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Easily one of the most accursed superhero movies to ever enter production is The Flash, which will supposedly finally race into theaters next year. There’s still a lot contested about the movie, and there will likely be all manner of last-minute changes up until near the premiere. With all these changes to the movie’s plans, it’s surprising that one huge element of The Flash’s mythos is still missing.
The Rogues are the chief villains of the Scarlet Speedster, yet his movie features none of them. Likewise, the soon-ending Flash TV series barely bothered with the Rogues, actually writing some of them out of the series. With his show ending and his movie finally coming out, the Fastest Man Alive seemingly couldn’t find the time to fight his most consistent threats.
The Flash Movie Is Skipping the Rogues to Adapt Flashpoint
The storyline of the upcoming movie The Flash involves the fallout of Barry Allen traveling to different timelines in an attempt to save his mother’s life in the past. Some of the alternate heroes he’ll encounter include Michael Keaton’s Batman and a Supergirl that was imprisoned by the US government. These elements make the movie into a loose adaptation of the comic book storyline Flashpoint, with Eobard Thawne/Reverse Flash/Professor Zoom serving as the ultimate villain of the movie. From what’s been shown so far, it seems that the Reverse Flash may be adapted as an alternate version of Barry himself. This leaves little room for the Rogues to even have a small role in the film.
None of the Rogues have been introduced in the DC Extended Universe movies outside of Captain Boomerang, with the thief briefly facing The Flash (a “red streak) as shown at the beginning of the movie Suicide Squad. Captain Boomerang was quickly killed off in that movie’s sequel, however, leaving Barry without any major established foes. The usual members of The Rogues include enemies such as Captain Cold, Heatwave, Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Trickster, and sometimes Captain Boomerang, as well as Cold’s sister Golden Glider. These are all major figures in The Flash’s rogues’ gallery, hence their name, so the fact that The Flash’s big screen movie won’t feature any of them is perplexing, to say the least. Even worse, however, is what the nearly decade-long Flash has done (or not done) with The Rogues.
The CW Flash Series Cared More About Thawne Than the Rogues
Beginning its soon-to-end run in 2014, the Arrowverse series The Flash featured many of the Scarlet Speedster’s villains, from the classic to the modern. Chief among them was Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash, who’s continued to keep coming back into the show’s narrative even when he’s seemingly died. The Rogues themselves only showed up in the first two seasons, and they weren’t even fully formed. Consisting merely of Captain Cold, Heatwave and Golden Glider, this group had none of the dynamic that the villains have in the comics. Sadly, throughout the series’ nine seasons, not one brought The Rogues together in a more substantial capacity. In fact, that’s long been an impossibility given Captain Cold and Heatwave becoming heroic characters on Legends of Tomorrow, with Cold actually dying early in that series.
Ironically, Captain Boomerang would appear in the Arrowverse as more of a villain in the Green Arrow series Arrow. Though that’s being fixed in the final season of The Flash, it was a somewhat bad optic given how The Rogues as a whole were handled. This lack of The Flash’s most iconic foes is even more egregious than the upcoming movie due to how much time the Flash TV series had to get it right. Even with stories of time travel and the multiverse, Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen never ran into all these enemies at once, making the show feel almost like a waste. Now, nearly ten years later, The Flash has outrun a lot of things across multiple mediums, with the biggest thing that passed him by being a live-action showdown with The Rogues.
The Flash is set to arrive in theaters on June 23, 2023.
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