The genesis of James Gunn’s upcoming DCU has left many fans confused, frustrated, and pining for the DCEU to return, but Gunn might actually have something in store that could bring a surprisingly big smile to the faces of all DC fans, including those enamored with the SnyderVerse. The chaos that dominated the latter years of Warner Bros. preceding DCEU franchise is still fresh in the minds of both its fans and detractors, and there’s little indication that will change anytime soon, if ever. In fact, the way Gunn’s DCU is beginning is keeping the memory of the SnyderVerse alive.
The DCU properly begins with James Gunn’s 2025 movie Superman, in which David Corenswet will portray the Man of Steel. Of course, that wasn’t what DC’s cinematic future looked like back in the fall of 2022, when Henry Cavill made his long-awaited Superman comeback in Black Adam, promising an epic showdown with Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam and a rejuvenated future for Zack Snyder’s Justice League heroes. The fact that Cavill’s return was cancelled for Gunn’s Superman film hasn’t been forgotten by many fans, while the puzzling ties Gunn’s DCU is keeping with the DCEU has only made the changeover that much more difficult for fans to get their heads around.
But what if there is actually a method to the madness leading into Gunn’s DCU? When looking at some of the breadcrumbs leading up to Gunn’s DCU, could it be that James Gunn is not only building a sprawling DC cinematic universe of his own…but is also leaving enough doors open to facilitate the eventual restoration of the SnyderVerse?! As hard as it may be to believe, it could be that Gunn’s DCU might shockingly be the best shot Zack Snyder fans have to getting the ending to Snyder’s epic Justice League saga that they continue to tirelessly clamor for.
What’s Staying, What’s Going? The DCU Reboot Doesn’t Make Much Sense
Owing to a half-decade of drama with Warner Bros.’ (to call a spade a spade) colossal mishandling of the DCEU – the legendary Justice League/Snyder Cut tale being the epicenter from which all of that can be traced – and Henry Cavill’s Superman comeback set up in Black Adam being shunted for Gunn’s upcoming reboot, the DCU could be starting off with far less of a history of heartbreak, letdown, and bitterness than it already has. Much of the media commentary on Gunn’s DCU plans has made the argument that Warner Bros. fumbling of the DCEU left the franchise so directionless and damaged beyond repair that Gunn had no option but to reboot for the long-term viability of the DC brand as a whole. However, that reasoning stands at odds with the fact that Gunn’s own DCEU projects will carry over in the DCU.
Specifically, Gunn’s DCEU TV series Peacemaker is getting a second season, while Gunn’s planned Waller series is being repurposed for the DCU with Viola Davis returning. Additionally, the DCU’s curtain raising animated series Creature Commandos acts as a semi-follow-up to Gunn’s DCEU movie The Suicide Squad.
Obviously, if the argument for Gunn to make a clean reboot with the DCU was that the DCEU was beyond saving, Gunn sparing his own DCEU projects and casting choices from the chopping block comes across as a conflict of interest at best, and an arrogant indifference to most DCEU cast members – not to mention fans – being repeatedly cheated and screwed over at worst. But what if there’s more going on with the DCU than meets the eye?
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Could James Gunn’s DCEU Projects Being Carrying Into The DCU For A Specific Reason?
To be sure, Gunn himself has made the effort to communicate how the changeover will make sense. Specifically, Gunn has made clear that certain plot points and events from the DCEU will be used as reference points and narrative building blocks for the DCU. Since revealing the DCU’s planned Chapter One, titled “Gods and Monsters”, Gunn has communicated a general philosophy of “some things are the same, some aren’t” with the relationship between the DCEU and DCU, and Gunn more recently spoke on the matter of 2024’s New York Comic Con. Regarding the ongoing continuity questions, Gunn stated “We learn that other things that have happened in the past in other media have still happened. There are references to things that happened in the past. And those references then become canon in the DCU because we mention them.”
Gunn elaborated on the matter with respect to Peacemaker season two in an interview with Collider, stating that everything in season one is canon to season two and, by extension, the DCU – “outside of the appearance of the Justice League at the end, which you’ll see something about that in Peacemaker season two.” In the same interview, Gunn also clarified that while Creature Commandos builds from numerous events seen in The Suicide Squad – such as Rick Flag Jr.’s death at the hands of Peacemaker and Rick Flag Sr. seeking revenge for it – the latter isn’t technically canon to the DCU.
Gunn’s specific reference to the Justice League’s cameo in Peacemaker has only left the SnyderVerse loyal that much more confounded. However, Gunn’s assertion that Peacemaker season two will address the continuity in some form or fashion is where things start to get interesting.
The Multiverse, Elseworlds, & The Flash Enter The Picture
The truth of the matter is that James Gunn’s DCU cannot and will not avoid the shadow of the SnyderVerse forever. Realistically, when elements of the DCEU and even cast members connected to Snyder’s DCEU cast will be featured in the DCU, how could it? Moreover, directly addressing the continuity leap from the DCEU to the DCU will do nothing but draw more attention to the former, and ensure that its fans will never stop loudly clamoring for its story to be concluded. However, one element could indicate that Gunn is playing his cards right, that being how he intends to integrate DC’s long-standing tradition of multiverse and Elseworlds storytelling into the DCU. This could also mean that 2023’s The Flash – the movie’s financial letdown notwithstanding – might actually have been covertly retrofitted into being a key pillar of Gunn’s DCU plans.
Looking back at 2023’s DCEU slate, there is no question that The Flash is the movie that Gunn, Warner Bros., and DC Studios pushed the most heavily. The Flash also played extensively on the concept of time-travel, alternate realities, and the multiverse, and introduced a rather new explanation for all three by positing the idea that the multiverse is like a bowl of spaghetti. Some noodles run parallel, some diverge heavily from each other, and some cris-cross at multiple points. Moreover, The Flash also introduced concept of “inevitable intersections” in the multiverse as the idea that not every event in a given timeline can be changed. Some things are just fated to happen, without or without the Scarlet Speedster’s intervention.
2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine includes a similar idea of “anchor beings”, individuals of crucial importance to their given universe. With the explanation Gunn has given of the DCU’s continuity with the DCEU, he might be playing on a similar concept – not of anchor beings, but anchor events, occurrences that are set in stone to be a fixture of a given universe or even of the multiverse in its totality. Which…sounds an awful lot like inevitable intersections, doesn’t it?
If Gunn is indeed using the idea of anchor events/inevitable intersections as the baseline for his DCU continuity, that could account for why his projects are being carried over and why certain events in their DCEU incarnations remain canon to them.
Meanwhile that the lack of one event – such as the Justice League’s cameo in Peacemaker – could drastically, but not totally, rewrite the history of everything else in that timeline. This could very well account for the partial overlap of the DCEU into the DCU, the idea that both share certain anchor events, but depart from one another in other ways.
Of course, given that The Flash sadly bombed in theaters, it’d be easy to write off the idea of Gunn pulling any influence from it into the DCU. But then again, when one considers that The Suicide Squad itself was a major financial failure ($168 million worldwide on a $185 million budget), Gunn’s storytelling decisions clearly have to be based in more than just raw numbers, and look at a much bigger picture of DC’s future, and its past, in its totality.
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Why DC Studios Plan Could Finally Pay Off Years Of Unfulfilled WB Promises
Warner Bros. has a long and very frustrating history of micromanaging and interfering with DC movies going all they way back to the Christopher Reeve Superman films, but the DCEU fell victim to this practice in some especially infamous ways. The reshoots and alterations made to David Ayer’s Suicide Squad and the director swap and behind-the-scenes turmoil on Justice League set off a snowball effect that left the entire franchise in tatters. WB finally seemed to have things realigned in 2020 between the CW’s crossover event of Crisis On Infinite Earths, the announcement of Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and DC Fandome, which promised infinite possibilities for DC in all media with DC uniting everything past, present, and future under a co-existing multiverse.
Then came the infamous Variety interview with WB’s then-CEO Ann Sarnoff four days after Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuted in March 2021, with Sarnoff declaring the film the end of Snyder’s DCEU arc along with stonewalling growing interest in the release of David Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad. 1.5 million #RestoreTheSnyderVerse tweets soon followed on March 25, 2021, but Warner Bros. remained insistent that no continuation of Snyder’s DCEU films would happen, while also continuing to offer flimsy (at best) assertions that they had some kind of replacement plan.
What excited many DC fans and especially Zack Snyder fans so much about the multiverse coming into play was that it promised a way for everyone to have something to latch onto with DC. Snyder fans could get his intended version of Justice League and the planned conclusion to his five-movie arc that they were pushing for at the exact same time that The Batman universe was unfolding, Tyler Hoechlin’s Man of Steel was taking flight on Superman & Lois, and any number of other one-off or interconnected DC movies or TV shows were being made – and no one would have to feel like their preferred corner of DC was being marginalized or cut-off for the sake of any other.
WB’s years of mismanagement of the DCEU and transparent efforts to kill the momentum of Zack Snyder’s Justice League caused all of those hopes to come crashing down, culminating in the soft reset of the DCU under James Gunn’s tenure. To ask DC fans and SnyderVerse fans in particular to simply “move on” from all of that is to be grossly incapable of understanding the context of their bitterness, not mention epically failing to read the room.
With all of the above said, James Gunn might actually be doing what Warner Bros. always failed to do by properly establishing DC as a multiverse across all entertainment mediums in which nothing is off the table. More importantly, if Gunn’s DCU is indeed building itself upon anchor events/inevitable intersections that occur in both the DCEU and DCU, that opens the door for something that most media commentary on the DCU has hastily declared impossible. And here, Zack Snyder fans, is where you should pay attention…
Yes, Zack Snyder Fans – You Just Might Finally Get The Completion Of The SnyderVerse This Way!
Will Zack Snyder’s unmade Justice League sequels ever be realized and give the SnyderVerse the conclusion it was always intended to have? More importantly, CAN that ever happen? It definitely seemed like a distinct possibility right after the release of the Snyder Cut. Since then, DC Studios kickstarting the DCU seemed to be the death knell of any realistic SnyderVerse hopes (though the subsequent #SellSnyderVerseToNetflix campaign hasn’t been as unrealistic as it’s often been painted as.) However, if James Gunn is indeed building the DCU by using key DCEU moments as anchor events that branch into different stories in the DCU, that, by default, keeps the SnyderVerse very much alive and well.
The fact that Gunn has stated that Peacemaker season two will address the continuity changeover shows that Gunn is well aware that maintaining such links to the DCEU cannot be narratively ignored and requires some kind of in-story explanation. More to the point, why maintain any ties to the DCEU at all if the franchise was such damaged goods? Why establish anything within the DCEU as an “anchor event” to be built from if the goal is to make the world forget the DCEU to begin with? By maintaining such ties to the DCEU and using parts of it as anchor events/inevitable intersections, James Gunn’s DCU might not be doing that at all, but instead be positioning itself as a direct and semi-connected alternate DCEU.
And that, readers, leaves the SnyderVerse sitting out there in the DC multiverse, still alive and waiting for its story to be finished.
One component of finishing the SnyderVerse puzzle would be the release of David Ayer’s cut of Suicide Squad, and per Ayer himself, Gunn has expressed support for the prospect of doing so in a meeting between the two. In an interview on the Real Ones with Jon Bernthal podcast, Ayer stated that “It’s possible, but they want to get some scores on the board first.” Given how Ayer has relayed Gunn’s support of eventually releasing his cut of Suicide Squad, Gunn might also have a more general view of the completion of Snyder’s Justice League arc that’s less of a “No” and more of a “Not right now.”
As many fans have pointed out, the fact that DC Studios will also produce Elseworlds projects, such as Matt Reeves’ The Batman franchise, gives the SnyderVerse a built-in space to be wrapped up. While that certainly benefits the prospects of it happening, Gunn’s own DCU blueprint that maintains direct ties to the DCEU could be the real kicker for it all. And it might simply be a matter of allowing Gunn’s DCU to breath and unfold for a bit in order for the picture of where it is going to become clearer – and whether, by keeping such ties to the DCEU, unrealized stories as the Ayer Cut of Suicide Squad, Ben Affleck’s Batman movie, the Black Adam vs. Superman smackdown, and the completion of Zack Snyder’s Justice League sequels could be where the DCEU and DCU eventually but inevitably intersect.
After the wild ride of the SnyderVerse, no reboot or attempt at pivoting away could ever erase the memory of something as historical to superhero movies, and indeed cinema as a whole, like Zack Snyder’s Justice League and everything intended to stem from it. Ditto if the reboot is weaving elements of its predecessor into its own universe as the DCU is doing with the DCEU. If James Gunn’s DCU is indeed using the DCEU not just a building block, but actually preserving it by integrating into its own DNA, buckle up SnyderVerse fans – a few years down the road, the SnyderVerse might indeed finally return for the epic finale Zack Snyder had long envisioned for it. Better late than never!
Tell us, do you think James Gunn is working on a DCU surprise that could see the SnyderVerse return?
