Summary
- The Flash missed the chance to bring back Henry Cavill’s Superman and Grant Gustin’s Flash despite having a multiversal plot and numerous cameos from other characters.
- Henry Cavill’s Superman only appears through CGI recreations, while Grant Gustin’s Flash is completely absent from The Flash, despite their previous meeting in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
- Andy Muschietti explained that the decision to exclude more cameos was due to the large number of possibilities, but it could have been managed differently to include important characters like Gustin’s Flash and Cavill’s Superman.
The Flash wasted the perfect opportunity to bring back two fan-favorite DC actors. Thanks to its multiversal plot, The Flash had free rein when it came to cameos and supporting roles from other DC characters. Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, and even George Clooney reprised their DC roles for what looks to be the last time, as the imminent DCU reboot will introduce a new universe with a fresh overarching story. Still, The Flash doesn’t fully take advantage of its cameos.
The Flash features cameo appearances by previous DC actors such as Helen Slater as Supergirl, Adam West as Batman, and Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, and Nicolas Cage as Superman. It also reveals another time-traveling Flash, who seems to be an unidentified version of Jay Garrick. But between all of these cameos, the two most logical additions are nowhere to be seen.
Henry Cavill And Grant Gustin Don’t Have Cameos In The Flash Despite Perfect Setup
The Flash brought Barry Allen back to Man of Steel‘s Black Zero event, where General Zod invaded Earth and was only stopped by Superman. But despite this opportunity to revisit Cavill’s character in the flesh, The Flash only includes CGI recreations of Superman. A CGI Superman appears in a news broadcast, where he’s shown to be busy overseas, and in The Flash‘s chronobowl sequence, where Barry Allen’s timeline shows Clark Kent during the events of Justice League.
Just as the clash between different universes in The Flash provided a brief look at Nicolas Cage’s Superman and Adam West’s Batman, it could have also featured Grant Gustin’s return as the Flash. Apart from the fact that Gustin’s portrayal of Barry Allen received high praise since the show’s first episode in 2014, Grant Gustin and Ezra Miller’s characters had already met in The CW’s Crisis on Infinite Earths event, and Gustin’s run as the Flash ended less than a month before the DCEU’s The Flash released. A tribute to Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen, however, wasn’t included in any form.
Why Henry Cavill And Grant Gustin Aren’t In The Flash
The Flash originally featured a Henry Cavill cameo in one of its many scrapped scenes. However, that idea got cut after Warner Bros. decided not to move forward with new DCEU projects. Since the studio parted ways with Henry Cavill after Black Adam, the actor’s exit from the DCEU became definitive, and The Flash only addressed Superman through CGI reproductions of Henry Cavill’s likeness similar to how previous DCEU titles like Shazam! and Peacemaker found clever ways to feature Superman without Cavill.
As reported by Nerdist, director Andy Muschietti explained that Grant Gustin’s The Flash cameo was cut because the list of possible cameos was “huge”, and while the production team “played with the idea of including DC characters from TV,” they “just had to pick”. Although it makes sense to keep the number of multiversal cameos small, it would have still been possible for The Flash to reduce the duration of some of its cameos to be able to include a character as important as Grant Gustin’s Flash, or at least to have replaced the nondescript Jay Garrick with John Wesley Shipp, known for playing Jay Garrick in the Arrowverse.