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The DC Snyderverse is a thoroughly established world that should continue, though maybe not in the way its fans want.
Love it or hate it, the DC Extended Universe continuity is a well-defined world of its own at this point. With its darker portions referred to as the “Snyderverse,” after its overseer Zack Snyder established much of the style and tone it is best known for with Man of Steel, the franchise often proves a divisive subject among DC fans. Some revere the Snyderverse and while others wish to see the colorful heroes of the comics rebooted into a fresher and newer world.
The most obvious solution that could make everybody happy is if the DCEU just takes a page out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest playbook and make it part of the multiverse. Once it’s a multiverse, everyone can have what they want.
There can be a weird dogmatic edge to the hardest core Snyder fans that will likely bristle at such a solution. The Snyderverse’s biggest fans exalt its heavy servings of symbolism, the mythic quality that infuses its stories and the grounded realism they feel is refreshing compared to the MCU’s often more light-hearted fare. Doubtless, there is much in the style of the Snyderverse to be commended, and settings dripping with style are what Elseworlds are all about.
Best understood as DC’s answer to Marvel’s What If…?, Elseworlds are alternate reality settings that allow creators to explore the impact of familiar DC heroes in a world with its own, separate continuity. Free from any obligation to be the one “true” vision of the character or to follow a more expansive history, keeping the DCEU alive while continuing to adapt other stories from the planned Snyderverse in different worlds to live-action is probably the best option for the future of the franchise. In fact, that seems like what Warner Bros. is already doing.
Despite initially limping along following the poor performance of Justice League at the box office, the DCEU is only just hitting its stride as it broadens its horizons out to a wider range of tones and a broader stable of characters. The Suicide Squad and Birds of Prey, both with upcoming continuations, remained set in the same DCEU while feeling completely free to tell their own stories. Wider audiences, not just the fringes of the DCEU’s most devoted followers, are clamoring for more of those stories and would hate to see them fall to the wayside. Yet at the same time, there will inevitably be a new Batman and Superman eventually.
The upcoming The Batman is the perfect example, with Robert Pattinson picking up the role that Ben Affleck left behind in the DCEU. The Batman will feature a different take on the caped crusader and appropriately bring with it a different world. Comic fans well understand that one universe need not come at the exclusion of another, and with What If…? familiarizing more general audiences with the same concept, the Snyderverse could find its salvation at last.
Part of the reason the DCEU’s latest ventures have been such a success in the eyes of fans is that the projects have not been beholden to the major expectations that weighed down the initial box office release of Justice League. Their creators enjoyed more liberty in uniquely stylizing them, the expectations viewers met them with were adjusted below a need to blow the MCU out of the water and the projects were subsequently allowed to be their own unique creatures.
Establishing the universe as a perpetually surviving Elseworld that will coincide along other alternate universes could have the same effect for the bigger properties. The Snyder Batman should be allowed to fully embody what the creative minds behind the character want him to be, and with The Batman coexisting as well, there would no longer be any pressure for him to be the Batman. In DC, as in Marvel, the multiverse is always a tempting option because it offers so many worlds of possibility.
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