What Does The Ezra Miller Controversy Mean For The DCEU?

Ezra Miller’s future with Warner Bros. is reportedly in jeopardy, as Warner Bros. and DC executives held an emergency meeting to discuss Miller’s recent arrest for harassment in Hawaii, the latest in a long line of scandals surrounding the troubled star.

In 2020, a video clip showing Miller choking a female fan in Iceland went viral, a controversy that Warner Bros. didn’t comment on. Currently, Miller is facing a restraining order from a couple who claim Miller broke into their apartment and threatened to kill them.

While Miller’s most recent controversy was overshadowed by “The Slap” at the Oscars, the studio has reacted to the incident by putting a pause on all of Miller’s projects, according to Rolling Stone. This includes Miller’s role in the DCEU as the Flash, and the Fantastic Beasts franchise as Credence Barebone.

Fantastic Beasts 3 is about to hit cinemas, while Miller’s next film in the DCEU, The Flash, has already been shot, but is currently delayed to June 2023. Miller’s controversies make a double headache for Warner Bros., but highlight the advantage of a useful narrative tool known as the multiverse.

Marvel is doubling down on multiverse stories, and DC is set to follow, as Miller’s The Flash is rumored to be setting up a multiverse, allowing DCEU movies to interconnect like MCU films, or remain standalone, as the studio sees fit.

On television, DC has already embraced the concept via the Arrowverse Crisis on Infinite Earths, which proved immensely popular with fans and critics.

A longtime staple of superhero comics, the multiverse has exploded as a popular concept in recent years, moving from Rick and Morty to the MCU in just under a decade, as corporations recognized that they could connect their existing IP together for crossover cash-ins, and ride multiple waves of nostalgia to box office success (or not, as was the case with Space Jam: A New Legacy).

For superhero movies, where much of the hype is based around crossover events, the multiverse offers a way for old fan favorites to return, for multiple versions of the same character to interact with one another, and most importantly, allows studios to reboot and recast characters on a whim, without breaking audience immersion.

This has always been the case, of course; all of the above can occur without the in-universe logic of a multiverse. But for detail-oriented superhero fans, a multiverse provides a satisfying explanation for an off-camera business decision.

Ezra might be starring in the upcoming The Flash (he’s even rumored to be playing multiple versions of himself), but perhaps it doesn’t matter – the film can potentially be tweaked, concluding with the titular speedster recast for the next adventure, without breaking canon.

That would leave two of the original Justice League actors left standing, Gal Gadot and Jason Momoa, the only remaining survivors from the “Snyderverse.”