The Flash’s first trailer gives new meaning to “world’s finest”

It’s still hard to believe that Warner Bros. Discovery’s The Flash is actually happening given its years of production setbacks and star Ezra Miller’s recent brushes with the police related to a number of troubling situations. Scandals be damned, The Flash is on its way, but by the look of the movie’s first trailer, Miller’s Barry Allen isn’t going to be the real big-ticket draw here.

Loosely based on DC’s Flashpoint comics event, director Andy Muschietti’s The Flash will follow Barry across the multiverse as he embarks on a haphazard journey into the past, where he hopes to prevent his mother’s death. By tapping into the power of the Speed Force, it’s (relatively) easy enough for him to travel through time by really pushing his metahuman speed. But when Barry’s meddling in the past leads to the creation of a new timeline totally devoid of metahumans that he becomes trapped in, he and that reality’s Barry (also played by Miller) team up in hopes of putting things right.

Though the new trailer seems to suggest that the Barrys will share a special moment involving Speed Force lightning that leaves them both empowered, it’s the other heroes they’re going to be allying with who are likely to steal the show. Devoid of proper metahumans as the new reality is, it’s got at least one Batman (Michael Keaton) who doesn’t need to be able to turn his head to beat criminals up, and one near-indestructible Kryptonian named Kara (Sasha Calle) wearing the House of El symbol. The pair might not be Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck (who’s also set to appear in The Flash), but the trailer definitely frames Kara and this take on Bruce Wayne as its world’s finest heroes, and it’s interesting to see Supergirl being featured prominently in a story.

The Flash has all the makings of being the sort of project that very well could functionally reset the DCEU and introduce James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC Universe, which would be quite the clever little bit of footwork on the studio’s part. But we won’t know whether that’s actually WBD’s plan or if it even has a chance of working until The Flash hits theaters on June 16th, 2023.