Warner Bros. has been promoting the multiverse as the future of DC movies and TV, but Matt Ryan changing to a new character on Legends of Tomorrow (so John Constantine can leave) is more evidence that they don’t know how it works. While there’s been a number of hit DC films in recent years, Warner Bros. has had trouble building the DCEU, especially after abandoning Zack Snyder’s original 5-film plan in the middle of the production of Justice League.
Since Justice League‘s reshoots, DCEU continuity has remained generally intact, but due to a desire to pivot away from the story originally being told by Snyder (despite the strong reception of Zack Snyder’s Justice League), there’s been minimal connectivity between DC films, with no larger story being built between the newest batch of movies. The Flash has long been rumored as WB’s silver bullet to shift continuity in a new direction and explain the loss of actors for key characters, particularly Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill’s Superman.
DC has a long-held reputation for only allowing well-known heroes to appear in one live-action medium at a time, with movie appearances for characters like Deathstroke, Deadshot, Amanda Waller, Harley Quinn, and more causing the characters to get written out of Arrow to avoid brand confusion. The massive Crisis on Infinite Earths CW crossover event was supposed to fix much of this, revealing the existence of multiple universes with alternate versions of many characters, particularly Flash, with a major Flash movie crossover from Ezra Miller. This was supposed to set up Flash’s expected timeline and universe hopping adventure in The Flash movie, akin to the Flashpoint comic story. Unfortunately, it seems executives at Warner Bros. aren’t on the same page as creatives and continue making multiverse-liming decisions.
With the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the strong reception started speculation that WB could finish Snyder’s original Snyderverse plan with Justice League 2 and 3 and maybe Ben Affleck’s Batman movie (and release of David Ayer’s original version of Suicide Squad) and it wouldn’t conflict with the future DCEU slate since the multiverse established in The Flash would explain why there were two different continuities; however, it was made clear quickly by WB CEO Ann Sarnoff in an interview where she said there’d be no more Snyderverse movies, despite promoting plans to “build out the DC multiverse” and make the DC movies and shows “more connected.” Now, as a Constantine show is in the works at HBO Max, WB is following old habits and pulling John Constantine from Legends of Tomorrow. It’s not specified that the HBO Max show is the reason for the change, the decision to keep Matt Ryan on as a new character and the impending HBO Max show (and Justice League Dark crossover), it’s clearly an attempt to preserve the character.
The utilization of the multiverse is supposed to allow for greater diversity in storytelling and more opportunities for fan-favorite characters to make appearances in various movies and shows, a strategy that can see big success as we’ve seen with Joker, but for some reason, Warner Bros. continues to stick to its old model of limiting character appearances, which will only become a bigger concern, especially if things don’t really change after The Flash.
