Warning: The following article contains spoilers for The Flash.
With the creation of the multiverse, timelines can be equally as fun to create as they can be chaotic to unravel. The Flash actually borrowed a storyline from 2022’s Lightyear that really didn’t play out so well in that movie, leaving critics to wonder why anyone thought it would play out in this one.
Whoever came up with the multiverse had no idea that one day, filmmakers were going to start having fun with it and that could lead to absolute failure, because keeping track of various universes and timelines is a challenge that if mishandled, can alter anything and everything. Toy Story isn’t taken as seriously as DC and MCU entertainment are, so it was all just in good-natured amusement when Buzz Lightyear went on a mission to T’Kani Prime and finds himself a victim of time leaps that take him far into the future.
In a final leap forward, he finds out that T’Kani Prime has been evaded by a robot commander by the name of Zurg. When Buzz rallies troops to fight back against Zurg, he is taken captive and informed that the robot commander is simply an older version of himself from a different timeline. When there are two or more versions of the same character in a movie, there are intersecting timelines and alternative universes that begin to unravel reality, creating new worlds and allowing multiple possibilities to co-exist. Who needs all that?
As Collider reports, Toy Story 5 is in the making. Obviously, the makers of Lightyear realized their mistake, and quickly went into covering it up by distracting fans with the next great thing in the Toy Story franchise. The whole idea of a character meeting himself would quickly and easily be played out as multiple universes wound themselves around each other and got all tied up in a knot. Was the invention of the multiverse meant for that?
The Flash thought they could do it so much better. Taking time travel seriously, Barry Allen goes back in time and tries to save his mother from dying. Batman warns him against it, but a grieving son might not be the greatest listener. Each event brings different consequences, such as General Zod threatening to attack Earth, Batman dying, and Supergirl dying. As time travel gets more and more ridiculous with each attempt, Barry eventually runs into himself. The same exact character with different experiences and therefore, different intentions, they each have a motive to end the other’s existence. How did that work out the second time?
Ezra Miller’s off-set legal issues and shocking allegations may have tainted the movie’s reviews a bit, but they are holding their own on the first day of the movie’s release. However, embedded in the negative reviews is the sentiment that the multiverse in all its variations and “do-overs” is getting old and can probably be toned down a bit, even though that Pandora’s box has already been opened.