The end credits on Zack Snyder’s Justice League barely started to scroll on HBO Max when fans of the DC director immediately wanted to know what was coming next. The campaign for Release the Snyder Cut transitioned immediately to Restore the SnyderVerse, and Snyder fans wanted desperately to have the director follow the threads that had been laid out in the movie’s Epilogue: Lois Lane’s pregnancy; The Flash getting a gig at a crime lab, and; the Knightmare Future that has been teased a few times. Which has allowed Snyder to tease out a couple of his planned plotlines for his key DC characters, including Henry Cavill’s Superman.
Superman has had an unusual arc on Zack Snyder’s DC movies to date. Man of Steel was an origin story for him, but his natural sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, had to establish both Batman (Ben Affleck) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot)... and ended with Superman’s untimely death. Kal-El (Cavill) is back in Justice League, and Snyder had big things in store for him. While appearing as a guest on CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast, Snyder told us:
The thing that's cool, that I've talked about quite a bit, is that in the two movies that were to follow this movie, you basically have the fall of Earth, and Superman is the main villain of that movie. After the timeline is rung back and Batman... after Batman’s sacrifice, Superman becomes the de facto head of the Justice League. And then he becomes the main hero of the final film. So you literally, in two films, he has to go from really like the destroyer of worlds to the savior of everyone. In a lot of ways, Superman has the biggest arc of anyone in the whole thing. And we did that on purpose because -- maybe it was overcompensation for the notion that Superman normally doesn't change very much, and in a lot of the Superman (comic book) runs, his morality is the rock that everyone breaks off against. And we were like, ‘Let's just really stretch Superman as far as we can.’ Because we think, well, frankly, we have such a great Superman. Henry can do it. So why not?
So far in his three DC movies, Zack Snyder has given fans a glimpse into what we now call the Knightmare Future, an event that would be triggered by both Darkseid’s arrival on our planet, and the brutal death of Lois Lane (Amy Adams)... perhaps because Batman (Affleck) failed to save her. This would prompt Superman to succumb to the Anti-Life Equation, and his rampage would lead to the post-apocalyptic existence that we see at the tail end of Justice League on HBO Max.
Zack Snyder has been saying that in his mind, Justice League 2 would mainly be set in the Knightmare Future, with Superman (Cavill) in his “angry” mode because he’s being controlled by Darkseid. But now he’s telling ReelBlend that the hero would come full circle in his fifth movie in the saga, leading the Justice League team members in a final, epic battle against Darkseid and his army.
Along those lines, Zack Snyder added:
Because by the end of the three movies, or the end of the whole thing, Superman has saved the world and united the world in peace and had defeated Darkseid. And then, I mean, their son... in my mind, (Lois and Clark’s) son had no powers. The child is born is, (and) he has no powers. And maybe, maybe though, when Lois comes to him in the Heroes Park, he also can sense that she's pregnant. That's a possibility.
Now that’s a major reveal. Lois, in Heroes Park, is carrying Clark’s baby? And that’s what snaps him out of his back-from-the-grave stupor. Very interesting. But damn, it’s depressing to think that these very cool storylines for Henry Cavill’s Superman might not ever happen, no matter how badly fans want studios to Restore the SnyderVerse. And that’s a shame, and a waste of Cavill’s talent as Superman.
