Henry Cavill Still Has Ideas for His Superman Return to the DC Universe

Henry Cavill still wants to play Superman, revealing how he could return to the DC Extended Universe. After his first flight in Man of Steel, his death in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and his rebirth in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the future of Cavill’s Superman is up in the air. Director Zack Snyder’s plans for his five-movie Snyder-Verse saga saw Superman succumbing to the Anti-Life Equation when a pregnant Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is killed by Darkseid (Ray Porter), triggering a nightmarish new reality. Redeemed after the death of Batman (Ben Affleck), Superman would unite the heroes of the universe in the Justice League 3 envisioned by Snyder as a Man of Steel sequel. 

“I was very keen on really fleshing out Superman’s early stages of his journey first,” Cavill says in a new interview with GQ Spain. “We had Man of Steel, and then we went quite a bit darker with Batman v Superman. And if he were to succumb to the Anti-Life Equation and become bad Superman [in Justice League sequels], I really wanted to make sure that we saw the hero Superman and we saw the true symbol of hope, the beacon of light, before we went down the path of darkness and then redemption.”

 He added: “It’s still something that I’m very keen to flesh out.”

Snyder previously revealed plans for a two-part Justice League 2 and 3, involving Batman’s anti-Superman insurgency sending the Flash (Ezra Miller) back through time to prevent their apocalyptic future. A throughline started in 2013’s Man of Steel would culminate in Snyder’s Justice League 3, what the Snyder Cut filmmaker has described as a “Lord of the Rings-like finale.” 

Snyder’s Justice League sequels would be about Superman learning “to become Clark Kent again, feeling more human than ever as he and Lois start a family,” the filmmaker previously told Esquire, equating his Justice League 3 as a Man of Steel 2.  

“I had just assumed that the final movie was going to be very much a Superman movie. Like the final chapter [Justice League 3] was going to be a large percentage of Superman to just bookend the whole thing,” Snyder explained. “Because if Batman died, it would have very much fallen on Superman to be the de facto leader. By the way, at that point, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) would have been made queen of the Themyscira and she would be leading the warriors of Themyscira into battle against Darkseid herself. And Arthur (Jason Momoa’s Aquaman) would be leading the armies of Atlantians.”

By the end of it, “Superman basically is going to be the head of the Justice League and the Armies of Men. And so Superman would have gone from this kind of berserker Superman to a benevolent Superman. Superman has the hugest arc of everybody because he goes from like the main villain to like the main hero.” 

Cavill last played Superman in 2017’s theatrical version of Justice League, only briefing reprising the role for additional photography on the Snyder Cut. He most recently said that “the cape is still in the closet,” telling The Hollywood Reporter: “There is still a lot of storytelling for me to do as a Superman, and I would absolutely love the opportunity.”