Key Points
- What that Superman ending means for the DC universe it created.
- Writer/director/studio head James Gunn previously explained how Superman and Peacemaker connect in a particular way.
- All the future DCU projects that directly connect to the events of Superman.
Warning: This article contains spoilers from Superman.
Superman, the first film in a new rebooted era for the DC superhero franchise, flew into theaters this weekend. And, as writer/director/studio head James Gunn promised, it proved to be “pretty important in terms of getting to the bigger story” told across the franchise.
The movie establishes a world in which humanity has known about the existence of metahumans (super-powered beings) for 300 years. For three of those, they’ve known about Superman (David Corenswet). The film serves as a fairly self-contained story that doesn’t require much homework or forward thinking on the part of the audience. But between the main narrative engine and all the special guests that pop up, Gunn subtly (and not-so subtly) points to this larger DC universe (DCU) that he’s building with studio co-head Peter Safran that will play out across a series of interconnected movies and shows.
With the Superman ending, he specifically sets up something that will heavily play into the events of the next project, Peacemaker season 2 (on HBO Max this Aug. 21).
Peacemaker and pocket universes
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) in ‘Superman’
Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), the tech billionaire archvillain, used Big Bang science to create a dimension that exists outside of our own. He uses it largely for two purposes: to travel near-instantaneously around the globe through various portals, and to shield his more nefarious activities from the public eye.
This pocket universe notably contains his band of genetically engineered, super-intelligent monkeys that flood the internet with misinformation and hate speech about Superman, as well as his prison for all those who personally wronged him. It then serves a third function as Luthor’s weapon of mass destruction.
To distract the Man of Steel from stopping the conflict between Boravia and Jarhanpur, Luthor creates a rift from one of his portals that quickly begins to tear through Metropolis like an unstoppable earthquake.
Gunn previously confirmed the pocket universe is directly linked to something already introduced in Peacemaker, starring John Cena as the titular antihero. Season 1, which ran from January to February 2022, included the Quantum Unfolding Chamber, or QUC for short. It was created by Auggie Smith (Robert Patrick), Peacemaker’s father, as storage space that exists outside of our dimension.
Jessica Miglio/Max
John Cena and Danielle Brooks in ‘Peacemaker’ season 2
Aside from the fact that Cena himself cameos in Superman, Gunn told Entertainment Weekly the QUC is similar to the technology explored in the movie. “The QUC is the center of the story in Peacemaker season 2,” he said in a May interview, adding, “We see a lot of different characters from Superman in the [season].”
He specifically mentioned two members of the Justice Gang, a super-trio introduced in Superman. Isabela Merced will return as Hawkgirl/Kendra Saunders alongside Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner and Sean Gunn as Maxwell Lord, the team’s billionaire backer. “And then we see a bunch of other characters later on in the [Peacemaker] season from other parts of the DCU and from Superman,” Gunn continued. “There might even be one really, really, really big cameo near the end of the show.”
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The first teaser trailer for Peacemaker season 2 included one major clue as to how the QUC and this pocket universe technology will be important. One scene shows Cena’s Peacemaker encountering another identical-looking Peacemaker, which suggests a parallel-dimension counterpart. Dare we say…a multiverse?
Other DCU connections
Jessica Miglio/Max
Frank Grillo in ‘Peacemaker’ season 2
There are a number of other ways that Superman, at the very least, sets up this fictional world.
The most obvious are the cameos, like Cena’s Peacemaker. Frank Grillo‘s Rick Flag, Sr., first appearing in animated form in last year’s Creature Commandos, arrived in Superman as the Secretary of Defense. He’ll then have a bigger part to play in Peacemaker season 2.
House of the Dragon and Sirens star Milly Alcock has a smaller cameo when she debuts for the first time as Kara Zor-El, Superman’s cousin known as Supergirl. She crashes into the Fortress of Solitude at the end of the movie, after partying on other planets with Red Suns, which emit the kind of solar radiation that weakens Kryptonians enough so they can experience the effects of alcohol and other substances.
The next DCU project that will release after Superman and Peacemaker season 2 is, yes, Supergirl, a film headlining Alcock and inspired by the Tom King-penned, Bilquis Evely-drawn comic book Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. In that story, Kara is approached by galactic warrior Ruthye Marye Knoll (Eve Ridley), who asks for help hunting down those who killed her father and destroyed her world.
Dominik Bindl/Getty; DC Comics
Milly Alcock will play Supergirl in the DCU
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While the events of Superman are not directly connected to Supergirl, it’s a signal (a Bat-signal?) that there’s more on the horizon. The same goes for those random shoutouts in the movie, like how Luthor is carted off to Belle Reve in the Superman ending, the prison facility that houses some of the most dangerous supervillains and metahumans. And who runs Belle Reve? Amanda Waller.
Viola Davis is already set to reprise her role as Belle Reve’s warden in a standalone TV series for HBO Max, which Gunn announced back in January 2023.
Other projects also in the works include Lanterns, an HBO Max series that will return Fillion’s Guy Gardner alongside other members of the Green Lantern Corps, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre) and Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). Then there’s a movie coming down the line about the Authority, a super-team described as the anti-Justice League, a group of metahumans who are willing to bend the rules a bit.
DC Studios/Warner Bros.
María Gabriela de Faría as the Engineer in ‘Superman’
A member of the Authority team is Angela Spica/the Engineer, played by María Garbiela de Faría in Superman. The character was left unconscious but alive at the end of the movie, thanks to a near-fatal death dive out of the sky.
“We did have a bit of that conversation about the future of the Engineer,” De Faría teased to EW in a cover story published in June, referring to Gunn. “And the motherf—er [she whispers the expletive] was very secretive. He was like, ‘I have a great idea,’ and then [texted] a little emoji. Okay, so what is it?! And then he didn’t reply. He’s keeping me in the dark, but apparently he has a great idea of what to do with this character.”
By the time the credits roll on Superman, it’s also clear that Justice League is very much on the brain, some kind of team-up of this world’s mightiest heroes. We see it in the eyes of Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan) and the Justice Gang after saving the people of Jarhanpur from Boravian soldiers. It also can’t be a coincidence that the Justice Gang’s home base is the Hall of Justice, which is the headquarters for the Justice League on Earth in the comics.
Warner Bros.
Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi) in ‘Superman’
EW previously questioned Gunn on the state of a Justice League movie. When asked if he’s already thinking about one, he replied, coyly, “Of course, of course. But there is no Justice League in this world…not yet.”
As fans continue to ponder the future of the DCU, we leave you with one last deep-cut theory to think about…
When the Superman ending reveals how everyone in Luthor’s pocket universe was rescued and released back into the real world, including those smart monkeys…will that become the low-key origin story for the DCU’s Gorilla Grodd?
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