Aquaman has become DC’s King and it will be the highest grossing DC movie of all time by the end of this week. It has been really quick to cross the $1 Billion mark and now that WB has seen what people really want, they will invest more in the direction of Wonder Woman and Aquaman. The slate of the upcoming movies that they had earlier is long gone with Zack Snyder, and what’s left is the new direction that WB is trying to take the shared continuity into.
Aquaman was a total hydro blast of fun and optimism, and the reason why it stood out the most among all other DC films is that it was so visually stunning, and gave us that X Factor with Atlantis, that people have never actually seen in a DC movie. It managed to come out on top against all odds and massive competition. So it is not rocket science to figure out that who among the Justice League is going to run the show from now on.
What’s interesting is that Aquaman actually has clues to set up a certain Flash movie that may not be happening anymore. If you’ve been duly updated with what’s going on with the solo Flash film, then you probably know that it will turn out to be the Gambit of the DCEU. There was a time when the Flash was scheduled to release in 2018 even before Aquaman, and here we are in 2019 where WB still doesn’t have a clear direction of what they want to do with the character.
The film went through two directorial changes, and then the Game Night Directors John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein were hired who did make things look pretty smooth after all. There were even reports that the film will begin filming in February, but there’s another bump in the ride as Ezra Miller has commitments with WB to film the next Fantastic Beasts movie, so the production on the Flash movie was delayed. But it gets even better now as after the production for Fantastic Beasts has also been delayed.
Moreover, there were plans that the Flash film will actually be called Flashpoint, but those have been scrapped for a while and the two new directors seemed to have given the film a new spin. But the talks about Flashpoint were going on during the time when Aquaman was in production. So, a new update has come into the light that Aquaman actually has hints which set up the Flashpoint movie.
Aquaman Mid Credits scene was a set up for Black Manta to take a larger villainous role in potential Aquaman sequels as we saw that his body was recovered by Dr. Stephen Shin. The good Doctor was apparently obsessed to find and prove that Atlantis exists, and looking at the Atlantean tech that Manta has, the two strike a deal to help each other’s cause. Doctor Shin is going to help Manta out in killing Aquaman, while Manta will lead him to Atlantis.
Amidst all this, we actually get a look at Dr. Shin’s workspace where the walls and whiteboards are covered with references and newspaper clippings which hint towards the existence of Atlantis. Neil Daly, who was responsible for organizing test screenings for Aquaman, explained on the Fire and Water podcast that amongst those clippings were actually hints that tie into the Flashpoint movie.
Here’s what he had to say:
“There was another one, that one of the newspaper headings said ‘Wonder Woman Nixes Aquaman Dating Rumor,’ which most people are just going to take that as tongue-in-cheek and think it was funny. But at the time of the filming, that was when they were still talking about going ahead with Flashpoint being the Flash story that they were going to do. And so there was a reference to Aquaman and Wonder Woman dating.”
Well, now that we know that Flashpoint is not happening and Aquaman is pretty much hitched with Mera, this will have no precedence in DC’s future films.
