Batman v Superman surprise ending is key to the creation of the Justice League

Major spoilers ahead for Batman v Superman!

Batman v Superman's made just under half a billion worldwide in a matter of days. Even after a spoiler-heavy marketing campaign, there's plenty of moments in the superhero smackdown that come as a genuine surprise. Zack Snyder has been discussing some of those major moments in the movie, and in particular - that ending.

If you're reading this far, then you've read the spoiler warning above and you've seen the movie, so you'll know that Superman dies at the hands of Doomsday. That unexpected finale borrows several plot points from The Death of Superman comics, but how did it come about? "I felt it was inevitable," he tells Buzzfeed. "Even when we were working on Man of Steel, I was like, Gosh, what are we going to do with this guy? He’s a pretty tough cookie. He’s so mythic. Superman takes cosmic shifts to get him to move emotionally [and] that reinforces his mythic nature."

We know that Superman won't stay dead though. That perplexing shot of dirt rising from his coffin? That was meant as a sign of hope for fans from Snyder. Oh, and there's the small matter of his guaranteed involvement in the Justice League. So, yeah, he's coming back. We just don't know how the Man of Steel will return from beyond the grave.

Snyder says that Superman's death was important because he wanted him to be absent from the creation of the Justice League. “We had a version that we talked about where [Superman] just—this isn’t it, but where he got frozen and shot into space or something, so he’s kinda gone," he tells Collider. "Because one of the big things I wanted to make sure of was that as we went into [Justice League], Bruce Wayne was the one who was gathering the Justice League."

One of the many ends to the movie has Bruce Wayne talking shop with Diana Prince - at Supes' funeral, no less - where he overcomes his fear of aliens and the unknown and tasks himself with recruiting the meta-humans. Superman's demise was a perfect way to ensure that Wayne is the one left in charge of approaching Aquaman, The Flash and Cyborg. After Lex Luthor's garbled threat of someone big coming - Darkseid? - it's no surprise that Batman is keen to get the gang together.

Directed by Zack Snyder and starring Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, Diane Lane, Gal Gadot, Jesse Eisenberg, Jeremy Irons, Laurence Fishburne, and Amy Adams, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is in theaters now. Justice League - Part 1 opens November 10, 2017.

Images: Warner Bros.