James Gunn Says His DCU Won’t Repeat Darkseid Any Time Soon

In the aftermath of the Peacemaker finale, DC Studios head James Gunn has faced an intense line of questioning regarding John Cena’s very much not meta-human anti-hero, who became the guinea pig to test out ARGUS’ Salvation prison dimension. Fans want to know about Darkseid, whose parademons can be heard in the trees and seen only by Peacemaker as the credits roll.

In a conversation with Screen Crush, the filmmaker revealed that the different universe his version of Salvation exists in does not stick to the script that DC Comics fans might expect in regard to Darkseid, who was featured in the Snyderverse Justice League.

“I don’t expect that to be exactly what it is,” he said bluntly, explaining that he loved the idea of the “Salvation Run,” the 2007 Bill Willingham/Lilah Sturges limited series (that was, fun fact, inspired by a pitch from Game of Thrones scribe George R. R. Martin!). “I liked the idea of supervillains building a society in this other dimension. And I liked the way that it was a very practical way that Amanda Waller and Rick Flag Jr., in that instance, were trying to deal with the problem of meta-humans who continuously escaped from prison in a way that I think a fed-up government might. Those were the things that interested me.”

But where “Salvation Run” and the DCU differ is on the origins of the world: in the comics, the planet was revealed to be a training world used by the New Gods of Apokolips, overseen by Darkseid’s right-hand man, DeSaad. In the DCU, there’ll be no New Gods connection to DeSaad or his master.

“You gotta remember the first and foremost thing is that I’m building a world, okay? And in that world, an aspect of that world is now obviously ARGUS, who are in charge of meta-human activities, have taken upon themselves to start sending meta-human prisoners to Salvation,” Gunn continued. “That’s the plan, at least. And then we’ll have to see how that affects and touches everything else.”

So don’t expect Peacemaker to bump into Darkseid despite the parademons of it all. But not just to make something original inspired by the comics, but because Gunn thinks that Darkseid shouldn’t be touched yet after both the prior DC movieverse and Marvel’s own Ominous Cosmic Big Bad Guy in the form of Thanos. After his MCU run with the Guardians of the Galaxy, featuring Gamora’s connection as Thanos’ daughter and how that tied that larger universe together, Gunn plans to stay away from that sort of territory for now.

“There are aspects of Darkseid and Thanos, [who] are obviously very similar. They look very similar,” Gunn concluded. “Using Darkseid as the big bad right now is not necessarily the thing, for a lot of reasons: because Zack [Snyder] did it so cool in his way. And because [of] Thanos in Marvel.”

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