Thanks to Superman and the second season of Peacemaker, DC’s franchise reboot is off to a promising start. James Gunn is wisely building this new saga around Superman, with a trilogy of films focused on the hero and his allies. It’s already shaping up to deliver what Zack Snyder’s DCEU couldn’t: though it also kicked things off with a new origin story for Superman, Snyder’s Man of Steel ultimately took a backseat to the introduction of the Justice League. Gunn plans to go another way with his DC Universe. He’s in much less of a rush to bring in the heroes that will eventually make up the Justice League, and even less inclined to reboot their fiercest adversary, Darkseid.
Darkseid is essentially DC’s counterpart to Thanos in the Marvel Universe. An incredibly powerful, nigh-unstoppable god, Darkseid has been a constant threat in DC comics since 1970. He’s on a quest to conquer and enslave all life in the universe using something called the Anti-Life Equation. His obsession with power makes him a perfect villain for most major crossovers, but it wasn’t until Zack Snyder’s Justice League that the character appeared in a live-action DC project — and even then, given the tumult behind the Justice League films, he’s not the most memorable part of that film.
