DC‘s cinematic world is a mess.
The franchise has put out a few solid releases, including the first Wonder Woman, but the majority of its lineup is middling at best. Had Warner Bros. allowed Snyder to lean into his more off-kilter ideas — like a child between Bruce Wayne and Lois Lane, or erasing Wonder Woman’s mythological history — the franchise would have fared far worse overall. In fact, an exhaustively lengthy viewing of the famed Justice League Snydercut (which is literally twice as long as the theatrical version) gives viewers a solid glimpse of how the DCEU may have developed with no Snyder restrictions put down.
The end of Snyder’s Justice League transports viewers to a confusing and shoehorned mention of a dystopian future, in which many members of the Justice League — and their loved ones — have perished. As a result, Batfleck and Jared Leto’s Joker are forced to work together to stop an evil Superman from wreaking yet more havoc on the ravaged Earth. This confusing and utterly unnecessary add-on showcases the wild directions Snyder was hoping to take DC in, before Warner Bros. made the extremely wise decision to go the James Gunn route and completely rework its approach.
Snyder’s library of DC releases continue to leave fans confused, despite their lack of relevance in the future of the DCU, as fans look back and wonder what he was aiming at. This is most prevalent with the aforementioned Justice League, which manages to pack plenty of confusing, disjointed factors into its massive runtime. The future bit is by far the weirdest, however, and it left fans feeling completely baffled by the odd direction DC might have headed down, in Snyder’s hands.
This confusion is once again rearing its head, as one fan examines an element of Snyder’s intentions for the story, and theorizes that Bruce Wayne is a time traveler in the director’s canon. Sharing an image of a man glimpsed in Wonder Woman’s quick history lesson, user Zepanda66 asked if Bruce Wayne’s status as a time traveler was ever confirmed by Snyder. They pose a theory that Bruce traveled through time, after his death, and likely joined the defenders seeking to push Darkseid back.
But the image shared appears to just show some guy. He does share some traits with Ben Affleck, so it’s fair to confuse the two, but even hardcore Snyder fans couldn’t find any evidence to support the Batman time traveling theory.
To be fair, Batman traveling through time to prevent an inevitable war, or to stop an unstoppable killer, does sound exactly like something Snyder would do. Maybe he’d even knock up Diana Prince’s mother, making himself technically her father, just to throw viewers for a loop. Regardless of which wild idea the director went with, it doesn’t really matter, because his contributions to the DCU are no longer part of the franchise’s future. The entire story is set to get a retcon, with fresh actors stepping in to play iconic characters like Superman and Wonder Woman, and Snyder’s history, while not erased, is no longer relevant to the future of DC on the big screen.