Warning: This article contains full spoilers for The Flash.
Barry Allen might be the one with his superhero alias in the title, but it’s long been clear that The Flash isn’t just serving as the Scarlet Speedster’s first solo movie but rather as a smorgasbord showcase of DC’s cinematic heritage, with its plot owing a lot to the DCEU’s beginnings and bringing back one of DC’s biggest icons of the 1980s/90s.
This extends to the movie’s choice of villains as well. Surprisingly, and controversially, The Flash doesn’t feature any of the hero’s ample rogues gallery from the comics. No Reverse-Flash, Captain Cold, nor even a reflection of the Mirror Master. Instead it’s up to one familiar villain from DC’s past and one original creation for the screen to fill the role of making the Crimson Comet’s life a misery.
There’s so much going on in the movie that it’s possible to come out of the theater having watched the whole thing from beginning to end and still require further clarification about who the villains were and what they were planning. If that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place.
Who is General Zod?
While the above question might be an easy one to answer for hardcore DCEU devotees, it’s worth pointing out that Man of Steel was released a full decade ago at this point, so it’s fully understandable that audiences less familiar with the ins and outs of the franchise’s continuity might be left mystified by the Kryptonian military man’s appearance in The Flash.
Once Barry Allen elects to travel back in time and save his mother’s life, he’s jettisoned from the Speed Force by a mysterious monstrous speedster — officially called the Dark Flash — and finds himself in an alternate 2013, where he encounters his younger variant, Barry 2. His arrival also coincides with Zod’s invasion of Earth, which in the original timeline marked Superman’s emergence as the world’s greatest hero.
Zod’s goal is the same in The Flash as in Man of Steel — he wants to get his hands on the child of Krypton that Jor-El imbued with the species’ genetic codex, the key to the planet’s rebirth. In a low-key twist, we learn that — in this version of events — Jor-El didn’t make his son Kal-El the codex but his niece Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl. So when Zod intercepted Baby Superman’s pod years ago, the infant died due the villain’s tests.
Without Superman, Zod was destined to win his conquest of Earth no matter what happened, which leads Barry 2 to become obsessed with doing whatever he can to defeat him.
Who is the Dark Flash?
When Barry finds himself in 2013, he decides he must ensure he gets his powers by putting Barry 2 through the accident that served as his origins story — when a lightning bolt doused him in dangerous chemicals. It works, although Barry 1 then has to spend the rest of the film attempting to get his energetic and reckless younger self to understand the responsibility of being a superhero.
By the time of the battle against Zod, the two Barries have teamed up with Michael Keaton’s Batman and Supergirl, who Barry 2 has developed a crush on. Tragically, even the combined might of these four heroes isn’t enough to defeat the villain and both Batman and Supergirl die. Heartbroken, Barry 2 takes himself and Barry 1 back in time a couple of minutes to undo their deaths and try again. But, no matter what they do, their allies die and Zod wins.
In the Speed Force, the pair are confronted by the Dark Flash once more and it’s revealed that he’s an elderly version of Barry 2, who has spent a lifetime attempting to alter the timeline to save everyone. He originally confronted Barry 1 in order to knock him into this timeline, thereby creating himself. When Barry 1 tries to stop him, Barry 2 sacrifices himself to protect his variant. The resulting paradox wipes Dark Flash from existence.
While Dark Flash has elements of evil speedsters like Reverse-Flash, Zoom, and Black Flash, he is mostly an invention for the film.