The Flash is an epic, timeline-hopping adventure for DC’s speedster, and we lose a few characters along the way – here’s everyone who dies and a breakdown of their deaths.
The last time we saw Barry Allen, he helped the Justice League defeat Steppenwolf by turning back the clock, and with the world in safe hands again, he bagged a job working with the forensics team in Central City’s police department.
In his long-awaited solo movie, life is a bit hectic for him: he’s still working for the police, but he also helps out his older superhero peers on the side, and his dad’s appeal hearing is just around the corner. In his frustration, he accidentally discovers he can travel back in time, so he decides to save his mother’s life, even with the risk of “destroying everything”, as Bruce Wayne warned.
Well, let’s just say Batman’s prophecy is quickly fulfilled. Barry’s actions place him in an alternate timeline that puts everyone in his past, present, and future at risk – and some people pay the price, so here’s everyone who dies in The Flash. Spoilers to follow…
Who dies in The Flash?
Five characters die in The Flash: Nora Allen, Supergirl, Michael Keaton’s Batman, young Barry, and Dark Flash.
Each death serves as a major beat as the movie draws to a close, but they’re all pretty different – so, below we’ve broken down how they all die one by one.
The Flash: Nora Allen death explained
The movie ends with Nora Allen, Barry’s mother, just like how she was at the start: dead.
Barry’s grief over his mother’s death and frustration at his dad Henry being charged with murder when he’s completely innocent is the catalyst for him traveling back in time in the first place.
He lost his mother when he was a young boy. One day, his dad left to pick up some tomatoes after she forgot to buy them at the supermarket. While Barry is upstairs and he’s away, intruders break in and attack her, and she later passes away from her injuries. So, Barry makes one simple change: he puts a tin of tomatoes in her shopping trolley so his dad doesn’t need to go to the shop, thereby preventing her death.
As Keaton’s Bruce explains, this created a whole new strand of “spaghetti” – aka, another timeline with a past, present, and future he’s never been part of, and his actions could result in the collision and destruction of multiple universes.
In order to restore order, Barry eventually makes one last trip back in time to remove the tomatoes from Nora’s shopping trolley, resetting his universe back to its default setup. We never find out who killed his mother, but he makes one small change on his way home: he moves the tomatoes to the top shelf, so his dad has an alibi when it comes to his appeal.
The Flash: Supergirl death explained
Supergirl is killed by General Zod… multiple times.
In this timeline, there’s no Superman, nor are there any other meta-humans. The two Barrys and Batman find Kara Zor-El at a black site in Serbia, and while she’s hesitant to help them at first, she eventually teams up with them against Zod.
When they all arrive at the Mojave Desert, Kara immediately seeks out Zod, who tells her that Kal-El had been infused with the genetics codex and sent to Earth in a small pod as a baby – but this isn’t the Man of Steel timeline. He never made it here, because Zod intercepted the pod and tried to harvest his blood. “What did you do?” Kara screams. “The infant did not survive,” he says.
She gives him a mighty beatdown, but he eventually impales her with his arm spike, just as he did to Jor-El. He then harvests her blood, completing his original mission.
Young Barry refuses to let her or anyone else die, so he whizzes into the Speed Force and in and out of every timeline to prevent anything bad from happening – but she dies every single time, in the exact same way. In the end, she can’t be saved.
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According to director Andy Muschietti, she may still return in the future.
The Flash: Michael Keaton’s Batman death explained
Michael Keaton’s Batman dies in a blaze of glorious sacrifice… and then he dies again, permanently.
The caped crusader joins the two Flashes and Supergirl in the desert to face off against the Kryptonian army. While she deals with Zod, he flies around in his Batwing providing air support.
It quickly goes wrong: Batman attempts to blow up the largest ship and ends up taking critical damage to his Batwing, disabling his ejection seat and locking him in the aircraft. He dive-bombs into the Kryptonian ship, killing himself in the process.
With Batman and Supergirl gone, the two Barrys travel back in time to prevent their deaths, essentially winding the clock back 10 minutes. They manage to avert Batman from taking on the shielded Kryptonian ship, but he goes after the “Space Giant”, who makes light work of the Batwing. Batman is forced to jump out and glide down to the ground, where he tussles with the alien and manages to get the upper hand by sticking a bomb to his head.
Sadly, he took quite a beating, and he dies as our Barry sits next to him. “We can’t bring you back this time,” he says, and Bruce responds: “You already did.”
The Flash: Young Barry and Dark Flash deaths explained
We’ve bundled the deaths of young Barry and Dark Flash together because… they’re the same person.
Early in the movie, Barry is kicked out of the Speed Force by a rather scary, ghoulish figure. We don’t know anything about him, but he reappears during the final battle as young Barry continually travels back in time to prevent the deaths of Batman and Supergirl, while also saving their mother.
“I am The Flash… nobody dies,” he says, but Barry repeats his mother’s mantra: “Not every problem has a solution, sometimes we just have to let it go.” Young Barry is appalled at the idea of letting their mother die, but Barry says she’ll always be alive somewhere in time – they just can’t be with her.
He tries to go back in time again, but before Barry can stop him, he’s attacked by Dark Flash, the monstrous, scaly version of himself inside the speed force. “I’ve lived more than you can dream,” he says.
When young Barry returns, he sees the same scar on Dark Flash’s face as he has on his own. It’s then revealed that Dark Flash is young Barry, only far, far in the future. He pushed our Barry out of the speed force into another timeline because he believed he’d finally figured out a way to save their mother, but their reckless, selfish time-traveling causes a multiverse incursion on a scale hitherto undreamt of, treating us to brief glimpses of other superhero variants, including Nicolas Cage and Christopher Reeves as Superman, Helen Slater as Supergirl, and Adam West’s Batman.
In Dark Flash’s eyes, our Barry’s death is the “inevitable intersection” in saving their mom, but young Barry sacrifices himself and kills Dark Flash in the process, turning to dust just as Marty McFly’s photo would have faded away in Back to the Future.
There’s also the billions of people killed in this timeline after Barry zips away, with Zod going on to terraform the Earth in lieu of anyone capable of stopping him. Unlucky.
The Flash is in UK cinemas now, and it’ll speed into the US on June 16. Check out our other coverage below:
The Flash review | Everything we know about The Flash 2 | Who is General Zod? | Is Nic Cage in The Flash? | Flashpoint explained | Who are Albert Desmond and Patty Spivot? | Barry Allen x 2 | How many Batmans are in The Flash? | Speed Force guide | Who is Dark Flash? | Story of Superman Lives | Secret villain revealed? | Supergirl explained | The Flash budget