No Way Home Shows What The Flash Movie Needs To Avoid (& Do Better)

Spider-Man: No Way Home gives a clear indication of what The Flash can do when it releases in November 2022. No Way Home did a lot of things right with its story, and since The Flash is set to have some similarities to No Way Home, it would make sense for The Flash to recycle some successful elements. Similarly, No Way Home wasn’t without its faults, so The Flash could benefit from avoiding the things that weighed it down.

While details about The Flash are currently sparse, one of the biggest things known about the movie is that it will involve the multiverse in some fashion. Michael Keaton is set to reprise his role of Batman from the Tim Burton movies, and an alternate version of Barry Allen will also appear in the movie. With alternate versions of the hero and characters from movies previously out of continuity appearing, the movie appears to have a lot in common with Spider-Man: No Way Home, which also involved the multiverse and characters from older movies showing up.

With that in mind, there’s a lot that The Flash could learn from No Way Home, both in regards to what it did right and what it did wrong. No Way Home did a lot right with its story and characters, but it ended up falling a little short with its pacing and how it handled certain plot elements of its story. Fortunately, The Flash can learn from all of that and use it to its own benefit in the long run.

What No Way Home Did Right That Flash Can Copy

No Way Home did a lot of things right that The Flash could serve to learn from. The basic way that it handles the multiverse, for example, is fairly simple, especially compared to other Phase 4 entries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it shows that a story involving the multiverse doesn’t need to make things overly complex for it to work. Furthermore, Peter’s interactions with both the villains and his alternate selves were some of the best parts of the movie, with the villains allowing for his character to move in a new direction from how different they are from the MCU villains and the alternate selves giving Peter a chance to connect with people who know the kind of circumstances he’s going through. The DCEU’s The Flashshould take notes from that and allow Barry to go through growth he didn’t have in his previous appearances thanks to the villains and give him a chance to interact with and learn from an alternate version of himself. There is a precedent for this kind of plot device, thanks to Ezra Miller’s Flash cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths, so there’s already a roadmap for Barry being able to bounce off alternate versions of himself.

Character work is probably the biggest thing The Flash should learn from No Way Home. Multiversal revelations aside, what truly made No Way Home work was how much the story was able to develop its cast and use them to facilitate growth in each other. No Way Home worked as well as it did because of its characters, so The Flash should do the same and give audiences a reason to care about everyone beyond varying degrees of fanservice.

No Way Home’s Biggest Issue Is Having Too Many Villains

For all its strengths, No Way Home wasn’t without its faults, and one of them was having too many villains. While the villains were entertaining and worked well with Peter and the other MCU characters, they couldn’t all get equal screentime and attention. The Green Goblin and Doctor Octopus had the most involvement in the story, Electro had some involvement, but was mostly used for comedic relief, and Sandman and the Lizard were barely involved in the movie to the point that they were fully CGI for the majority of it, with many of their scenes just reusing old footage from Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man. On a similar note, the story was written with the expectation that everyone watching would be familiar with the previous Spider-Man films and know the ins and outs of all of them, but for anyone who didn’t, a lot of the movie could feel incomprehensible, especially in regards to the villains.

While it’s not known who all of the villains of The Flash will be, General Zod and Faora-Ul will be appearing for the first time since Man of Steel. With the added multiversal plot elements, the movie will likely feature a large assortment of villains, which would be to its detriment. The DCEU’s The Flash would retain more focus if there were fewer villains in the story, but if there are going to be a lot, then it should at least try harder to give all of them equal screentime and development. Additionally, if more of them are going to be villains from older movies, then the story should make an effort to be more accessible to people who didn’t watch these movies at the first time of asking.

How The Flash Can Focus Its Story More

There are several things that The Flash can do to retain focus a little better than No Way Home. Better handling of the villains is clearly essential, but The Flash would also benefit from being paced a little quicker than No Way Home. In No Way Home, it takes nearly the entirety of the first act for the crossover elements to come into play, with the time before that spent on setting up the conflict for the rest of the film. Granted, a lot of that was for the film’s benefit, since it provided great character moments between Peter, MJ, Ned, and the rest of the cast, and it did a good job of setting up the larger story, but a case can be made about it taking too long to get to all of that. The multiverse and the crossover elements are going to be the major focus of The Flash, so the movie should try to get to them as quickly as possible while still taking care to properly develop the story surrounding it.

The Flash’s Multiverse Needs To Have A True Impact

Above all else, the multiverse aspect of The Flashneeds to be able to have a major impact on the DCEU going forward. While the multiverse was integral to the plot of No Way Home and continued Phase 4’s exploration into the multiverse, the movie doesn’t actually explore it that much, mostly using it as a plot device. Moreover, the change in Peter’s status quo comes about from Doctor Strange’s spell, not the multiverse, specifically. Whatever ramifications the multiverse will have for the MCU following No Way Home are unclear, but The Flash doesn’t have to follow the same path.

The Flash should use its time to fully explore the ramifications of a multiverse. While plot details are still sparse, the movie will be using elements of the Flash story Flashpoint, which famously altered the multiverse of the DC Universe; if the movie is taking inspiration from that sort of story, then whatever it does with its multiverse should also have a major effect on the DCEU, going forward. Various leaks and rumors suggest that the movie will be used to reboot the DCEU, and as controversial as that could be, it would still have the movie giving the multiverse more weight than No Way Home did. Whatever The Flash decides to do with the multiverse, that decision should help it get the most out of it.