Zack Snyder's Justice League Could Have Ended Differently

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Zack Snyder's Justice League is available to stream on HBO Max in all its glory, and while you may have to schedule a few bathroom breaks across the film's four-hour runtime, the general consensus among critics (including Looper's Larry Carroll) is that it's a vast improvement over the original that was released in theaters in 2017. For starters, the theatrical cut seemed focused on telling a standalone story involving a group of superheroes coming together to defeat Steppenwolf (Ciarán Hinds). There may have been passing references to a larger threat, but they were small enough for general audiences to gloss over. 

It's obvious from the Snyder Cut that the director had big plans in store for the future of his DC films. Darkseid (Ray Porter) would've taken over the planet, but plenty more heroes likely would've entered the fray to try to stop him. We see one of these defenders of justice in the form of Ryan Choi (Ryan Zheng), whom comic book fans may know eventually becomes the Atom. Considering Choi gets promoted to S.T.A.R. Labs' Director of Nanotechnology by the end of Zack Snyder's Justice League, it's highly likely he would've gained Atom's eponymous powers in a subsequent film.

There's also the appearance of Martian Manhunter, aka J'onn J'onzz (Harry Lennix), who pops by to give Lois Lane (Amy Adams) a motivational speech (hidden, of course) before stopping by Bruce Wayne's (Ben Affleck) house to officially reveal himself. Now, thanks to a Justice League actor's recent comments, we know that the movie's final scene could've hinted at much larger forces hidden within this universe — if only Snyder had his way.

In the Snyder Cut of Justice League, the flashback sequence depicting Darkseid's first attempted conquest of Earth — when  Yalan Gur joins the planet's armies to fend off the villain's forces – confirms to audiences that the Green Lantern Corps exists within this universe. As it happens, Snyder wanted a far more familiar Lantern face to appear at the end of his movie, but it just didn't pan out.

During a recent appearance on the LightCast podcast, Martian Manhunter actor Harry Lennix revealed that there was originally supposed to be someone else present during Martian Manhunter's conversation with Batman at the end of Zack Snyder's Justice League. 

"All along, I knew that I was going to be in it. It was going to be Martian Manhunter and [the Green Lantern] John Stewart. J'onn J'onzz and John Stewart, as it were, in the movie," explained Lennix. "But then they made [Snyder] take out that part." (We can only assume that the "they" Lennix referred to are Warner Bros. and/or DC executives.)

By the sound of it, the two would've appeared together, likely to inform Bruce Wayne about the Anti-Life Equation and the need to step up their game so that they can take on Darkseid directly. The fact neither Martian Manhunter nor John Stewart shows up in the Knightmare sequences certainly doesn't bode well for their theoretical futures in the Justice League movies, but had the scene come to fruition as Snyder originally intended, it would've been an incredibly epic set-up for the future of the franchise. 

Later in the interview, Lennix noted, "I did go in later, like in October, to do the scene with Ben Affleck. So I think that was the recipient — that is to say, the information that was conveyed in that scene. [Snyder] just had Martian Manhunter do it, which I thought was fun." 

As it stands, comic book fans will have to wait until the Green Lantern Corps HBO Max series comes to fruition to see Green Lantern's light illuminate the blackest night.