Now that we’re in James Gunn’s new DCU, DC has mostly moved beyond the Zack Snyder era. Kicked off by 2013’s Man of Steel, the original DCEU was never quite able to escape the shadow of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a disastrous theatrical release for Justice League was the final nail in its coffin. Several projects following Justice League continued to build off casting and aesthetics from Snyder’s universe (Aquaman, Wonder Woman ‘84, the first season of Peacemaker), but with the release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League in 2021 and The Flash in 2023, we’ve officially entered a new era of DC Comics live-action adaptations, one eager to forge its own path.
But while film and television have left the Snyder universe behind, video games haven’t followed suit. The recent Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is a patchwork of every cinematic era of Batman, which means that Ben Affleck’s armored Batsuit is in the game, along with the Batmobile as it appears in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice — as well as an abundance of meta-jokes about some of the more infamous elements of Snyder’s universe. Now the game is taking that a step further, as the trailer for the next DLC release relies heavily on some narrative beats from one of the DCEU’s most reviled entries.
