Batman V. Superman: Zack Snyder Reveals Who Is Playing Jimmy Olsen

SPOILERS for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice follow.

After months of fan speculation, director Zack Snyder has confirmed that Jimmy Olsen is indeed in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, although you’d be forgiven for not noticing him. Olsen is never identified by name in the movie, and makes a rather jarring exit pretty early in the movie.

Contrary to popular fan theory, Scoot McNairy is not playing Olsen. Instead, Olsen is played by Michael Cassidy, who fans may remember as the editor of The Daily Planet on Smallville. He joins Lois Lane (Amy Adams) on an assignment to interview a warlord in Africa. He’s then outed as a CIA plant and shot in the head right in front of Lois.

“We just did it as this little aside because we had been tracking where we thought the movies were gonna go,” Snyder tells EW, “and we don’t have room for Jimmy Olsen in our big pantheon of characters, but we can have fun with him, right?”

Snyder says he kept Olsen’s identity a secret to soften the blow of his death, but Olsen will be properly identified in the R-rated “Ultimate Edition” cut of the film, being released on Blu-ray this summer.

“He comes up to her and he goes, ‘Lois Lane, I’m Jimmy Olsen, photographer, obviously … You know, I’ve been assigned to you for this mission.’ But it turns out that Jimmy Olsen is a spook for the CIA.”

Snyder said he originally tried to cast a big name in the small role, to catch audiences off guard when the character was killed off so quickly. Who exactly? Jesse Eisenberg, who ended up playing Lex Luthor instead.

“I thought, if it were Jesse Eisenberg and he got out and he goes, ‘I’m Jimmy Olsen,’ you’d be like, oh my God, we’re gonna have Jimmy Olsen in the whole movie, right?’” Snyder says. “And then if he got shot, you’d just be like, ‘What!? You can’t do that.’

“I said, ‘I want to do this misdirect and you’d be great. You’d be a great Jimmy Olsen,’” the director says. “And he’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ and he was being very Jesse in the meeting. Introverted but constantly going, ‘Okay, I see, uh-huh. So it’s sort of a pop-culture redirect, you’re gonna do, because of the certain status of an actor…”

At the time, Snyder was still looking at older actors, like Bryan Cranston, for the Luthor role, but ultimately changed his vision for the character.

“We talked about the usual suspects that you would imagine; any actor who has been bald, probably,” Synder says. “Bryan Cranston would have been great, right? And by the way, he’s an amazing actor. Can you imagine how different the movie would be?”

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice opens today in theaters.

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Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is now playing in theaters.