Original plans called for The Flash to end by softly rebooting the DCEU, replacing Ben Affleck's Batman with Michael Keaton's Dark Knight and swapping out Henry Cavill's Superman for Sasha Calle's Supergirl. From there, we'd have eventually got a Crisis on Infinite Earths movie, with both Affleck and Cavill expected to return.
That's all been scrapped now, with DC Studios embarking on its own plan to reboot the DCU with some new, and some returning, actors.
The Flash has undergone at least a couple of rounds of reshoots over the past year, with James Gunn and Peter Safran confirming they've consulted on the movie. The former recently answered a few fan questions on Instagram, including the notion that it's now going to reset everything. With that, he cleared up some long-standing confusion.
"Nope. Flash resets many things, not all things," the filmmaker teased. "Some characters remain the same some do not."
In other words, it sounds like The Flash is still going to reboot the DCEU, transforming it into the new DCU. We don't expect a big deal to be made out of that, though, and would guess it's going to have a relatively open ending so no specific characters are locked into the DCU that Gunn and Safran choose not to keep around.
So, anyone who wasn't in The Suicide Squad?
We kid, but remarks from Gunn during Monday's DC Studios press event may offer more context. "Some things are like a rough memory of what happens in the DCU," he said of whether the DCEU remains canon, "but once we hit Superman: Legacy anything can be changed."
It's all still pretty confusing, but a plan is in place, and we anticipate learning more in the coming months.
The Flash races into theaters on June 16.