The Flash Is A Superhero Tragedy For The Post-Pandemic World

The following article contains spoilers for "The Flash."

The pandemic changed us. We know what a big effect the lockdowns, deaths, fear, and vaccine debates had on us all. We learned new ways to communicate and deal with the collective trauma, but things are different now. We are not the same. You can see it in how people drive more aggressively and angry fights over nothing in the grocery store. Depression spiked. The economy changed. Entertainment changed. We are not the same people we were, no matter what side of any of the endless debates we fall on. 

Before Covid, accepting that people could bounce back from huge events was easier. We recognized that idea of resilience in, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe films where, sure, there was an alien invasion, but there are still picnics and coffee shops to visit. Life goes on.

I don't think most of us feel like that anymore. Watching "Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania," for instance, and seeing everyone walk around San Francisco, just chatting away like the world hadn't completely changed, was jarring in a way that it wasn't before Covid. 

"The Flash" was different. Watching alternate universe Barry (Ezra Miller) — who I will refer to as "Alt Barry" — lose his grip on reality in the third act felt real to me in a way earlier superhero films no longer do. Toward the end of the film, after several attempts to fix things, Original Barry realizes that he has to let his mom die to save the universe. Alt Barry can't accept that and goes through lifelong attempts to keep it from happening, causing terrible rifts and changes in the timeline, becoming as much of a villain as those he was trying to fight.  

While the film has Zod (Michael Shannon) as an antagonist in the alternate timeline Original Barry visits, the real villain ends up being Alt Barry. I think if we were ever in a place to understand this, it's now, after years of the pandemic. If you've ever heard the phrase "one bad day away," you know what I mean. It's that feeling that everything you've been through has taken you to a breaking point, and if one more bad thing happens, this could become the beginning of your supervillain origin story. 

Alt Barry had the life that Original Barry wanted. He had both his parents. He never learned to grieve and practice empathy. He's a doofy kid, which is not necessarily a bad thing. He just doesn't have the life experience to deal with everything that's been thrown at him. Original Barry really grew up after his mom was killed and his dad falsely imprisoned. He learned to deal with his powers over the years, and being around the rest of the Justice League gave him great role models. On the other hand, Alt Barry's mind breaks getting superpowers/discovering alternate universes/the idea of superpowers at all/meeting an alien (Sasha Calle's Kara Zor-El)/watching her die/learning that the entire world is going to be destroyed/finding out that his mom died in another timeline. 

The pandemic isn't exactly all of that, but it's caused a lot of us to get so used to a heightened level of stress that we're like a full glass of water, and one more drop — someone cutting us off on the road, let alone learning all that Alt Barry does — could send us into a tailspin. 

We just haven't seen this in most superhero movie offerings since they took over the box office. "The Flash" shows us a more realistic (yes, I know how odd that word seems here) way of reacting. Not only does Alt Barry relive the deaths of Kara and Bruce over and over, but he begins to look at the pain of the Kryptonian shards in his body as necessary to save the world he knows. He cannot accept that things are different now, and the world he knew is gone. It ultimately turns him into a time-traveling villain, the older version of himself that understandably uses up his entire life to try to fix the timeline. Wouldn't you change the last few years if you could? His continual attempts also reflect something many of us who have experienced trauma have been through. We often keep reliving the events in our minds, trying to come up with the way we should have reacted or what we should have done. 

The final choice that Alt Barry makes reflects a different side of the pandemic, though. When Alt Barry sees who and what his actions lead him to become, he gives his life to save Original Barry. I wanted to mention this because I watched it happen the other day at the store. A woman in line started loudly berating the cashier for not having change. Then she stopped herself and started crying. She apologized profusely and said she just hadn't been the same since all this started. We've all felt it. Maybe we'd even make the same choices as Alt Barry. Either way, we can certainly understand him. 

"The Flash" is currently in theaters.