Zack Snyder Shares His Theory Behind Justice League ‘Knightmare’ Epilogue

Warning: The below contains spoilers for the end of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

Zack Snyder has finally weighed in on the much-discussed Knightmare scene from his 2021 director’s cut version of Justice League.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a four-hour revised cut of the 2017 superhero film Justice League, concluded with an epilogue featuring Ben Affleck’s Batman and Jared Leto’s Joker. The epilogue, better known as the Knightmare sequence, shows a post-apocalyptic future where Darkseid rules Earth and Superman has gone mad following the death of Lois Lane. To try to defeat the Man of Steel, Batman has teamed up with Cyborg, the Flash, Mera, Deathstroke, and, of course, the Joker.

Seeing the Dark Knight team up with his most famed enemy was a surprising sight for fans, leaving many curious as to what this apocalyptic future held in store. Snyder recently addressed the topic during a panel at SnyderCon 2023, saying that the team-up has to deal with finding Kryptonite shards to kill Superman.

“Our theory is that [the Joker is] the one who knows where the Kryptonite, what shards of Kryptonite exist,” the director said, according to CBR. “He has that information. And so he’s being carried… He has basically made a deal with Batman. ‘Don’t kill me, and I’ll show you. I’ll get you a tool to fight Superman.’ And so [Batman] is kind of stuck with him, in that way. If he kills him, or gets rid of him, then he’s screwed himself.”

While Snyder’s theory makes loads of sense, we will likely never see this tease pay off in DC’s future. James Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios as co-heads back in October, and the duo is doing a total reset on DC’s storytelling. That means new superheros, new castings, and no Zack Snyder — for the time being.

Despite the ending of the Snyderverse, the director is still on good terms with Gunn. In February of this year, Gunn took to social media to tell fans that Snyder seems happy with Gunn’s choices for the new DC. Gunn and Safran’s roadmap for DC begins with Superman: Legacy, which will recast the Man of Steel.

Meanwhile, Snyder is staying busy building out his own filmography. His new entirely original space opera film, Rebel Moon, is slated to premiere on Netflix this December. The movie, which originated as a Star Wars concept that Snyder pitched to Lucasfilm, will follow the residents of a peaceful colony at the edge of the galaxy as they struggle against armies sent by a tyrant named Balisarius.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.