The Batfleck returns.

Although Ben Affleck never got to appear in a solo Batman movie and it looked like his career as the Dark Knight ended with 2017’s Justice League, Batfleck is not done with his cape and cowl after all. Vanity Fair reports that Affleck will reprise his role as Batman in the movie version of The Flash opposite Ezra Miller.

In an interview, The Flash director Andy Muschietti revealed that Affleck will play the Batman of the DCEU in the movie, which is inspired by the comic book series Flashpoint. In that storyline, a villain alter the timeline of DC Comics and only the Flash realizes the changes and can fix them. According to Muschietti, Affleck’s Batman is “part of that unaltered state before we jump into Barry’s adventure.”

Just because Affleck’s Batman is from the part of the story before the timeline is altered, doesn’t mean it’s not important though. Per Muschietti:

He’s a very substantial part of the emotional impact of the movie. The interaction and relationship between Barry and Affleck’s Wayne will bring an emotional level that we haven’t seen before... It’s Barry’s movie, it’s Barry’s story, but their characters are more related than we think. They both lost their mothers to murder, and that’s one of the emotional vessels of the movie. That’s where the Affleck Batman kicks in.

Affleck is one of several Batmen in The Flash; Michael Keaton, the Batman of Tim Burton’s two Batman movies of the late ’80s and ’90s, plays a “substantial” role in the film as another Batman. (Likely the Thomas Wayne Batman of the darker, altered timeline if The Flash is in any way faithful to the original Flashpoint comics.)

All of this is certainly exciting news for Batman fans — who also have Matt Reeves’ The Batman to look forward to next year as well. While Marvel has created a consistent cinematic universe across all their properties, it really looks like Warner Bros. is leaning into creating a cinematic multiverse, where different versions of the same character can exist all at once. That’s the way DC’s always been in comics, so it’s cool to see that happen in movies and television as well.

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