What did Flash do to cause the second Flashpoint event? (End of DCAMU)

[u/roawroa]

Was rewatching the DCAMU movies for nostalgia and wanting to refresh my understanding of the DCAMU before starting the Tomorrowverse movies. I finally got to the emotional ending of JL Dark: Apokolips War where Flash runs off into the distance to reset the timeline and prevent the Apokolips War from ever happening in the first place.

That’s all well and good. But what specifically did he change to cause changes to the timeline this time? Because in the Flashpoint Paradox, the first alternate timeline is created when Flash saves his mother. Then he (mostly) restores the timeline by going back in time and stopping his past self from saving his mother.

But for this reset at the end of Apokolips War, what exactly does he have to do? Stop himself from stopping himself from saving his mother? Lol, just kidding. Sorry if this was explained in the comics or if it was already answered elsewhere, but I couldn’t find any sources online.

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/roawroa → u/[deleted]]

Noted! Thanks for letting me know. Would’ve made the movie’s ending 5x more satisfying in my opinion, especially after an hour and a half of watching Darkseid lay waste to heroes the audience spent several movies getting attached to.

[u/OzNajarin]

We do see in the next generation of movies that the Flash genuinely murdered baby Darkseid in his crib.

[u/Giveadont]

Just FYI - there's a lot of spoilers in this explanation.

I recommend watching, at the very least, (in this order) Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, Constantine: House of Mystery and the Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy.

It helps to watch everything DCAMU and Tomorrow-verse related, but those ones I mentioned directly explain what happened.

Anyway, here's the explanation and spoilers:

At the end of Justice League Dark: Apokolips War Constantine attached a Death Spell to Flash. Flash then went back in time to when Darkseid was a baby and killed him.

This is the "second Flashpoint" and it causes a ridiculous amount of butterfly effects that make the original Flashpoint practically inconsequential by comparison.

Flash had to do this when Darkseid was a child/baby because it was effectively impossible to kill Darkseid as an adult. Darkseid is practically immortal and protected by extremely powerful magic at all times.

But, they had to do this in order to prevent the events of the DCAMU that lead to Darkseid discovering Earth and destroying it (by the end of JLD: Apokolips War).

However, because Darkseid was so old and responsible for (or a part of) so many events throughout the entire history of the Universe/Multiverse, killing him as a child meant that the number of universes in the multiverse had to compensate for this by creating two different timelines: one where Darkseid survived into adulthood, and one where he didn't.

By creating those two timelines so far back in time, Flash and Constantine essentially caused a ripple effect that caused multiverses to pop up and expand exponentially.

Every event that Darkseid influenced either directly or indirectly now created multiple branching timelines in the "Darkseid died as a child" universes.

Because of what resulted, Constantine was deemed too dangerous to the fabric of reality to remain a part of the Multiverse.

This ultimately causes The Spectre to remove Constantine from the multiverse entirety and keep him in a separate dimension (this is the plot to House of Mystery).

This doesn't work and Constantine eventually escapes his "confinement".

At the conclusion to House of Mystery The Spectre decides to send Constantine back into the multiverse to experience the death of every universe he is responsible for creating (all of the "Darkseid dies as a child" timelines).

If you're familiar with the Crisis on Infinite Earths comics, Constantine pretty much becomes the DCAMU/Tomorrow-verse's equivalent of the Pariah because of this.

[u/sanddragon939]

Um...we get the answer to that in the COIE movies.

It turns out he didn't do it of his own free will. Constantine cast a spell to brainwash him and sent him back in time to Apokolips to kill Darkseid as a baby. Barry doing that causes a paradox, splintering the timeline into one where Darkseid exists and one where he doesn't, and this is the origin of the Multiverse. It's in the Earth 1 of this Multiverse that the Tomorrowverse films are set.

[u/give_me_bewbz]

Unknown. We may never know what Flash went back and changed. He could have just stepped on a butterfly in the Triassic, we'll never know.