Hidden Villains of the Batman v Superman Trailer

WARNING: If it turns out I’m right – and I always am – then this post contains potential spoilers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Batman Arkham Knight.

No matter how many times I watch that trailer, I still don’t quite believe this film is really happening. I’m betting the apocalypse kicks off about two weeks before the release date, just to spite me. But anyway, I’m not going to gush about how amazing the trailer is (you’ve got your own eyes), this post is going to briefly examine the villains possibly hidden in between the cuts and punches.

What, you didn’t think they weren’t going to team up at the end, did you?

Anyway, first up, the most heavily rumoured to appear: Doomsday.

This Kryptonian monstrosity is most famous for appearing in the story arc The Death of Superman, in which – spoiler alert, I guess – Superman ‘dies’ by way of being beaten to death in a cross-country brawl with Doomsday, who is also killed. In the comics, Doomsday was created by a scientist and released on a prehistoric Krypton, where it died due to the atmospheric conditions. The idea behind the character is that he can never be killed the same way twice, as the scientist would collect his remains and create a stronger clone by removing the weakness that resulted in his death – a sort of forced evolution. Eventually Doomsday murdered his creator, stole a spacecraft and crash-landed on Earth and remained buried for centuries until waking up, resulting in Superman having to stop his reign of wanton destruction.

In terms of his possible appearance in Batman v Superman, we see in the trailer that General Zod’s corpse has been retrieved and brought to Lexcorp for examination. In this movie universe, many people blame Superman for the destruction of large parts of Metropolis in Man of Steel, and no doubt Lex Luthor is one of them. The rumour is that in an effort to convince the world that Superman is a threat and deserves to be hated, Luthor experiments on Zod’s body – possibly using the Kryptonite also shown in the trailer – and either reanimates the corpse or creates Doomsday. This would then result in Batman and Superman teaming up and give us our introduction to Wonder Woman.

The clues for Doomsday are there: the apparent destruction of a Lexcorp facility as if something powerful had broken out, the burning lands the Batwing (or Wonder Woman’s jet?) is seen flying over, and the massive blast of what is edited to look like Superman’s heat vision narrowly missing Batman – but notice how focused and thin his heat vision is here…

compared to the uncontrolled and fiery beam shown here…

No matter how annoyed Superman is at Batman (who also notice is not wearing his battle armour at that point in the trailer, as he does when shown fighting Superman), he is not going to reduce him to an ash smear on the wall – he’s a pretty good bloke that way.

Next up: The Red Hood

The Red Hood was an identity the Joker may or have not have used (depending if you trust his honesty in retelling his origin story, as seen in Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke) and was adopted by the back-from-the-dead Jason Todd – the second Robin, murdered by the Joker.

In the comics, Todd returns from the grave thanks to Superboy punching a hole in the time-space continuum (comics can be dumb sometimes), but in the animated adaptation, Ra’s Al Ghul steals his corpse and dips it into a Lazarus Pit (a rejuvenating pool he uses to cheat death, but which also greatly affects the mind) as an apology to Batman for hiring the Joker for a job which inadvertently ended with Robin being beaten to death. Shit happens, you know? The Pit brought Jason back from the dead, but sent him insane and he escaped, to begin plotting his revenge against Batman for not only failing to save him, but for not killing the Joker in revenge and stop his body count piling up.

A new version of the story was the main plot-line of the new video game Batman Arkham Knight, where it is revealed that the Joker never killed Jason, but held him prisoner in an abandoned wing of Arkham Asylum to torture him before faking his death and sending Batman the video. Todd returned with a military force and help from the Scarecrow in a bid to finally defeat Batman and get revenge for apparently leaving him to die and replacing him.

In the Batman v Superman, we see an apparently burned Robin costume with a taunt from the Joker sprayed onto it in the Batcave, as Bruce Wayne contemplates becoming Batman again – the shots of him staring down the Batsuit imply he has been retired for a while, as in The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel by Frank Miller where Batman also retired partly due to Jason Todd’s death.

We also see a newspaper in Bruce Wayne’s hands with the message ‘YOU LET YOUR FAMILY DIE’ scrawled across it. Some have suggested it could be a relative of one of the Wayne Financial employees who died in the Superman vs Zod fight, but why would it say ‘YOUR FAMILY’ and not ‘MY’ or ‘OUR’ family? Others have suggested it’s the Joker taunting Bruce, but the Joker doesn’t know or care who Batman is in pretty much every iteration of the character – plus, in The Dark Knight Returns the Joker is catatonic during Batman’s retirement and only wakes up when he hears about his return, a factor which may or may not be used in the film.

There are a few quick shots of Batman wearing some kind of desert gear and fighting with a militia emblazoned with Superman’s logo on their arm. But if you look closely, that doesn’t look like Ben Affleck under the cowl, and Batman doesn’t usually snap a guy’s neck like that (what with his no-killing rule and all). Compare that few seconds of footage to how the Red Hood is usually portrayed – has no problem killing, uses Batman’s tactics but with a lethal edge and he wears more militaristic attire including a brown jacket over his costume. It’s possible that is Jason Todd under the cowl, trying to defame Batman by leaving a trail of bodies killed by someone wearing a Batsuit, after taunting him from afar about the deaths in Metropolis. 

With it recently being announced that Ben Affleck with direct and co-write (as well as star) in the next solo Batman film in 2018, and with Jared Leto’s Joker being introduced in next year Suicide Squad movie as well as the Robin costume prominently on display in the trailer for this film, I wouldn’t be too surprised if the Under the Red Hood storyline is the one chosen for adaptation. It may only be introduced as an ongoing mystery in Batman v Superman first, with it left unanswered who sent that taunt on the newspaper and who is possibly masquerading as the fake Batman, as setup for that solo outing.

Finally, I have two unlikely options. One: Metallo.

Ignore the gorilla.

It was rumoured a while ago that Callan Mulvey could be playing Metallo; a Superman bad guy who’s a sort of cyborg thing that is powered by a Kryptonite heart. Because of that, he’s a tough opponent for Superman but probably easy pickings for Wonder Woman, so I don’t expect to see him in this film – even though Zack Snyder did recently admit that Metallo was in contention for the villainous role should they have chosen to do a standalone Man of Steel sequel. Plus, Metallo doesn’t have heat vision, so this would mean it was indeed Superman who tried to wipe Batman off the face of the Earth.

Option Two: Battle Armour Lex Luthor.

We know that Batman’s battle armour for fighting Superman will be Kryptonite infused, and there have been rumours that along with General Zod’s corpse, his military battle armour was also retrieved. Perhaps Lex Luthor has tweaked it and uses it to attack the Trinity once he realises they have cottoned on to his manipulations, and that heat vision blast was actually some kind of laser weapon. After all, the first official image of Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor showed him with a shaved head (I'd say bald, but you can still see hair follicles or whatever) and wearing a prison jumpsuit.

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s Doomsday or a reanimated Zod that unites the three heroes, and I’d also put money on Jason Todd’s Red Hood to be the villain of the standalone Batman film – even if that message on the newspaper was from the Joker.