Zack Snyder's Answer To Marvel's Thanos Was NOT Darkseid - Here's Why

A portion of the DC fanbase will always pine for what could've been had Zack Snyder been allowed to bring his full "Justice League" vision to fruition. Viewers got a glimpse when his director's cut of "Justice League" was released, as it would've set up Darkseid (Ray Porter) to play a significant role in the franchise going forward, leading to an apocalyptic world where heroes and villains must band together to set things right. It'd be easy to assume Darkseid was established to be the big bad, effectively functioning as the Thanos (Josh Brolin) of the DC Extended Universe, but another villain was planned to be pulling all the strings.

Jay Oliva has worked on many DC projects, including directing the animated "Flashpoint Paradox" movie. He worked on the live-action "Flash" film for years, seeing many directors come and go. He revealed to Inverse how the plan was for Snyder to make a series of interconnected movies bringing together the Justice League with a clear reset in mind. Oliva said, "Originally, there was supposed to be just Zack's five films and one side movie, which ended up being Suicide Squad." However, after "Man of Steel," DC wanted to pursue a cinematic universe, which would've resulted in a Flash villain being the endgame.

Oliva continued, "Rick [Famuyiwa's Flash] movie was laying the groundwork for Zoom as the big baddy of the DC universe." Professor Zoom, a.k.a. Reverse-Flash, a.k.a. Eobard Thawne, is a long-time Flash villain, and he would've been the true "Thanos" of the DCEU with his schemes resulting in the franchise's reboot.

Darkseid and Thanos are easy parallels of one another, but ending the DCEU with "Flashpoint Paradox" would've taken things in a new direction and allowed the franchise to gain some semblance of an ending. While 2023's "The Flash" movie adapted elements of the "Flashpoint" storyline, namely with Barry Allen (Ezra Miller) traveling to the past to save his mother, Jay Oliva makes it sound like something on a much grander scale was planned to close out Zack Snyder's series.

Oliva explained, "It was Professor Zoom pulling the strings because he had come from the future to basically f*** with Barry. In the Flash movies, Zoom would be the villain in the background. But also in the ancillary other films, you would see some of the influences of Zoom on the rest of the Justice League." If Snyder's DC movies were allowed to continue, it would've led to a "Justice League Unlimited" on the big screen where there are many heroes. Then, everything would've been thrown into disarray, "You flip it. You do Flashpoint Paradox. Everybody who's friends are now enemies, and it's a world that you don't want to live in. You can reboot the universe and introduce a new cast that way. Because after 10 years, the actors need to go onto something else."

It sounds like this would've been much closer to both the comic book storyline and the animated movie. As it stands, "The Flash" movie we did get had a couple of Batmen, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), and an alternate timeline Supergirl (Sasha Calle). Oliva concluded by saying it's a missed opportunity, and now, the DC film franchise is getting rebooted anyway under the guidance of James Gunn and Peter Safran. Perhaps another attempt at "Flashpoint Paradox" will still come down the line.