Headscratchers / Zack Snyder's Justice League

Diana recognizing Steppenwolf

• How does Diana immediately recognize Steppenwolf and refers to him by name, if he wasn't part of that first attack on Earth?
  • Diana is a hacker. Maybe while prepping for the invasion she was able to get information on Steppenwolf from the Kryptonian scout ship and Steppenwolf's name popped up right when she came across his hologram.
  • How's Diana a hacker? In BvS she steals Bruce's device at Luthor's party and couldn't get any info out of it because the data was encrypted, and in JL she is shown on Bruce's PC searching for online info, nothing really that fancy.
  • Said data was encrypted to military grade standards. She doesn't have the Bat Computer that Bruce does, but she's still a solid hacker. She's very capable of spending enough time to enhance her skills and learn the protocols to decrypt it herself, but figured it would be quicker to let Bruce do it, because she was starting to trust him as an ally and he had the resources to make short work of it. And she probably knew he was Batman (she was established in her first movie as having telescopic super-sight, making it likely that she has super human senses in general and so heard his conversation with Alfred much like Clark Kent did).

Darkseid forgets Earth

• So Darkseid came to Earth armed with the Mother Boxes and the Anti-Life Equation and was driven back, leaving both the boxes and the equation behind. Steppenwolf is then called to Earth because the boxes beckoned him as Earth was, once again, vulnerable. But both him, Darkseid and DeSaad act like they don't know Earth... they mention that the boxes were found, as well as the planet which managed to fight back, and later one of the boxes themselves tells Steppenwolf that the equation is on Earth. Was that axe wound so bad that Darkseid forgot everything? Did he see Earth as such an easy target, that he didn't even bother to mark down where it is? And, as far as we know, no Kryptonians or Lanterns were keeping an eye on Earth before Kal-El arrived, so why not come before?
  • Yes, the implication was that they lost track of Earth because for Darkseid it was just an irrelevant, random planet and it only became important to him once Steppenwolf found the Anti-Life in here. And yes, it doesn't make sense because A) You'd think Darkseid would be a bit more concerned with exacting revenge on the one planet out of hundreds of thousands that resisted conquest, and B) the motherboxes that were left on Earth were the only ones they had, which seemed to be a huge inconvenience to them.
  • I think it's because Darkseid wasn't able to properly record the Anti-Life Equation the first time due to Earth's combined forces attacking right when it was uncovered (that was a very complicated pattern). Darkseid already knows the exact location and that nobody claimed it for their own, which gives him a head start unless Wonder Woman also knows where to look.
  • TBF, Diana says something like "The motherboxes fell asleep, anonymous among a trillion worlds". The Motherboxes were like a GPS, so when they fell asleep, Darkseid couldn't track them. They WERE that marker.
    • If that's true, that would mean that the entire Apokoliptian civilzation relied entirely upon those three motherboxes for astral navigation, with a total absence of navigational computers tracking movements and speeds of the spaceships on their armadas, and something as basic as triangulating positions would need to be unknown to them.
  • My fix is that when Artemis shot one of the ships with her magic arrow, she was infecting the fleet with a navigation-scrambling virus. They got back to Apokolips with no idea where they came from.
  • Also Darkseid is immortal, he might not perceive time as we do. 5000 years might be his weekend as far as we know.
  • Snyder confirmed that Darkseid’s defeat on Earth caused a massive political upheaval on Apokolips, and Darkseid was too focused on healing his wounds and maintaining his power to remember where Earth was.
    • This explanation arguably makes... even less sense. If Darkseid's defeat on Earth lead to so many repercussions for him, how could he possibly forget about it? This would explain why he was too busy to come back, but how could he not remember the planet that was the source of all his woes? That's like saying if someone shot you in the back and you spent several years dealing with extensive spinal damage, thus resulting in forgetting the person who shot you.
    • It’s possible that Earth’s coordinates were saved into the mother boxes, and thus were lost when they were left behind in the scrambled retreat. In the comics, mother boxes are practically Apokolips’ version of smartphones and PDA’s, after all. Parademons are mindless slaves, all of the priests were dead, and Darkseid himself was unconscious, so no one would have been able to write it down as a backup. As for Darkseid himself forgetting Earth’s name and location, he may be suffering from dissociative amnesia, which is a mild mental illness where one’s subconscious blocks traumatic memories such as a near-death experience, and the battle for Earth was the closest Darkseid has ever come to dying.
    • The problem with the above is we see several of Darkseid's minion survived too. Some hauled him in his ship. Several ships escape. None of them knew where they flew from? None of his soldiers, commanders, generals and such knew what planet they even were attacking?
  • Realistically the answer is simple: Synder added that idea later and it caused issues with the script, so he made an excuse.
  • Perhaps, after suffering defeat and a political crisis over it, Darkseid had all notions of the incident erased, maybe even all mentions of the planet itself. Had it scratched from all charts and logs, murdered all witnesses to his humiliation, including ship crews and people who were doing the scratching... And only then realised that he can no longer find the damn planet himself!
    • For a God of Tyranny, that kind of pettiness wouldn't be too far-fetched.
  • Snyder referred to a Civil War between the New Gods. Records might have been lost due to damage caused by this. Earth's own name didn't show up until the first millennium AD, the invasion occured way before that and Apokoliptians might have had another name for it before said damage happened. They might have rebuilt new archives and updated their knowledge of the universe since, hence they know of Earth's name but couldn't put two and two together about it being the world they failed to invade.
  • There is an additional wrinkle here caused by the conversations between Steppenwolf and De Saad. They talk about the retrieval of the mother boxes after the first is found, but neither seems to be aware of the anti-life equation being on Earth until after the second. If the boxes were originally lost when failing to take the planet with the anti-life equation... wouldn't they automatically assume that the planet the boxes were on when they were called back was that same planet? And why would they send Steppenwolf on his own for what is arguably the single most important mission Darkseid's forces could have? All of this could be fixed by saying "there are many sets of mother boxes that have been left all over the place and they didn't know this set was THAT set," but there is no indication in the movie that this is the case.
    • If that hologram on the Kryptonian ship is any indication, Earth isn't the first planet on which Steppenwolf has found a set of Motherboxes. And since it's never made clear if the Motherboxes stick around after synchronising, it would explain why he didn't bring any of those spare ones with him.
  • Maybe this is clearer to someone who knows just what the "anti-life equation" is, but while watching the movie, I was under the impression that they just didn't know it was on Earth until Steppenwolf found out, and that's what he was reporting to Darkseid, not that Earth was the same planet they'd tried conquering before. You'd think the latter point would be pretty evident from the movie's premise, since the reason the Mother Boxes are on Earth is because the villains left them behind last time.
  • I was just wondering if the answers in this thread (Darkseid's potential dissociative amnesia and/or erasing the records, and Steppenwolf having found Mother Boxes on other worlds) are sufficient to leave the corresponding entry for the film in the Plot Hole article redundant therefore either a candidate for deletion or at the very least, rewriting? I'm leaning, yes they are (and deletion at that), but let's see what consensus is.
  • According to his actor, Darkseid did remember that it was Earth, but thanks to his trauma-induced amnesia, he just couldn’t remember which Earth.

Why does Darkseid fear Kryptonians?

• Why is Darkseid so afraid of Kryptonians? They were a technologically advanced civilization but their space exploration was limited, stopped aeons ago, and more importantly it failed, so it is not like they could be a threat to his conquests. Moreover, a Kryptonian under normal conditions would not be a physical threat to him.
  • Kryptonians would be a threat to any large scale invasion of a world under a yellow sun that he would plan, Parademons would be mere insects to them and given Superman's fight against Steppenwolf, not all New Gods can take them on on equal footing (he probably can after gaining his powers, but more than one? Not sure). As long as he doesn't have the Anti-Life Equation to control Kryptonians or any such powerful beings on the worlds he wants to conquer, he wouldn't want to risk this. He's preparing to invade Earth with all the forces that he can muster knowing that there's only one known Kryptonian left and on the same planet where the Anti-Life Equation is hidden, and in at least one timeline he manages to find the Equation first then controls said Kryptonian.
  • Darkseid has good reason to fear Kryptonians given their abilities, as seen with Zod and Doomsday. Their status and reputation is questionable though, given that they reduced on meeting new races and withdrew to their own world.
  • When Steppenwolf mentions the threats on Earth that are gone, he lists "Kryptonian" singular. They were aware of Superman.
• Even so, how could it have become widely known how strong Kryptonians can become when living under a yellow sun, when Kal-El seems to have been the first Kryptonian ever to have lived under a yellow sun?
  • Several possible explanations, but it doesn't have to have been "widely" known. a) Jor-El informed his son that the yellow sun would vastly increase his abilities. Jor-El is a scientist, and what's the best way a scientist has to discover a new aspect of science? Not making an educated hypothesis, but by performing an experiment. He could have gone off-world (they have the ability to do this, even if interstellar colonisation has long since died by the time of Krypton's destruction) and found his abilities increased in a solar system with a yellow sun (albeit not as radically as Kal-El's over the full course of his lifetime). This is easier to justify than him having to constrain a different Kryptonian who discovered these powers. He took measures to keep the information secret, namely from Zod and his faction, yet Steppenwolf, or the New Gods in general could have had the means to observe this phenomenon in Jor-El too, from a great distance. But ok, all of a) is a bit of a stretch, so let's at least assume Steppenwolf wasn't keeping tabs on Jor-El's work. So more likely b) as the Justice League deduce that the Mother Boxes feared Superman, thus the machines can observe him where ever he goes on Earth and even see that he becomes particularly strong and charged up when he flies straight into space to bask in the sun's radiation. Then, as they called to Steppenwolf, they told him this particular fact about the Kryptonian (or the first one he obtained, from the Amazons, told him when he came into physical contact with it, which tracks as he then uses it to turn Pozharnov into his stronghold and to contact DeSaad, thus bringing up Superman). Or c) Lex Luthor spilled the beans when he communed with Steppenwolf, as he clearly knew a great many facts about Superman.

How did they know that the motherbox talked to Lex Luthor in the ship?

• Alfred and Bruce had a conversation about this but I can't remember any of them learning about this.
  • They didn't. They did know that after Doomsday happened and Superman died, Lex was raving about someone hearing something "out in the dark." Alfred doesn't take the rantings of an insane criminal mastermind seriously. Bruce does.
  • Bruce could have hacked into the SWAT team's records and found that Lex Luthor's entry mentions a hologram of some monster holding three large cubes.
• Speaking of, what was the reason for that hologram appearing to Lex after all? Just a depiction of Steppenwolf kept in the ship's logs that Lex decided to look through for some reason? Or the actual Steppenwolf contacting Lex? And if so, was it supposed to be their first contact, or Lex was working for him all that time? It would explain some things, like his obsession with killing Supes and him researching Amazons, Atlanteans and Cyborg, but it raises even more questions, like wouldn't Steppenwolf already know about the location of Cyborg's box.
  • Maybe it was indeed from the Kryptonian archives of the ship, since they are vast. Lex knows about the existence of the Mother Boxes since he saw one in his Cyborg file in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, so he searched more about them in the archives. He might have found a file about Steppenwolf since the New Gods are notorious destroyers of worlds. That's also a plausible way he would know of Darkseid.
  • This is open to interpretation. I prefer the take that perhaps the unleashing of Doomsday triggered a part of the Kryptonian ship to spontaneously act as one of those bizarre metal-animation technologies which the New Gods use to communicate, and thus Luthor either observed this passively or else directly communicated with Steppenwolf. This truly unhinged his sanity (it was shaky before, but look how he acts later when Batman confronts him) and left him vulnerable to arrest by the authorities; if he hadn't witnessed it, he could have left the ship before SWAT arrived and used a ton of lawyers to prevent any charges from sticking, and also kept up his mask of sanity without the vision there to badly freak him out. Also, I don't think the subject of where humanity's motherbox was came up (if there was indeed a conversation), else of course Steppenwolf would have gone straight for it. Luthor might not know where exactly Silas is experimenting on Victor, using the box.

Silas attending the football game

• Cyborg tells his father "If you were there, Mom would still be alive." How would Silas being at the football game have changed the outcome of the car crash?
  • The reason his mother was distracted is because they were talking about Silas not being there; if Silas had been there, they wouldn't be having that conversation and she wouldn't have gotten distracted.
  • Also, after winning a game that big, Victor would have probably wanted to go out for on-campus drinks or dinner with his parents to celebrate, instead of heading straight home.

Superman: Back In Black

• Aside from being a comic reference, is there symbolism behind the black costume? In The Death And Return Of Superman, the black costume was part of the Deconstruction of Darker and Edgier, giving Superman a black suit and big ray guns, but keeping him the All-Loving Hero. In this film, it doesn't seem to serve the same function. Clark is clearly taking his time to consider what choosing this suit means, but he keeps wearing it at the end of the film. I could see it as emblematic of "mourning his own death" or "dealing with coming back to life" or "this is different, this is war" if he went back to the red-and-blue at the end... and if the Knightmares didn't show Evil!Superman wearing that outfit. Given that, the only symbolism I can think of is that Zack Snyder thinks color is evil (That's a joke. 90% a joke.).
  • Apparently, The Black Suit in this film is also meant to symbolize Clark’s Kryptonian family roots. As seen in Man of Steel, Kryptonians (from Zod, to Faora, to Jor El himself) wear black skintight suits with their respective family emblem on them underneath their armors (better shown when Jor emulates the classic shirt rip pose in front of Clark). Given how he wears this suit after reminiscing of his childhood memories on Earth, hugging his mom and girlfriend and while he hears words of encouragement from both his Kryptonian and Earthly fathers, this could be interpreted as a slightly roundabout way of Superman fully embracing both human and Kryptonian sides of himself, rather than one over the other. In regards of Knightmare Superman wearing the Blue suit, well... that could be Darkseid twisting the symbol of hope into a symbol of oppression with his newly brainwashed Superman. Wouldn’t be the first time (see: Superman: The Animated Series.)
  • The first thing we see him do after putting on the black suit is fly into space, towards the sun and bask in its unfiltered radiation. Black clothes naturally absorb more sunlight than other colours, so Superman's probably trying to recharge after being dead for so long (I know he overpowered the Justice League immediately after coming back to life, but that could be chalked up to getting zapped by both the Speed Force and a Motherbox, with a gradual come-down).
    • That would tie in with the comic explanation of it being a "regeneration suit" or some such, to help him recover (though it could just be the Kryptonian equivalent of a hospital gown). The "embracing his heritage" explanation also works, especially if he keeps using it at the end of the film (and in any others following this one).
  • Word of God implies that Kryptonian outfits are semi color coordinated to societal roles. Blue is diplomatic, black is military (hence Zod's crew), and since Jor-El's armor was bronze that could have indicated sciences. While it was chosen largely for the Mythology Gag, another implication is that the black and silver suit was Superman embracing the role as the protector of Earth.

Atlanteans breathing air and water

• So in the Aquaman movie it's said that "only high borns" (whatever that is) can breathe both air and water. In this movie's continuty, Diana says that Arthur can only do it because he's half-human. But then the movie contradicts both of those explanations by showing Mera and an ordinary Atlantean soldier talking in an air pocket?
  • Diana's misinformed. Mera is high born and can breathe air just fine (as seen in this film and Aquaman), and perhaps the soldier she was talking to is highborn as well. Notably, there's a shot of Parademons dragging Atlanteans out of the water to question them, and most of them are gasping like... well, like fish on land. They might have gone through several before they found one who breathed air well enough to actually talk (and even he seems to be struggling to do so). Besides, it's been outright stated that this version of Justice League is not full in continuity with the rest of the DCEU, as subsequent films (like Aquaman) had to keep continuity with the theatrical cut, not this one.
  • Are you sure? I thought Jason Momoa, possibly James Wan and others behind Aquaman said that they consider their movie to be the sequel to Snyder's vison, not to the theatrical.

Pozharnov

• So, Steppenwolf sets up a secret base in a small, desolate, heavily irradiated town of Pozharnov located 20 miles away from Moscow. Setting aside how the landscape looks nothing like the Moscow region, what sense does that make at all? It's not like Russia doesn't exist in Snyderverse (thanks for small blessings) - Superman saved an exploded Russian rocket back in BvS, and someone says here: "Even the army doesn't go there". So, the Russian army, and I assume the government, still exist, and yet nobody notices that huge tower and energy field? Nobody registers a sudden drop of radiation of a nuclear disaster site located in the suburbs of the freaking capital? Nobody pays attention to areal bombing and the ensuing war?
  • Pay attention to the time frame going on in the movie. All events between Steppenwolf's arrival and the activation of the Unity happen in ''less than three days''. The tower defenses also didn't fully activate until Steppenwolf got the second Motherbox, this being in the morning of the second day, then the showdown in Gotham Pier happened at night, and then Silas dying and Steppenwolf getting the third Motherbox happened at the afternoon of the third day - they dig up Superman's body at the same night of the showdown and then show up the next day at Star Labs. This means that the giant forcefield only was up for a single day or even less - the structure created by the first Motherbox was mainly inside the reactor so it likely wouldn't call the attention of anyone. As for why the Russian government didn't show up... well, they are notoriously incompetent. It would probably take some hours for them to notice the forcefield rising, then some extra hours for the info to get to the relevant channels, and then extra hours to go through all the red tape and political nonsense concerning a mission into Chernobyl 2.0. Not to mention that they probably would want this to be covered up as much as possible, they don't want international media rising yet another stink about their world-famous radioactive dump. Also Wonder Woman never gave a specific location for Pozharnov, she just said it was near Moscow; near for someone almost as fast as Superman, a speedster faster than Superman, a flying cyborg and a billionaire with likely multiple supersonic jets.
  • All good points, just not sure why you'd need to talk about speeds of the League when 5 out of 6 of them took the supersonic jet anyway.

Martian Manhunter

• So, what is the in-universe reason for MM to sit out the events of all the three movies? It's not like he was out of the loop - he, at the very least, knew about Martha's and General Swanwick's connection to Lois (or was Swanwick him the entire time?), so what gives?
  • Martian Manhunter in the comics has nervous breakdowns whenever he sees fire or explosions, of which there are plenty across the Snyder trilogy. When he offers to join the League he seems to acknowledge that he's been letting his fear control him and he's going to fight that.
  • As General/Secretary of State Calvin Swanwick (since, as far as we know, nothing indicated that Swanwick was a real human), he couldn't abandon his duty without raising major suspicions in the major crises of both Man of Steel and Batman v Superman. As for Justice League, well, the above might explain.
  • You could argue his intervention disguised as Martha Kent may have pushed Lois to be there right when she needed to be, to help calm Clark down and bring him back to his senses upon his rebirth.
  • His statement about deciding to fight for Earth now indicates he viewed himself in a more passive role, trying to encourage humanity down a certain path rather than take charge as an alien superhero. Seeing the League coordinate and rise up like they did let him know it was safe to reveal himself. But the randomness of this reveal leaves a lot of information vague, we don't know how long he has been Swanwick or even if a human Swanwick is still around.

Gone in a Flash

• This movie goes through great lengths to make Flash even faster than he was in the original, which is great... but then that only raises the question even more of why he never attempts to just use his speed to singlehandedly kill Steppenwolf. It seems they manage to find a number of far-fetched ways to have him get put out of the game so he's unable to use his speed, to the point that- while he's literally approaching the speed of light- he manages to get hit by a projectile moving far slower.
  • It seems that you correctly acknowledge his faster speed in this version, but missed a couple of other things. First, his characterisation. In the CW Flash TV series (possibly the comics too, I'm not sure) he's usually more about helping rescue hostages, disarming the villains' nefarious contraptions and while he might fight them, it's almost always about subduing them rather than outright murder. Granted the DCEU Flash is a different version (note that they meet in multiversal crossovers) but this aspect isn't so different. They downplayed his narmy cowardice from the 2017 movie, but this means he's still a greenhorn in Snyder's vision, just subtly so, and he'd still rather be putting his speed to practical uses like hostage rescues and powering unimaginable science using the energy he generates. Sure, he swift-pushes a Parademon to kill it, but he's better utilised as a tool of rescue and technical creation rather than a fighter like some of the other members. He may well be terrified that the other New Gods will teleport to Earth instantaneously after he vapourises Steppenwolf, and revenge-execute him even more violently (also on a meta level, the writers don't want to have just have the arguably most overpowered characters just breeze through the villain, instead choosing to show a conflict with real struggle and requiring all the characters to put their specialities together as a team and prevail). Compare and contrast Superman, who tanked Steppenwolf's axe to his shoulder and would be able to further exploit his invincibility if the other New Gods had counter-attacked. Also, when he gets shot, it kinda makes sense. If The Flash is close to, at, or even greater than the speed of light at this time, bear in mind he's just running loops around the fairly small geographical area of Pozharnov. When you can run this fast around a small area, the idea is probably that for all intents and purposes (i.e. human/Parademon reflexes, in this case) you are essentially in all places in that area simultaneously, with only short nanoseconds (or picoseconds? Who knows!) between him being at any given coordinates and then reaching the same place again straight afterward. Also, the enemy's plasma weapon beams seem to travel at sub-light speeds, given we can see them move from frame to frame. Put these facts together, and we can presume that that Parademon's rudimentary brain managed to guess that it could basically shoot anywhere around the circumfrence of Pozharnov and have a very good chance of hitting The Flash, with him basically running straight into (well actually, straight across, as it hits him side-on) the comparatively much slower beam projectile, and he can be forgiven for that mistake given he was so focused on simply maintaining that velocity.
  • Also, Barry expresses worry that Steppenwolf has bested many other superbeings on many other planets; a logical inference he could be making is that a subset of those superbeings were speedsters, and thus Steppenwolf may have means of defending himself against speedsters, so he doesn't want to put that defence to the test. His skills were best utilised to assist Victor in dismantling the Unity. It's likely he could have came up with some way to take Steppenwolf down himself, but they didn't have the luxury of time, and we'll wait for the Flash solo movie to show how he can take down a Big Bad with his powers.

Harley Quinn's fate

• Is the implication meant to be that Batman gave her a Mercy Kill in the Knightmare timeline, or what?

It's toxic- that's good for the villains, but what about the heroes?

• So Pozharnov is highly toxic and radioactive after the nuclear power plant disaster. Wouldn't this be dangerous for some of the League members? Superman of course is invulnerable, Wonder Woman is highly durable (and Google says she is immune to radiation effects perhaps because of her magical nature), Aquaman is part-human but does his Atlantean half help against radiation? Then this leaves the other three more technology-based League members, who are also human without alien or magical based biology. Does Cyborg's suit offer a healing factor for his remaining organic parts? Can The Flash move so fast as to outrun radiation? And even though Batman is surely Crazy-Prepared enough to bring a radiation-proof suit, what about his exposed lower-half of his face and eyeballs?
  • It was mentioned during the League's assessment of Pozharnov that the first two Motherboxes absorbed all the pollutants in the area to construct the tower and barrier. This would make the air clean enough for regular humans.
  • Additionally, the entire planet would've been wiped out if the League didn't stop Steppenwolf. Even if the above hadn't been the case, they probably would've still gone to confront him, figuring it was infinitely better to suffer whatever effects the radiation inflicted on them than to let everyone in the world be killed.
  • The League's unflinching devotion to protecting the world wasn't in question here, just whether it was safe for all of them to assault the radiation-laced headquarters. BTW, still also interested in at least the Aquaman, Flash and Cyborg questions regarding radiation effects on them.
  • They probably didn't stay long enough to be impacted by radiations anyway. It's implied the disaster happened around the same time as Chernobyl, which now has some relatively safe zones for tourists to visit, and they were nowhere near a big source of radiations that takes a short period of exposure to be lethal like the "Elephant's Foot".
• On rewatching, I did get a satisfactory answer for the effects of radiation on Cyborg- his exposed facial fragments can be armoured to form a helmet, so presumably the entire suit can protect against radiation if necessary.

Timeline divergence

• Has it been established that the Knightmare scenes shown in this movie follow chronologically from those shown in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, or are they part of a divergent, modified timeline which the main events in this movie had created?
  • If what the Joker said was true, then it's possible the Knightmare timeline is inevitable until the Flash time-travels enough times to alter the course of events so that Darkseid loses.

Aquaman's weapon

• Why does Vulko call this weapon "your mother's trident" when it is clearly a quindent?
  • Someone (Snyder, Dafoe, who knows?) may have thought the general weapon's name was that instead of spear or polearm and that "quindent" never occurred to them. It should be noted that, similarly, in Real Life people confuse missiles and rockets, even though there are technical differences.

Can New Gods survive Unity events?

• Did Steppenwolf also die when the Unity was activated, or does the gargantuan shockwave merely momentarily create (to him) pleasant Apokolips conditions, while he bathes in the rubble and the gore of the Justice League?
  • Since the Unity gave Steppenwolf those glowing blue eyes, it's possible that was the Motherboxes granting him some kind of protection from their impending cataclysm.

Who is Mera bloodlusted for in the Knightmare scene?

• She states "Let him come. Let the bastard come. I’ll stab this through his heart for what he did to Arthur. I want to make him pay.". Does this mean she thinks Superman betrayed Arthur or even killed him? She may not have observed his death directly (but then that quindent won't be doing much of anything against a Kryptonian if it doesn't have Kryptonite enhancements). Or is she talking about Darkseid himself, who did murder Aquaman with the quindent and Vulko with his Omega Beams?
  • It's implied that there might not be a definitive Knightmare. What Bruce and Victor saw were just three separate futures that all had the same conclusion (kind of like Doctor Strange looking across 14 million possible futures and only finding one where the Avengers beat Thanos). So while Aquaman's fate is practically unavoidable, the circumstances behind it may vary.

Identity of the Green Lantern who participated in the first defence of Earth

• The wiki's Characters entry for this individual says that he might be Yalan Gur, but doesn't identify him as such definitively. But all sources online point to yes, that's him (and so too for the theatrical cut for whatever that's worth). I can't find a quote from Snyder or other production staff stating so, but if various articles, other Wikis, etc say yes, they must be pretty sure, right?

How does it work to have Superman punch Steppenwolf off of an impaling quindent?

• Aquaman sneaks up behind and skewers Steppenwolf with the quindent, probably through his spine and ribcage, and lifts him bodily into the air. The impalement is deep enough to expose all five prongs of the weapon through the front of his chest. Superman then flies forward at great speed and gives him a left straight directly to the face, propelling him backwards to the portal (and to Wonder Woman's sword). But wait, he's impaled, right? How does the quindent manage to get freed from Steppenwolf's body (and remain undamaged from the titanic impact force of the punch which would reverberate through the body) and allow him to be thrown backwards? It doesn't look as though the punch just tore his body through the prongs of the weapon down his torso and out his pelvis. But as presented the punch should probably have forced the quindent out of Aquaman's hands and it would be thrown backwards, remaining embedded in there, along with Steppenwolf's body. Or did Aquaman have to "bounce" the villain into the air and off the quindent, just in time so that Superman could deliver the punch unhindered? It undoubtedly makes for a great action shot, though.

Miscellaneous

• If Darkseid uses the Anti-Life Equation to corrupt Superman in the Knightmare future, then why doesn't he simply use it on the entire League, or even the entire world? Why are Flash, Cyborg, and Batman (among others) spared or seemingly immune to the Equation's effects?
  • It is Darkseid's will that those who resist him must suffer. Yes, it would be easier to use the Anti-Life Equation on the rest of Earth's heroes, but he probably doesn't want a Victory Is Boring situation where he doesn't have anyone trying to fight him, and simply spared the heroes from the effects of the equation because it amused him. Or, his use of the equation is limited in this reality on how widespread it could be used, and he couldn't simply inflict it on everyone.
  • Simplest answer would be that his victims need to lose their will to live to succumb to Anti-Life. Note that Superman only submitted after Darkseid killed Lois.
  • And Batman is particularly known in all continuities for his immense, nearly unrivalled willpower, thus making him an ideal candidate to lead the resistance forces against Darkseid and Evil!Superman because he's not going to succumb to Anti-Life.
• At the end of the movie, Darkseid watches the assembled Justice League through a boom tube as they send Steppenwolf's head (and body) through it, and the portal then closes. However, he doesn't think to use his Omega Beams on them while he has the opportunity, which is also just before they lose any chance to retaliate.
  • But Darkseid is seething in rage, and yet that rage is a deliberative one instead of one looking for immediate retribution. More likely than not he's plotting how best to seek the worst kind of revenge against those who set back his conquest. He wanted to go and murder Aquaman and Wonder Woman, likely both by their very own weapons, and to crush Superman's will so that he could brainwash him and stop the one being most likely to thwart any future events related to the successful invasion of Earth. As discussed above, he likely didn't consider Batman, Cyborg and The Flash to be much of a threat to his plans (he may not have perceived the act of Flash turning back time, much like everyone else there; also he does not yet know about the sheer tenacity and "capacity for preparedness" which Batman exhibits, which make him a very formidable foe for Darkseid in the comics) so he wouldn't have felt the need to deal with them yet, either. For the League's part, at least The Flash and Batman were very exhausted and somewhat wounded, and the others would not have wanted to provoke a fight so soon after preventing the Unity and slaying Steppenwolf. Their only actions whilst staring down Darkseid and his underlings were defensive; they would want to prepare for the invasion if it happened and didn't feel the need to preemptively prevent it (and who knows their chances if they had the six of them take on three New Gods; they pretty much cannot see the legions of Parademons there, but it's a safe assumption that there are many, along with who knows how many other subservient New Gods aligned with Darkseid). So it's in both sides' best interests to stare each other down, consider the next move, and not make any rash decisions. Then the portal closes.
• After the boom tube closes, DeSaad says the Motherboxes are destroyed, which is plainly untrue as the boxes separate and fall to the ground, and have been shown to be extremely difficult if not impossible to destroy.
  • Not necessarily so. Just because objects outwardly appear to be intact does not mean that their essential function can't be irreversibly compromised, for example in an internal sense. Just like with any regular computer on Earth, even a ruggedised one. The New Gods may have had reason to reverse a Unity event in the past (e.g. if the Motherbox array turned corrupt and the fulfilment of the Unity would lead to harmful effects towards their own faction), which if done similarly to how Cyborg and Superman separated the array on Earth, would also have led to destruction of that array, so there may be precedent for such an event. Moreover, it's evident that DeSaad and the other New Gods have a biotechnological sense (or some other external indicator, but the sense is already established in this movie along with the canon of the comic universe) that the Unity they saw being stopped also caused the individual Motherboxes which made up the whole to be left ruined and useless. Recall that Steppenwolf told DeSaad earlier that one of them awoke and called out to him, from galaxies away, so his kind can sense their burning out with or (perhaps) without the convenience of a boom tube viewing portal to show the manner of their undoing. If there was any doubt in the minds of the Justice League that their utter cessation of function was the case (unlikely, because Cyborg can also vouch for the demise of the machines) then they can start to look at ways to ensure their physical destruction (if indeed this is possible without the use of other Apokoliptian technology), such as Superman throwing them into the sun, using his heat vision or freeze breath, Aquaman finding a pocket of the deep sea to try and crush them, etc.

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