The Ending Of James Gunn's Superman Explained

Contains spoilers for "Superman"

James Gunn's "Superman" marks the fourth big-screen incarnation of the Superman character, played this time by David Corenswet, but there's much more riding on it than the reintroduction of an iconic comic book hero. This is a film designed not just to reacquaint audiences with the Man of Steel, but to launch an entire cinematic universe with Superman at the center of it all.

That means that, while the film spends plenty of time on Superman's story, it's also concerned with laying a lot of groundwork for stories to come, including new heroes, villains, locations, and much more. It's a lot to take in for a film that runs just slightly more than two hours, which means that by the time everything ends, there are endless possibilities for what might come next. So let's break it all down. From Superman's fate to all of his allies and enemies, this is the ending of 2025's "Superman," explained.

Before we dig into the ending of "Superman," we need to rewind a little bit and take a look at where things stand heading into the finale. The film picks up three years after Superman revealed himself and started saving the world in any number of ways, but when we meet him, he's just lost a battle for the first time.

Superman has recently embroiled himself in an international conflict, halting an invasion of Jarhanpur by the neighboring nation of Boravia and drawing the attention of a superhero known only as "The Hammer of Boravia." What Superman doesn't know is that his new opponent, who's capable of beating him in battle, is actually Ultraman, the creation of Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who controls the superpowered being from a command center in Metropolis. When Ultraman defeats Superman not once, but twice, Luthor goes to the U.S. government and assures military commanders that he has what he needs to defeat and imprison Superman if necessary.

Meanwhile, in his Clark Kent guise, Superman is working with Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) to link Luthor to the war in Boravia, believing that he's orchestrating things behind the scenes. As the reporters work, Luthor gains entry to Superman's Fortress of Solitude and, aided by the Engineer (Maria Gabriela de Faria), recovers the entire message that Superman's Kryptonian parents sent with him when they put him on a ship bound for Earth.

While working with Guy Gardner (Nathan Fillion), Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi), and Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced) to defeat a kaiju in Metropolis, Superman learns that Luthor has infiltrated the Fortress, revealing part of the message from his parents (Bradley Cooper and Angela Sarafyan) that he never saw before. Their message to Superman was not just to protect and help the people of Earth, but to rule them as a super-powered overlord. It's exactly the nugget of truth Luthor needs to turn public opinion against Superman, then arrest him. Luthor locks Superman in a pocket universe, and moves forward with plans for the Boravian invasion, which will eventually give him half of Jarhanpur and therefore make him ruler of his own country.

With the help of Lois, Mr. Terrific, and the metahuman known as Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan), Superman escapes his dimensional prison and heads out to stop Luthor. While Lois prepares a bombshell report on Luthor's plans, Gardner, Hawkgirl, and Metamorpho move to stop the Boravian invasion. Back in Metropolis, Superman battles Ultraman, revealed to be an unintelligent but powerful Superman clone made by Luthor, while Mr. Terrific works to stop a massive dimensional rift caused by Luthor's portals to his pocket universe.

Realizing that Luthor is controlling Ultraman through drones which observe their fight, Superman sends his dog Krypto to destroy the drones. Without Luthor's help, Ultraman loses the fight to Superman and falls into a black hole caused by the dimensional rift. Lois and Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) publish their report, and Luthor is arrested.

Though he spends the movie fighting supervillains and forging closer partnerships with his fellow metahuman heroes, Superman's real crisis is something more internal. All his life, Superman has used the partial message left by his parents as a soothing reminder of his purpose, a guiding light for all of his heroic exploits. He believed that they sent him to Earth to help people, but by recovering the corrupted part of the message, Luthor shatters that perception.

Faced with the truth, that his parents wanted him to be a merciless emperor of an entire planet, Superman has a crisis of confidence, worrying that something in him might be inherently programmed to be a dictator. He never stops trying to do good, but he worries that the dominant, ruling side of his Kryptonian nature may have simply been buried all these years.

It takes a conversation with his adopted father, Jonathan Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince), to set Superman straight. Worrying aloud that he doesn't know who he is anymore, Pa Kent reminds Clark that parents do not get to decide what their children grow up to be, and Superman is not automatically rendered evil because of something his birth parents said. Clark Kent is a good person because he chooses to be one every day, and that means he can still be the hero he aspires to be for the world. For all the superpowered battles throughout the film, that's the biggest fight Superman faces — and wins.

Lex Luthor begins the film in a position to not just undermine, but absolutely defeat Superman, fulfilling a mission he's been working on for three years. Obsessed with what he sees as Superman's unearned sense of superiority, Luthor has built a multi-pronged plan to not just beat the Man of Steel, but to gain his own kingdom and thus come one step closer to gaining the status on the world stage he feels he's earned.

By the end, of course, it all comes crashing down. Luthor's plans to take over half of Jarhanpur are revealed, as are his lies to the American public, his collaboration with the foreign government of Boravia, and more. We see him arrested and taken into custody by the U.S. government, but we don't see what's going to happen next.

Nicholas Hoult's version of Lex Luthor is, like so many of the character's comic book incarnations, a master strategist, so while he's thoroughly humiliated and brought low by the events of the movie, we certainly can't count him out for sequels. He no doubt has contingency after contingency built into his corporate empire, as well as massive amounts of money to fund a legal team that could turn the tide in his favor. The movie gives a definitive end to his evil plan, to be sure, but it's safe to say this is only the end for a little while.

As the film begins, Superman is working alone, but he's not the only superhero in the world. Guy Gardner (aka Green Lantern), Hawkgirl, and Mr. Terrific are part of a budding superhero team informally called "The Justice Gang," funded by billionaire Maxwell Lord (Sean Gunn). When we meet them, the Justice Gang is operating independently of Superman, though they do team up with him when necessary, and they see no reason to interfere when Superman is in trouble with the U.S. government.

By the end of the film, of course, thanks to Mr. Terrific's investigations alongside Lois, the Justice Gang is singing a different tune. They step up to help, even welcoming Metamorpho into their ranks along the way. They've already got significant infrastructure in place thanks to the Hall of Justice, which is still under construction during the film. It's a nod to the organizations we've seen in DC Comics, and when the metahumans come together at the end of the film, it signals that the superteams comic book fans love are probably not far behind.

So how many metahumans will flock to the Hall of Justice now that Superman and the Justice Gang have succeeded on a global stage? How long will the spirit of collaboration last? We don't get those answers in "Superman," but we do know that this is the beginning of an entire universe of superhero stories, so it won't be long before we see the next steps.

As "Superman" begins, the title hero has already been active for three years. Everyone knows who he is, his story, and pretty much everything else apart from his secret identity. But the crisis in Boravia and Jarhanpur, coupled with the rift that Lex Luthor opens in Metropolis, propels Superman onto the world stage in ways seemingly like never before, opening up a new range of possibilities for the character.

As one official of the U.S. government says at the end of the film, following Superman's play to stop the Boravian invasion, the metahumans are now the ones making the rules. World governments were seemingly happy to let Superman and other heroes operate more or less independently before, treating them either as allies or nuisances, but never as serious geopolitical movers and shakers. Superman's actions, stopping a war and toppling Lex Luthor's empire, change that forever.

In the future, every major world conflict will no doubt feature some involvement from Superman, whether he's joining the fight or stopping it. Nations will all have to consider his power and influence with every important decision they make, and they'll also have to remember that he's not the only metahuman. This means many things, including the fact that some wars will never even begin now that Superman is watching over the Earth. It also means that the world will look to Superman in every moment of global crisis, whether he wants to get involved or not, setting up a delicate political situation that will only get more complex.

In the introductory text of the film, we learn that metahumans have existed in some form on Earth for three centuries, suggesting that Superman and the Justice Gang are just the latest in a long line of enhanced individuals. The film does not attempt to explain metahumans or count how many might be active in the world at the moment, but it does establish that these extraordinary beings have been around for a very long time.

So where are the rest of the metahumans? Many of them are no doubt operating locally, so it's easy to imagine Wonder Woman keeping things safe in Themyscira, Aquaman patrolling the seas, or even The Flash running around Central City, getting used to superspeed. Thanks to Lex Luthor's creation of the Superman clone Ultraman and the nanotech-infused Engineer, we can also imagine other artificially created heroes roaming around.

In terms of other metahumans who are possibly around, Guy Gardner is not the only Green Lantern, so we can imagine an entire Corps of them ready to spring into action. The presence of Hawkgirl also suggests the existence of Nth Metal, a powerful substance that might mean other Hawk-themed heroes are right around the corner. Then, of course, there's Luthor's pocket dimension prison, which could house its own host of captured metahumans like Metamorpho. Basically, the possibilities are endless — and that's exactly the point. This is a universe teaming with, as the opening text notes, "gods and monsters."

At one point in "Superman," Lois Lane heads to the Hall of Justice to ask the Justice Gang for help and learns that Superman's fellow metahumans already know his secret identity as Clark Kent. Lois is concerned that Superman trusts too many people with his real identity, but how many folks are actually aware that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person?

Obviously Clark's parents back home in Kansas are aware of who he is, and we learn early in the film that Lois is also in on the secret. Add the three members of the Justice Gang to that, and that makes at least six humans who know the Man of Steel's secret identity.

But there may be more. At the end of the film, with Luthor and Ultraman defeated, Superman and Lois sneak off to an empty building to share an epic kiss. Jimmy Olsen and Perry White (Wendell Pierce) commiserate over their shared knowledge of the romance, which Lois and Superman think they've been hiding. While it's important to understand that this doesn't mean Perry and Jimmy know that Superman and Clark are one and the same, it does seem that they're leaning in that direction, giving us at least eight people who are aware of the secret identity. Is that too many? Will it get Superman into trouble? We'll have to wait until the sequels to find out.

At one point in the film, Superman mentions that Krypto, his superpowered dog, is actually a "foster situation," suggesting that the canine doesn't actually belong to him. It takes until the very end of the film to understand, but while Superman is recovering from his battle with Ultraman in the Fortress of Solitude, we finally learn what he means.

Superman's cousin, Kara Zor-el (Milly Alcock), barges into the Fortress, knocking around in a bit of a stupor and demanding to see her dog, who promptly jumps on her and starts to play. Superman explains to his newly repaired Superman robots that Kara likes to party on planets that don't have a yellow sun, because spending time away from the yellow sun renders her more vulnerable and, thus, able to get drunk.

She's clearly a young woman leading a carefree lifestyle, but she also already has her Supergirl costume on, suggesting that she's ready to learn how to be a hero like her cousin. Or is she one already? We know that Alcock is set to star in "Supergirl," a movie coming out in 2026, which suggests that this glimpse of the character is a hint at her trajectory from hard-partying alien to world-saving hero.

There are, depending on your knowledge of DC Comics, arguably too many seeds of future DC Universe stories in "Superman" to count, but because we know that more films and TV series are coming, we can take a look at the biggest ones.

For example, Guy Gardner serves as this universe's introduction to the Green Lantern Corps, and we'll see more of them in the upcoming series "Lanterns," which will feature Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as Green Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart, among others. Supergirl will, of course, get her own movie next year, while The Engineer is a member of the comic book superteam The Authority, whose standalone film is in question despite it being one of James Gunn's DCU passion projects. Plus Lex Luthor is sent to Belle Reve prison at the end of the film, which is traditionally the comic book home of Amanda Waller, another character who might be headed for a streaming series.

Then there's that nugget about three centuries of metahumans. Who are the earliest metahumans? We don't know, but there's a good chance that's a reference to the Amazons, who will return not only in the form of a new Wonder Woman story, but in a streaming series titled "Paradise Lost," focusing on their homeland of Themyscira. All these hints, and more, suggest a universe that will be full of stories for years, possibly decades, to come.