Zack Snyder’s plan was to have Superman’s son become the new Batman. But that plan is no more and we can spoil it for you because, current success aside, internet pressure campaigns seem unlikely to get two new Justice Leagues made from scratch.
As such, you can just enjoy an alternate reality. The filmmaker’s four-hour cut is now up on HBO Max, and contained within that (far) longer movie are a number of setups for what would’ve been, in a different timeline, the second and third films in a Justice League trilogy.
One of those setups is a pregnancy test seen in the drawer of Lois Lane.
As he revealed in a new Vanity Fair interview, Snyder’s idea was to have a 20-year in the future jump at the end of Justice League 3 that would show Superman/Lois’ son, Bruce Kent, as the new Batman, and that Bruce wouldn’t have any powers like his dad (got the bad genes).
“It was going to be Lois and Superman’s son,” Snyder said. “He doesn’t have any powers, and then he was going to end up being the new Batman… Twenty years later, on the anniversary of [Batman’s] death, they take young Bruce Kent down to the Batcave and they say, ‘Your Uncle Bruce would’ve been proud if you did this.”
As for why there would need to be a new Batman, Snyder’s idea was to have the Bruce Wayne-edition die at some point in Justice League 2/3. Said death would’ve come protecting Lois against Darkseid, and that would lead to the Anti-Life Equation that we see in the post-apocalyptic Knightmare scene teases being unleashed upon the world.
According to Snyder, Warner Bros. wanted the pregnancy storyline axed from the film, but he did shoot it (obviously). The studio was also against the idea of Batman and Lois Lane having a Justice League romance. He did not get to shoot that. If you’re thinking along with the movie’s plot then know that, yes, this proposed romance would’ve complicated Bruce Wayne’s feelings about bringing Superman back from the dead.
“The intention was that Bruce fell in love with Lois and then realized that the only way to save the world was to bring Superman back to life,” the director explained. “So he had this insane conflict, because Lois, of course, was still in love with Superman. We had this beautiful speech where [Bruce] said to Alfred: ‘I never had a life outside the cave. I never imagined a world for me beyond this. But this woman makes me think that if I can get this group of gods together, then my job is done. I can quit. I can stop.’ And of course, that doesn’t work out for him.”
Snyder says Warner Bros. made it clear to him that his stuff wasn’t canon. For all of this you’re just going to have to picture it in your head.
