Is There An End Credit Scene in ‘The Flash’?

The Flash, currently in theaters everywhere, is a bad movie. Maybe you’re sitting in the movie theater right now, in fact, thinking that’s over two hours of your life you’ll never get back, and wondering if you need to sit through the credits for an end credit scene, or if you can somehow, miraculously, duck out of the exit right now.

Good news: there is an end credit scene in The Flash, and it’s also bad. So we’re going to describe it for you right here, right now, so you can get those precious 10 minutes back and go on with your life, even though it’s mostly ruined from having paid to see Ezra Miller commit crimes of a cinematic nature, instead of their (Ezra Miller identifies as non-binary, and uses they/them pronouns) regular slate of actual law-breaking crimes.

So is there an end credit scene in The Flash? And just to create a multiverse of SEO possibilities: is there a post credit scene in The Flash? We’ve already answered that question, but read on to find out anyway!

Is There An End Credit Scene in The Flash? Describe It For Me, Please:

I would love nothing more. But first, I actually need to describe the pre-credits scene or it won’t make any sense. Even though it barely makes any sense anyway.

*Squints In Confusion* Is There A… Pre-Credits Scene In The Flash?

Well technically there are more than two fucking hours of them, and they mostly all suck. But the main one we’re concerned with is what happens right before the credits. The whole point of the movie is that Barry Allen (Miller) discovers he can travel back in time. What he decides to do is give his mother an extra can of tomatoes at the supermarket, so his dad won’t have to buy tomatoes, which would mean that when his mother previously got stabbed to death by a random drifter his father wasn’t out of the house and then got arrested for her murder.

The only problem, as described in an insane scene where Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton), who is dressed like Big Lebowski, the multiverse is a bowl full of noodles and tomato sauce, and if you mess with one thing you mess with the whole bowl of noodles. Or whatever. It’s basically a “have your cake and eat it too” explanation of time travel that allows them to have both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton as Batman, even though they’re different ages and look nothing like each other. Honestly, the less you worry about it the better because that’s one of the movie’s lesser sins.

The point is Barry’s tomato can gambit doesn’t work, and towards the end of the movie he returns the can of tomatoes to revert the timeline to normal. Except, he makes one little change: he switches all the tomato cans in the supermarket to the top shelf, so when his dad goes to buy tomatoes he’ll have to look up, have his face captured on camera, and have an alibi for his parole hearing. He still spent decades in jail and Barry’s mom is still dead, but at least justice is served, right?

Well, not exactly. As Barry exits the courtroom having freed his dad, and secures a date with his longtime crush Iris West (Kiersey Clemons), he gets a call from Bruce Wayne. Only it turns out it’s not Ben Affleck, who was previously the Bruce Wayne of this universe. It’s not even Michael Keaton. The Bruce Wayne who walks out of a car and is confused Barry doesn’t recognize him is… George Clooney, who played Batman in the 1997 disasterpiece Batman & Robin! Then Barry’s tooth falls out of his mouth and we cut to credits. Which sounds batshit (no pun intended) on paper, but is a callback to when Barry had his tooth knocked out earlier, and is one of the two actually funny jokes in the movie (the other one is an alternate Barry thinking their spaghetti meal with Keaton is something called a “cousins’ dinner”).

Anyway, I bring all this up because without that context, you won’t actually understand what happens in the end credit scene.

So, What Actually Happens in The Flash Post Credits Scene?

After the credits, which hopefully you skipped out on and are already in the parking lot, or perhaps apologizing profusely to your family for the abomination they just witnessed, Barry has reunited with his fellow Justice League member Aquaman (Jason Momoa), who is roaring drunk. Barry is filling Aquaman in on what happened to him, and how he’s realized he’s on another strand of spaghetti entirely, meaning not his original universe. It is unclear given how drunk Aquaman is if he even knows Barry at all, if Justice League the movie ever happened, or what exactly is going on in this new universe “our” Barry has found himself in.

Barry does offer to let Aquaman crash at his place, but instead, Aquaman falls into a remarkably enormous, green puddle on the street and says that’s his bed, and he’ll sleep there. Barry makes some joke I completely forgot because my brain was crawling out of my head and dying when I saw it, but that’s it, that’s the end credits scene.

The implication again, though, is that Barry never returned home, he went to another relatively similar strand of the multiverse where Clooney is Batman, Aquaman is even more drunk than usual, and Barry otherwise has pretty much the same life he previously had.

But do you know what that also means? That means Barry’s real dad is back in a universe where not only is he going to continue to rot in jail for the rest of his life because there’s no available exonerating evidence, but also his son is missing, forever. That’s fucking insane!

Sorry to Ron Livingston, who plays Barry’s dad, and sorry to you, the audience member, who had to sit through that. Go watch the first season of The Flash on Netflix next time instead, that’s an actually good Barry Allen story. Bye! Do you say bye at the end of articles? Probably not. Anyway. Bye.