What's Going on in That 'Batman v Superman' Dream Sequence? (Spoilers!)
A captured Batman from the dream sequence (Warner Bros.)
Warning: This article gets into major — and we mean major — spoilers for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Of all the burning questions bouncing around in your head after walking out of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice — Why was that movie so long? Why were Batman and Superman fighting a Ninja Turtle at the end? — the one guaranteed to keep you awake at night is: What’s the deal with Batman’s dream? Clearly, a guy who puts on a bat suit to fight bad guys and/or angry Kryptonians is going to have an unstable mind, but as the movie shows, what’s going on inside his head is even crazier than anticipated.
You know the scene we’re talking about: that vision of a ravaged Earth, ruled by soldiers loyal to Superman (Henry Cavill), who take the Dark Knight (Ben Affleck) hostage and wait for their deity to arrive. When he does, the steely-eyed Man of Steel first accuses Batman of robbing him of someone he loves and then rips his mask off, revealing Bruce Wayne’s face. But what happens after that is even stranger. Jerking awake in the Batcave, Bruce is visited by a costumed man surrounded by glowing light with an urgent message about the Man of Steel’s girlfriend, Lois Lane (Amy Adams). The next time Bruce opens his eyes, he’s awake for real and neither he, nor the movie, ever mentions that nightmare again.
Related: All Your ‘Batman v Superman’ Burning Questions Answered (Spoilers!)
Now, the events of this dream may never actually come to pass, but it sure would be nice to have them explained anyway. And since director Zack Snyder is keeping mum for now, here’s our best educated guess: it all ties into Darkseid, the tyrannical intergalactic god-villain whose eventual arrival on Earth — probably just in time for the two-part Justice League adventure — is teased throughout the movie. Batman is particularly attuned to the impending danger, so much so that he warns Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) at the end of the film that they’ve got to get busy preparing for a major battle. This dream is a major motivator for that conversation.
Watch Zack Snyder defend his violent Batman:
Darkseid lords over a planet called Apokolips, a hellish, fiery place that’s as desolate as the ruined Earth that Batman glimpses in his nightmare. That suggests that in this suitably apocalyptic vision, Darkseid has already pulled off a successful invasion and left his signature mark — an omega symbol, for his powerful Omega Beams — behind. Even worse, he’s apparently converted Superman into an ally, and assigned him a squadron of loyal “S”-symbol soldiers. Batman is still fighting the good fight in this dream, but not for long. For awhile, he manages to fend off the oncoming fighters, mowing down several of them with a gun…which proves just how bad things have gotten since Batman supposedly hates guns because of his parents’ violent deaths. (Although even in his waking life, he’s strangely into shooting people. His Batmobile is tricked out with heavy firepower.) But then a troupe of winged warriors start buzzing down from the sky and the Dark Knight is overwhelmed. These buzzboys, by the way, are Parademons, genetically engineered to serve Darkseid — and now Superman — with absolute compliance.
Watch a portion of the dream sequence below:
The rest of this portion of the dream is fairly straightforward. Batman’s a captive and Superman shows up eager to avenge the unspecified woman (probably Lois) the Dark Knight supposedly wronged. Yada yada yada. Let’s move along to that spectral visitor who appears to Bruce in the Batcave. First of all, that’s our first sighting of Ezra Miller as the super-speedy Flash, although you can’t be blamed for not recognizing him. (Miller reappears later in security-camera footage in Lex Luthor’s meta-human computer files.) For one thing, he’s not wearing his standard-issue red suit, instead showing up in some kind of heavy-duty armor. Secondly, it’s hard to make out anything he’s saying, although the gist of his message is that Batman is right to be paranoid. “You were right to fear him,” the Scarlet Speedster says, and while Batman takes “him” to be a reference to Superman, it’s entirely probably that his future Justice League ally was actually speaking of Darkseid.
As for how a flickery Flash turned up in the Batcave, there are two possible explanations. The first is that he opened a Boom Tube, glowing inter-dimensional portals that quickly transport characters from one planet to another. The second and more likely explanation is that he’s using his speed to travel through the timestream, a skill that he’s regularly employed in the comic book. One of the Flash’s most famous runs occurred in the landmark miniseries, Crisis on Infinite Earths, when DC Comics did away with their “multiple universe” model and killed off several heroes in the process — including the Barry Allen version of the Flash, who raced backwards into the past until he disappeared completely. In fact, in Issue #2 of Crisis, the Flash appeared to Batman in spectral form as he was dying and warned him that the world as they knew it was coming to an end. If that’s indeed the bit of comic book lore that Snyder is referencing — and it sure seems to be — there are clearly bigger crises in store for Batman than having to fight Superman to a standstill.
Ben Affleck explains his version of Batman:
