Will ‘Batman V Superman’ Bring Back General Zod As Doomsday?
Next year’s Batman v Superman is looking to kick off the DC Cinematic Universe in a really big way, but we still don’t know too much about the particulars of the film. There’s no shortage of rumors about it, though, and the latest holds that Batman v Superman will see the arrival of one of Superman’s greatest villains, Doomsday.
The newest bit of gossip on Batman v Superman hinges on the possibility that Michael Shannon might be reappearing in the film. Shannon, of course, played General Zod in Man of Steel, and – spoiler alert – got his neck snapped in that film’s climax. Being dead would, of course, seem to be an obstacle to General Zod having any real influence on Batman v Superman, but that’s where the scuttlebutt and speculation come into play.
According to ComicBook.com, there’s been some talk that General Zod will be back in Batman v Superman, just not in the way on would immediately assume. Zod wouldn’t be returning from the dead. Instead, the thinking goes, Zod’s corpse would be acquired by Superman’s human nemesis, Lex Luthor. Luthor would be looking to experiment on Zod’s corpse in order to find some weakness that he could exploit against Superman.
In the course of this experimentation, rumor has it that Luthor would somehow “[trigger] the Doomsday genome,” which is purportedly built into all Kryptonian soldiers like Zod. That triggering would reanimate Zod’s corpse, but the corpse would metamorphose into the Doomsday that comic fans are familiar with.
The report is merely speculation at this point, of course, but there could be some truth to it. Doomsday has been rumored for the Superman sequel even before it was named Batman v Superman. The DVD release of Man of Steel saw the inclusion of a Doomsday Easter egg, one that pointed to the character’s well-established comic history. Since Warner Bros. is in fact trying to lay the groundwork for an expanded DC Cinematic Universe, it’s not too out there to assume that the studio may have been laying that foundation for a while now.
Could we see Doomsday in Batman v Superman? Is there even space for Doomsday, considering that Batman v Superman has to introduce Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and a good deal of other DC villains and heroes, as well as the newest incarnation of Batman?
Then again, there is supposed to be an “epic” standalone sequence in Batman v Superman that was produced by world-renowned visual effects house Weta. A fight between Superman and Doomsday could be just the sort of throwdown that demands that sort of special effects power.
