‘Justice League’ Will Explore Doomsday’s Mythology

The biggest thing — literally and figuratively — to come out of the most recent trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was Doomsday, the classic mutant baddie who appears in a massive battle against Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman near the trailer’s end. Many fans were confused as to why Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. would reveal Doomsday so soon, but the director says he has a good reason for offering the character up this early in the marketing cycle and teases a bigger connection to the Justice League franchise.

A few weeks back, the production designer on Batman v Superman said that Doomsday “isn’t just the final act” of the film, hinting at bigger problems for the Dark Knight and the Man of Steel — which would also explain why Snyder wasn’t shy about putting the villain out there in the most recent trailer.

While speaking with The Daily Beast, Snyder further explains his decision to put Doomsday out there now instead of holding him back as a surprise:

We had a long conversation about just taking ownership of that, of giving it to the audience in a controlled way that I felt was consistent with the escalation of the campaign. To us it really made sense to give [Doomsday] to the audience now. I really wanted to make the audience a promise that… though I’m super excited and happy and fulfilled by the conflict of Batman and Superman, there’s also a bigger world to start to think about.

That bigger world would be the DCU and its other, non-Superman, non-Batman movies, as well as Justice League, the two-part blockbuster event that will unite the characters with fellow heroes like Aquaman, Wonder Woman and The Flash. While Snyder has recently promised a “bigger enemy to fight” in Justice League, it seems as though Batman v Superman won’t be the last we hear of Doomsday — in one way or another:

Well, you have Doomsday, right? He doesn’t just crawl out of the ground. He has his own mythology, right? So that has to be explored…

As comic book fans well-know, Doomsday is a genetically-engineered Kryptonian project gone horribly wrong, a highly-aggressive, mutated super-soldier who kills Superman in the famous Superman: Doomsday story. It’s unclear just how Snyder plans on connecting Doomsday to the Justice League movies, though it could very well take the DCU and Superman back to Krypton.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice stars Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot and Jesse Eisenberg, and hits theaters on March 25.