If you were a kid in the late ’90s and 2000s, first of all, congratulations on being thirty. Isn’t it odd how much your knees hurt? Secondly, do you remember how great cartoons were growing up? We do! Specifically, we remember the DC Animated Universe and the Justice League, one of the best animated series ever made.
Set in the universe created by Bruce Timm when he launched Batman: The Animated Series (BTAS), Justice League (And its follow-up Justice League Unlimited) was the DCU done right. On paper, it was just a cartoon featuring our favourite DC characters going up against the worst DC villains, but it was so much more than that.
The show featured an incredible layer of continuity (Seriously, we’ve watched all the DC movies in order, and they’re not as complex as the DCAU) and an epic story spanning across not just the Justice League show and BTAS but also Superman: The Animated Series, Static Shock, and even Batman Beyond. Basically, imagine the shared universe you enjoy so much while watching the Marvel movies in order, but done half a decade earlier for a lot less money.
Now, it may be because my birthday is looming, and I’m feeling nostalgic for a time when my hair wasn’t quite as thin, but wouldn’t it be great if we got another season of this wonderful cartoon? I mean, Justice League, at its peak, was better than some of the best superhero movies, and a lot of new films have borrowed from it.
Take this clip below where Supes fights Darkseid and tell me you haven’t seen the same thing done worse in more recent films.
Another reason we want a revival, though, is because Unlimited ended on a sort of cliffhanger. We want to know what happened with Lex and Darkseid when they teleported off to the Source Wall.
Did Jon and Shayera ever make it work like The Once and Future Thing episode promised? What about Superman? Did he ever really get over his fear of his Justice Lord self? In fact, what happened to the Justice Lords? They were definitely set up for a return that never happened.
Anyway, we’re rambling. The fact is that we live in an era of reboots, remakes, and restarts. So, rather than giving us a new Superman movie, why doesn’t Warners give us what we really want? A new series of Justice League. I mean, you gave the Snyder Cut people what they wanted, and they are, to quote Parks and Rec’s Jean-Ralphio Saperstein,”the worrrrrrsssst.”
If you love the DCAU, why not check out our list of the best DC animated movies? Or, if you actually are excited about the new DCU, we recommend checking out our guide to Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters. We’ve also got separate articles all about the Brave and the Bold release date and the Superman Legacy release date.