Batgirl would have become a huge part of the DCEU if Zack Snyder had his way.
As his special cut of Justice League finally premieres on HBO Max, the director revealed more about his plans for the never-made sequels.
This includes how Barabara Gordon’s superhero was going to play a big role.
The dark future
The “Knightmare” sequence of Justice League is meant to be the set-up for Snyder’s epic plans for the second and third movies in his trilogy.
It shows a dark future where Darkseid has conquered Earth, and a mind-controlled Superman is his enforcer. The sequence has Batman, Cyborg, Flash, Mera, Deathstroke, and the Joker as a ragtag group trying to find a way to fix the world.
During their banter, the Joker mocks Batman for Robin’s death, only to be quieted when Batman replies how Harley Quinn died in his arms.
Snyder shared to Esquire how this would have connected to a scene in his “Justice League 3.”
“So basically in the alternate-future movie, we would have been in this post-Superman, Anti-Life Equation world, where the team knew that the only way to fix the world was to run Flash back and warn Bruce to save Lois.
And so in that world, the movie was basically going to be about a ragtag group of Justice League members pulling off a crazy mission to steal a Mother Box from this half-destroyed cathedral in Gotham and get it back to the Batcave in order to use it to power the cosmic treadmill to jump Flashback in time.
And the night before the big mission, they would have this last supper sort of reckoning, where they would all tell their stories. One of those stories was Joker telling the story of the death of Robin.”
This sequence joined a bizarre vision Cyborg had, showing the deaths of Wonder Woman and Aquaman.
Snyder said he would have filmed those scenes and Harley’s death, meaning Margot Robbie would have made an appearance in the sequel.
Batgirl’s role
While there have been a few Batgirls over the years, most associate the character with Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon’s daughter who took up the cowl.
Her role would have played into a storyline of how, when Superman is dead, Lois Lane would bond with Bruce Wayne and have a brief relationship. The Snyder Cut ends with Lois with a pregnancy test, Snyder confirming she is pregnant.
In the Justice League sequel, Lois would claim the child was Clark’s. When the Flash goes back in time, he would tell Bruce the child was his, which ends up being the decision that alters the entire future.
Bruce would intercept a blast from Darkseid that originally killed Lois, badly wounded in the process. He would then retire with Lois raising the child with Superman.
Twenty years later, in a brighter future, now-Commissioner Barbara Gordon would encourage Lois to tell her son the truth, leaing the man to discover the Batcave and becoming a new Batman.
Snyder had hoped for more movies to set things up and that Batgirl would play a role.
“I always wanted Barbara Gordon to come in the movies. Commissioner Gordon would be on the way out, and we’d have Barbara starting to play a bigger role,” he explains.
“My idea was that after Batman sacrificed himself, there would be a window where there was no Batman, and I thought Barbara could fill that until the child of Superman and Lois, who has no powers, would become Batman when he was of age. That was the idea anyway.
It just seemed to make sense,” Then, of course, Barbara could have been his mentor, but who knows? That’s all just…see now we’re just wishful thinking.”
When Jena Malone was cast in Batman v Superman, fans immediately speculated she was playing Barbara, but she turned out to be a random scientist.
Like scores of ideas involving Snyder’s DCEU plans, this Batgirl never reached the big screen. With word of DC planning a new project around the character, perhaps some parts of Snyder’s vision come true after all.
Justice League the Snyder Cut now streaming on HBO Max.