Darkseid is “the great villain of the DC Universe,” and his only appearance across all DC live-action films is in Zack Snyder’s Justice League. That’s the reminder to fans that Zack Snyder himself issued on social media, as Zack Snyder’s Justice League nears its fifth anniversary.
Zack Snyder took to Instagram to post a photo of the supervillain’s appearance in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, which is namechecked specifically here probably to make it clear that he’s talking about his director’s cut, not the initial 2017 release that Joss Whedon took over after Snyder stepped down.
Snyder has been posting a number of behind the scenes photos of Justice League and his wider DC Extended Universe movies on Instagram in the run up to the anniversary, highlighting everything from Henry Cavill’s Superman to Wayne T. Carr’s Green Lantern, who Snyder had planned to bring into the Justice League story at some point.
The DCEU ended with 2023’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, leaving a number of character arcs and plot threads dangling. James Gunn, of Guardians of the Galaxy fame, rebooted the DC Universe with last year’s Superman, and is set to follow it up with next year’s Man of Tomorrow, which will see a Green Lantern appear in the form of Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart.
Darkseid was perhaps the biggest plot thread left dangling by the DCEU. His brief appearance in Justice League teased a bigger role as the overarching DCEU villain. Snyder added more Darkseid scenes for his director’s cut, but again, they’re destined to go unresolved.
In an interview with GQ, Snyder revealed his big plan, saying Darkseid would have made his way to Earth, where Lex Luthor had founded the Anti-Life Equation. Lex hands it over, and with it the ability to control all will in the universe. After Darkseid kills Lois Lane, Superman succumbs to Anti-Life and Earth falls.
This is where we would have jumped forward to the Knightmare vision of the future, where the surviving superheroes plan to find a Mother Box to jump Flash back in time to give Batman the advantage he needs to save Lois in the fight against Darkseid. Batman sacrifices himself to save Lois, buying Superman the time to fend off Darkseid.
Then, as Snyder put it himself: “the final act would be this giant war between Darkseid and all of his minions, all of the New Gods, the Fury, Granny Goodness, the whole pantheon of New Gods versus the Themysicarans who come off the island, Atlanteans rise out of the water. Wonder Woman is their new queen, and Arthur is the king of Atlantis. Then the armies of men all come together. That means the whole world, the whole army of the entire planet. They have a huge battle and they win. Then the end is this epilogue where it’s 20 years later, where Superman’s son has no powers. He’s born without the powers of a god, but then in the end, he would have become the new Batman.
“The final scene would be Lois taking her son down into the Batcave and that kind of deal. So yeah, that was the epic plan. All those little Easter eggs about the future were all meant to point toward that eventual, giant battle. Then it would have been a reboot after that. You can just go back to the beginning again, where you could do a small movie with the new Batman or something.”
Could Darkseid make an appearance in the DCU? Last year, James Gunn officially ruled out his DC Universe building towards Darkseid as the “big bad,” insisting that because Snyder had intended for Darkseid to be the DCEU’s overarching enemy, and because of the character’s similarity to Marvel’s Thanos, the DCU was looking elsewhere.
“First of all, there’s Kirby’s whole world which he created which is totally fascinating,” Gunn began when asked what he thought of Darkseid as a character. “So, that’s a huge part of it. It’s the New Gods in general that is to me so interesting, which we’re dealing with with Mister Miracle. And I have the screenplay that I haven’t read yet on my shelf right now. So there’s that aspect of it.
“And then there are aspects of Darkseid in Thanos, who are obviously very similar. They look very similar. And because of that — to give you probably more of an answer than you expected — using Darkseid as the big bad right now is not necessarily the thing. For a lot of reasons, because Zack did it so cool in his way, and because of Thanos in Marvel.”
Image credit: Zack Snyder Instagram.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
