every incarnation of the Flash is known for his time-traveling shenanigans, and Flashpoint is only one of a few stories that deal directly with the repercussions of his meddling. Final Crisis and the divisive Heroes in Crisis also directly address the intersection between The Flash's abilities and time travel, with the latter possibly providing an explanation as to why there are two Barry Allens in the film. In Heroes in Crisis, written by former New Gods co-writer Tom King, Wally West, the third incarnation of the Flash, is involved in an accident that results in the deaths of dozens of superheroes, and in a panicked fugue state, the character kills a version of himself from a week into the future and uses the body as a decoy to throw the other heroes off his trail while he desperately searches for a way to reverse his actions.
If the movie is employing a similar trick, albeit with a very much alive version of Barry Allen, then there's a potential ticking time bomb at the heart of the Flashpoint adaptation. In the comics, the war between Themyscira and Atlantis has caused so much carnage that the U.S. government drops a nuclear bomb at the end of the story, decimating the Earth before the entire timeline is undone by the Flash's time travel. If the movie carries similarly high stakes, audiences could be looking at a paradoxical situation in which Barry alters the timeline, tries desperately to fix it, but finds out that he's unable to do it himself and resolves to travel back in time again to enlist the help of none other than himself to make the situation right.
Based on the fact that the long-haired Barry is wearing a repurposed Batman suit (the sneak peek shows a quick shot of Barry spray-painting a Flash symbol over a pair of Batman's boots), this could suggest that the other Barry's suit is destroyed in the initial time he spends in the Flashpoint timeline. All hints from the trailer indicate that this timeline will be a much darker one. Regardless of the reason why, the presence of two Barry Allens suggests that the stakes will be dangerously high for the heroes whenever The Flash finally races into theaters.
