The main theme about Superman in the DCCU is not the fact that he represents some sort of God metaphor or that he represents power but that he represents hope and I’m going to ramble about that for a while. Cut for length.

Lex had nothing. Lex had nobody to help him, nobody to save him, and nobody to look to or believe in. Diana who was born into a culture who left the world because it lost hope in the rest of humanity. And Zod lost his entire planet, and all of his hopes and dreams rested on finding the child who had the codex launched into space, with no idea where it was going. Bruce lost his family before his very eyes at the ripe old age of eight, he had no ability to save them, no ability to help them, no ability to turn back the clock. And then, and then he comes across Robin, who became the light of his entire world, who was all of his hopes for the world, who was his family and then.

To all of them.

And we don’t see any scenes with Lex, but he revealed that he was abused as a child, and in the words of Snyder, “No God ever rescued him.”



Superman is a representation of everything people ask for. He is a representation of that fleeting hope people have that someone–anyone–will come find them. That hope that people desperately hold onto. It’s a point in For Tomorrow that he will answer any call, any plea for help, no matter how far-away, no matter who makes it.

He is a symbol for what good people are capable of. He is a symbol for the heart people have, even when they’re strong. He’s, in any continuity, hope for people who are in hopelessness, way back to the beginning.

And then you have Batman. And then you have Lex. And then you have Zod. And their lives have been nothing but betrayal and pain and anger and loneliness and crushing despair. Every single good thing in their lives has been beaten down, every single positive aspect ever given to them, and they’ve had nothing on top of nothing and they’ve been fighting monsters, what they want to champion, and then they’ve been staring into the abyss for too long and we all know what happens then. And what the difference between fighting crime and becoming it is.

Because Batman in the DCCU had nothing. He had nobody but Alfred, he had none of the social life, he didn’t even rebuild Wayne Manor and when Robin died that destroyed him. He lost faith in everything. He only went through the motions because Gotham needed protection and it needed to stay that way. And yeah, I still think Alfred should be gone so that there would be complete isolation, but he had twenty years in Gotham with nothing but loss after loss and no way out, nothing but that one place and he couldn’t even stay in the Wayne Manor because of what it did to him.

And then we have Dru-Zod, who was programmed by birth to be a soldier, who knew the planet needed his help, who had a family and wanted to protect them from the end of the world that he loved so much, and it all slipped through his hands when his best friend turned his back on the planet and sent a baby carrying their entire race on its pod, and then this baby turns his back on their race just like his father and Zod just loses it and he literally explains what this last lost hope does to him.

“Look at this. We could have built a new Krypton in this squalor, but you chose the humans over us. I exist only to protect Krypton. That is the sole purpose for which I was born. And every action I take, no matter how violent or how cruel, is for the greater good of my people. And now… I have no people. My soul, that is what you have taken from me!” […] “I’m going to make them suffer, Kal. These humans you’ve adopted, I will take them all from you one by one!”



And then there’s Lex, who explains that there was nobody to save him from his father. While the world saw a false savior, he saw a monster. He sees nothing but his father with Superman. He sees nothing but a demon masquerading as an angel. He sees a devil. He sees a cruel God who turned a blind eye while people suffered. He saw that with the people Clark couldn’t save from the battle with Zod, he saw that and he capitalized on it because hope doesn’t exist in this world, and heroes don’t exist, and most of all people who want to do good don’t exist.

It’s the principle of, continuing with the religious symbolism, where is God when people needed him? If God was all-powerful, why would he let people suffer?

But the thing is that Clark isn’t a God. Clark isn’t all-powerful. He’s just a guy trying to do the right thing, even while people are pushing onto him everything. Even if his own father is pushing it.

But then there’s the whole reason why he’s hope in the first place. He shows that he is. He chooses to be their hero. He chooses to do good. Even while he doesn’t owe the world a single thing.

Because there is hope, even if God does or does not exist, and he demonstrates that by just existing and that is something that Bruce and Lex struggle with so hard. It challenges everything that they ever knew, because nothing good ever happens in this world, and they’ve seen it, and they’ve become accustomed to it, and they’ve known that, especially Bruce who is greying and Diana who left the freaking world five-thousand years ago because of the despair the world brought and then.

This idiot comes along who saves cats out of trees and walks head-first into traps and still shows up despite people saying that he shouldn’t even be in this world and he dies because of it, dies trying to do good after over a year of the world rejecting him, and he’s just a kid from Kansas trying to do good who wants to save his mother and who wants to help people even when they hate him, whose only lights are two women he loves, because he sees something in people that they don’t see anymore, and he sees something good, and he sees beauty in this world and twenty years in Gotham and five-thousand years away don’t do that for you, and they can’t let that die with him.

There is hope born when the Justice League forms, there is hope born when someone does good for no reason other than that it needs to be done, out of love for people who do nothing but hate you, and that is something that the world needs, and that is something that Kal-El brought with him when he put on the symbol of hope and the whole damn story is just about saving the world, not with power and not with fighting and not with all of that but by just giving people hope because that is what Superman means.

That’s what the S stands for.