Sorry ‘The Flash,’ This Is Still the Best DC Superhero Team-Up

The Flash expands DC Extended Universe, bringing in time travel and different timelines as they all crash together. Meanwhile, two Flashes (both played by Ezra Miller), Batman (Michael Keaton), and Supergirl (Sasha Calle) work together to stop Zod’s (Michael Shannon) invasion. Team-ups have a rich history in superhero stories, including everything from a pair of notable characters working together to the formation of a larger team. The Flash creates an ambitious team-up in the doomed fight with Zod, but it’s far from DC’s best. For starters, it’s missing a lot of characters, and two of the four are the same guy. Even with many cameos, The Flash‘s team-up cannot compare to the expansive roster of heroes featured in Young Justice. Few superhero team-ups are as expansive or as well done as Young Justice, and, in reality, The Flash was never going to come close.

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‘The Flash’ Mishandles Supergirl and Batman

Young Justice premiered in 2010 but was canceled after two seasons. However, it was brought back by popular demand in 2019. Though its future looks bleak, as it was announced that Young Justice won’t return for Season 5, it has vocal fans who still love the show. With a focus on the protegees of the Justice League, Young Justice explores several generations of heroes as they grow and become leaders themselves and incorporates several different hero teams working together to defeat their enemies. The show started with only a handful of characters on the team, but rapidly grew to include more superheroes than any other show without relying on a single lead character. Now Young Justice incorporates everything from the easily recognizable DC Trinity to the New Gods, working together to save the world several times.

While the main battle in The Flash includes Batman and Supergirl, Flash is undoubtedly the main character. This is understandable for a film about him, but it’s not the best format for a true team-up. Barry has all the emotional beats in the story. He rewrites the past to save his mother, and he realizes the fight is doomed, and he’s the one who has to fix it. Though Batman and Supergirl are important, they are not the main characters. In fact, they are not present in a large part of the film. The fight with Zod is epic, but it is a small portion of the film, and in the rest of it, Batman and Supergirl are unsure if they will help.

Meanwhile, Young Justice follows an entire team. The show shifts the focus to different characters, allowing each main character their own plotline. The main cast also changes as the show goes on. Starting with a team of six made up of Aqualad (Khary Payton), Robin (Jesse McCartney), Kid Flash (Jason Spisak), Superboy (Nolan North), Miss Martian (Danica McKellar), and Artemis (Stephanie Lemelin), the story rotates to focus on them, but as the show goes on, new leads are added, eliminating the potential of there being a single main character. This ensures that the team-up is well-rounded and not slanted towards one member.

‘Young Justice’ Knows How to Treat Its Heroes

When looking at the Young Justice cast, there are few heroes who don’t make an appearance. The show doesn’t focus on only popular characters but brings in obscure heroes to interact with the more familiar ones. This is far more manageable in a TV format than a film, as four seasons provide more time than a single movie. But The Flash‘s cast is limited, with only three heroes represented in the climactic fight. Still, the film includes many cameos, including an appearance from Nicolas Cage‘s Superman. These brief glimpses are memorable, but the characters do not participate in the team-up.

Young Justice can’t expand on every character they introduce. Instead, it brings in other content as canon-adjacent material, connecting Young Justice to familiar iterations of characters. The show’s creator Greg Weisman, describes Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Catwoman: Hunted, and DC Showcase: Green Arrow as adjacent to Young Justice, meaning that similar events happened in Young Justice‘s world without committing to total accuracy. This method allows fans to dig deeper into the world, but it’s not necessary viewing, as the story makes sense without them. While the many cameos connect other DC content to The Flash, they are not significant characters in the confrontation, nor are they actually in the same world as Barry and his allies.

‘Young Justice’s Heroes Team Up More Often

Unlike The Flash, Young Justice focuses on several coordinated efforts rather than a single fight, proving they know how to work together consistently. While not every issue requires the full team, the heroes rarely work alone. Yet the main story centers on the Justice League and their protegees working together to thwart The Light, a coordinated group of villains. In the show, all the heroes come together for several battles, including Vandal Savage’s takeover of the Justice League’s Watchtower, The Reach’s invasion, The Light’s meta-trafficking scheme, and Zod’s attack on Earth. These fights span across the planet and require communication and careful teamwork.

The Flash‘s big team battle consists mostly of Batman and Supergirl dying in different ways as the Barrys travel through time to try to fix it. These heroes work together to defeat Zod, and there are several phases to their plan: rescue Supergirl, get future Barry’s powers back, and confront Zod. However, it’s all one goal, unlike in Young Justice, where they team up multiple times throughout a decade to defeat different threats. Young Justice includes several teams working together, including the Justice League, a clandestine team of young heroes, the Outsiders, briefly a separate Batman Inc, and even the Legion of Superheroes from the future. All these groups are separate teams, but they work together in the fight. Meanwhile, The Flash features a ragtag group coming together in desperation, not a functioning team.

‘The Flash’ Didn’t Stand a Chance

Even in the scene at the beginning, the established Justice League struggles to work together. Ben Affleck‘s Batman leaves Flash behind to save the hospital while he works alone. This sequence includes Flash, one of the film’s several Batmans, and briefly Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), but they aren’t fighting side by side until the end, making it hardly qualify as a team-up. The Flashes, Supergirl, and Batman may be thrown together unexpectedly, but they work together more efficiently, even if their mission is doomed to failure.

The Flash is meant to have one hero, making it less of a true team-up than a story that centers on several heroes. Young Justice is one example of a show with many leads, which allows a complete team-up. Young Justice also has much more time to include a wide range of characters, introducing new heroes in waves. Because its format lends itself to more time, Young Justice can juggle more characters than The Flash and explore several situations where the characters work together, making a more well-rounded team. The Flash makes a valent effort but doesn’t have the time, characters, or consistency to become DC’s best hero team-up. Young Justice‘s expansive universe and variety of characters are what make it so great, and The Flash, despite that cameo teasing the next Batman, could never compete with that in a single film.