The following piece includes major SPOILERS for Justice League.
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Justice League may bring the DCEU's greatest heroes together, but it does so while leaing a lot of big questions both about its own story and the wider franchise. The team-up has opened to largely negative reviews and a lower than expected box office performance. That has to be disappointing for Warner Bros, which was counting on the film to not only turn Wonder Woman's thus far atypical (for the DC Extended Universe franchise) mega-success into the start of a trend but also to "repair" the franchise itself after the negative reception that greeted Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Seemingly as part of achieving that goal, Justice League spends as little time as it's able to get away with setting up future movies or paying off loose threads from its team-up predecessor (save, of course, for one very, very big one) which leads to a much more "streamlined" moviegoing experience more focused on action scenes, jokey dialogue exchanges and "hero moments;" but also one that inevitably leaves a lot of questions unanswered - both in terms of story-threads it raises and leftover details from Batman v Superman that apparently are no longer priorities. Here are the ten biggest things yet to be answered now that the League's debut is in the history books.
Related: Justice League: 30 Easter Eggs & Secrets You Completely Missed
WHAT WAS FUTURE FLASH "TOO SOON" FOR?
One of the most talked-about scenes in Batman V Superman involves Bruce Wayne waking up from one bad dream ("The Knightmare") seemingly into another: Ezra Miller's Flash - whom he hadn't met yet at this point - pops up of a mysterious energy field wearing a futuristic armored version of his Flash costume and sporting an older, goatee-and-mustache look overall. Apparently, he's come with a warning, shouting out important-sounding declarations about how "You [Bruce] were right about him!" and that Lois Lane is "the key!" Midway through, though, Flash seems to determine that he miscalculated his appearance, asking "Am I too soon!?" before vanishing completely.
It's a comic-book reference of course, specifically to Crisis on Infinite Earth's famously featuring an encounter between Batman and a spectral incarnation of Barry "The Flash" Allen early on that turns out to be a dire warning flung backwards through time from later in the apocalyptic story. But it also seems to be a setup for later events, either for the ending of that film (where Lois plays a significant role) or a future one.
It now seems like it could have been an allusion to the plot of Justice League, where Lois turns out to be the "big gun" that can talk Superman down from a brief bout of post-resurrection super-anger. But either case is unknowable, since nothing about the scene (including Barry's facial hair, alternate costume, ability to travel backwards through time or whether Bruce Wayne recognizes him) has been addressed yet. Rumors persist that Flashpoint - the renamed solo Flash movie - will be a time-shuffling story used to "soft-reboot" the entire franchise, but that wasn't the plan when the "Am I too soon?" scene was shot, so it's still anyone's guess.
WHAT DID WONDER WOMAN DO FOR A CENTURY?
According to the ending (and incidental story details) of Batman V Superman, Wonder Woman "walked away from Man's World" for a century following her service in World War I. What she's been doing for all that time isn't exactly clear, save that she apparently didn't return (at least not permanently) to Themyscira with the other Amazons. So what was the most powerful superhero on Earth (until Kal-El arrived) getting up to between winning WWI and slipping her tiara back on to help battle Doomsday? Supposedly, Wonder Woman 2 will find Diana getting involved in the Cold War during the 80s, but that still leaves a long stretch of time unaccounted for and a lot of major world events (including a whole other World War!) that it currently seems like she sort of "sat out."
Read More: Gal Gadot Says Wonder Woman Was Changed After Batman V Superman
Presumably her own sequel(s) will correct the record, but a popular fan theory is that Wonder Woman was at one point supposed to have a much darker ending - i.e. Diana actively removing herself from the affairs of humans after learning that her nemesis Ares didn't actually have to "make them" fight wars and be awful to each other - that was rendered more optimistic (but less congruent with her "pre-set" future) after the backlash against Batman V Superman.
WILL ANY OF THE DARKSEID TEASES PAY OFF?
Even before Batman V Superman started teasing at it, it was widely assumed that alien dictator Darkseid and his minions - originally the antagonists from Jack Kirby's ambitious New Gods series in the 70s - would be the main villains of Justice League. And while it's still believed that this was at one point meant to be the case, that changed sometime around when Warner Bros decided that League would be only one movie rather than a planned two-film back-to-back shoot; instead, the heroes wound up facing the Lord of Apokolips' henchman Steppenwolf. But while Darkseid get's name-checked at least once in the film and was heavily teased by Batman V Superman (Batman's vision of a nightmare future included a giant Omega symbol carved into the Earth itself), there's no explicit confirmation he's coming.
In fact, apart from Steppenwolf himself, the Parademon foot-soldiers and the Motherboxes, the film seems to be actively avoiding even the suggestion that the broader New Gods/Fourth World cosmology exists in the films at all, and those not already in the know would be forgiven for assuming that Steppenwolf's defeat is the end of that entire threat. Instead, the film's expected post-credit scene is devoted to teasing a cinematic version of the Injustice Gang/Legion of Doom concept. Is it possible that the myriad of changes of plans to the DCEU plan post-Batman V Superman (rumored to include a new actor to play Batman and a possible soft-reboot in Flashpoint) might have included dropping plans to involve the New Gods characters altogether?
WHAT WAS BATMAN'S "KNIGHTMARE" ABOUT?
"The Knightmare" remains one of the Batman V Superman's iconic sequences, even among those who didn't care for it (or the rest of the film): a bizarre stretch of film in which Batman either imagines or predicts a Mad Max-like post-apocalyptic future hellscape, blighted by Apokoliptan engine towers and Darkseid's omega symbol, where he leads a failing armed resistance against a dictatorial Superman and his army of armed soldiers and Parademons. It certainly looked cool but didn't have much to do with the actual story of the film (i.e. Batman already wanted to kill Superman for reasons having nothing to do with any of the things being pictured here) - leading many to assume that it was meant to be a preview of things to come in Justice League regarding Darkseid and the New Gods.
Read More: Zack Snyder's Knightmare Batman Joins DC Canon
But while Apolopitan advancer Steppenwolf indeed turned up as the heavy of Justice League, any of the broader mythos that might've been implied never sees the light of day. Also, rather than becoming a villain, Henry Cavill's post-resurrection Superman is mostly just angry and (apparently) allergic to shirts until a quick trip to Smallville with Lois Lane puts him back on the right path. So where did the "Knightmare" come from, then? We may never know.
WHAT ARE THE MOTHER BOXES ACTUALLY FOR?
In the sprawling cosmic space opera that was Jack Kirby's Fourth World continuity for DC, Motherboxes were cube-shaped supercomputers that the advanced alien races collectively referred to as The New Gods used to perform the dizzying quantum calculations necessary for opening "Boom Tube" portals and other acts of Clarke's Third Law space-magic. They do that in Justice League, too - but without a lot of explanation as to how and also seem capable of letting Steppenwolf transform/conquer Earth if three of them are brought together.
It's all very vague (as, to be fair, such movie MacGuffins tend to be - see: the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Tesseract, which turned out to be an Infinity Stone itself) and with the above-mentioned examples of how the DCEU appears to be backing away from the prospect of New Gods characters playing a significant role going forward it's conceivable they might remain largely unexplained for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, it's possible that they could be further fleshed out by future films involving Cyborg, given that his reworked origin story now involves getting his cybernetic replacement body-parts from the Mother Boxes' influence.
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH LEX LUTHOR, NOW?
When DC fans last saw Lex Luthor at the conclusion of Dawn of Justice, he was in a pretty specific place in terms of "next life steps." Jailed for the various illegal actions he undertook as part of his curiously elaborate plan to rid the world of Superman (including but not limited to: war crimes, mass-murder, regular-murder, kidnapping, blowing up the U.S. Senate and unleashing Doomsday) and sporting a freshly-shaved head, Lex had been driven mad(er?) by visions shown to him by the Kryptonian Archive that the Ultimate Edition of the film clarified as dealing with the impending invasion by Steppenwolf. But when he turns up again in the bonus post-credits scene in Justice League, Luthor appears to have left all of that very much behind.
Read More: Justice League's Post-Credits Scenes Explained In Detail
Not only is he no longer behaving in the manic, frothing-at-the-mouth manner he was when Batman walked away from him in jail, Luthor isn't even acting like his "normal" self from before that: instead, he's kept the bald look, traded in his tech-industry hipster threads for a Gene Hackman-reminiscent ostentatious suit and is kicking back on a luxury yacht surrounded by leggy henchwomen and spelling out his plans to Deathstroke with confident, smug matter-of-factness. The stereotypically awkward tech-startup characterization from Batman V Superman is gone, replaced with a much more conventional version of how Luthor has been depicted in films, cartoons and comics since the character was reworked in the mid-1980s. Will the change ever be explained?
PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING ABOUT AQUAMAN
Of the three characters being (formally) introduced in Justice League, Jason Momoa's Aquaman probably feels the most shortchanged: His storyline is believed to have been cut down drastically from what was originally intended, but as one of two Leaguers (Wonder Woman being the second) also serving as representatives of ancient "metahuman" cultures tied-into the broader mythos behind Steppenwolf and the Mother Boxes, he can't help but be presented as kind of a big deal - which creates a fairly noticeable disconnect throughout the story.
An exuberantly macho tough-guy with biker-dude manners and beach-bum enthusiasm, the seeming clash with what little we're told about his backstory as the resentful half-human heir to the throne of an undersea magical kingdom would seem to make him a character worth exploring; but Justice League is mainly interested in Momoa's adept skill for action beats and ironic meta-narrative jokes about Aquaman's often-maligned "talking to fish" super-powers. For the character (and for Momoa) that might be a blessing, allowing greater room to flesh out and put a personal stamp on the character in his just-wrapped solo feature. But for Justice League it means that there are way more questions than answers (or memorable moments) associated with one of its main characters.
DOES THE WORLD CARE THAT SUPERMAN IS BACK?
According to Justice League's opening credits, the world is fairly bummed out about the death of Superman, with black banners and mournful news headlines all suggesting a scenario wherein said world would be ready to collectively cheer the not-even-attempted "surprise" of his resurrection midway through the film. Maybe that was the case at one point, but with Superman's storyline widely believed to have been among the aspects of Justice League most drastically transformed by Joss Whedon from whatever Zack Snyder's original intent was, it's possible that we won't get to find out what the rest of the planet's reaction to his comeback is until a later film.
Related: Justice League Reshoots: Every Change Whedon Made To Snyder's Film
In fact, one of League's more curious features is a lack of scope focusing on the presumably large numbers of people who would be affected/interested by a large-scale alien invasion and the return of Superman (among other things): the Man of Steel's brief rematch with Batman and briefer scuffle with the rest of the Justice League is witnessed by Lois Lane and a single Metropolis police officer, and Steppenwolf's main point of invasion is a fallout-scarred urban wasteland in Russia inhabited by exactly three people.
WHAT HAPPENS TO CLARK KENT NOW?
While Superman's comeback might be accepted by a global public that apparently accepted the facts of his alien origin and nearly-godlike powers in the first place, it's presumably going to be a lot harder for people to accept the also declared-dead Clark Kent showing up alive out of nowhere - and might invite other unwelcome questions considering his obituary confirmed he died the same day as Superman. Comic book and cartoon versions of similar scenarios have found plenty of ways around this in the past ("The Death of Superman" used another hero's shape-shifting powers to pull off a ruse and put the "never photographed together" issue to bed) and presumably any hypothetical future films in the franchise will attempt the same.
But, for now, it's fairly odd to see Clark Kent walking the streets of Metropolis again (plus casually hanging out with Bruce Wayne in front of dozens of workers helping Martha Kent move back into her house) as though he doesn't expect to have to explain to anyone how he's suddenly no longer dead.
Next: Why Was Superman's CGI-Erased Mustache So Bad in Justice League?
WHERE DID SUPERMAN GET HIS NEW COSTUME?
When Superman makes his return to action (which comes after both his return to life itself and his return to Smallville - it's complicated) during the film's climactic battle against Steppenwolf, he does so wearing a brand new costume... that's not technically meant to be "brand new." Fans with clear memories of Man of Steel and Batman V Superman will immediately notice that Cavill's super-suit has been re-colored to use more distinct, pure shades of red, yellow and blue; but since the colors are also popping this way in a video flashback set prior to the character's death we can assume that we're being asked to pretend that this outfit now always looked like this. However, that still doesn't account for why he has any super-suit available, period.
Superman's death at the hands (or, rather, spikes) of Doomsday in Batman V Superman left him with a gaping hole in both his chest and the front of his costume, and while it's unknown what became of the damaged suit after this he wasn't buried in it - when we see Clark's body in this film as the Leaguers set about reviving him, he was buried in an ordinary suit. Once risen, he's first seen fighting/flying bare chested and wearing black slacks, then later on jeans and a flannel shirt on the Kent farm in Smallville. At some point between then and the finale he apparently acquires a new, fully-repaired version of his classic costume... but we're never shown where or how this has happened.
While details are still coming to the forefront, it's now believed that all or nearly all of Cavill's scenes were re-shot under Joss Whedon's tenure as post-production director; and many are theorizing that one reason for this kind of continuity strangeness could be that Superman's resurrection was meant to go much differently at one point - possibly including a longer sequence of Superman being evil/crazy post-resurrection (which could have occurred under very different circumstances) and perhaps even a version of the infamous "black suit" from the original Death of Superman comic. If such extensive changes were required amid what was already a busy schedule, it's very possible that there wasn't time to decide "how" he'd wind up back in his classic look - something that many of the aforementioned theories suggest might not have been originally scheduled to happen until a subsequent film.