“Justice League” Almost Had Another Villain (But No, It’s Not Darkseid)

According to an anonymous insider, early versions of Justice League were going to include Desaad as a villain.

The film premiered a few weeks back, and unfortunately for DC Comics and Warner Bros. it has proven underwhelming—critics are slamming it and it stands to lose the company up to $100 million.

One of the biggest criticisms is the villain, Steppenwolf—aside from his CGI rendering being less than impressive, he has been decried as a pretty weak character, his goal being simply to conquer Earth by getting three special MacGuffins together while spouting evil dialogue. There does seem to be an attempt at giving him greater motivation—he attacked Earth in the past and was rebuffed, and hopes to make up for his previous failure—but most fans agree that it does not do much to make him more compelling.

Furthermore, Steppenwolf is a fairly minor character in the source material. He is the uncle and general of the fan favorite villain Darkseid, who rules a planet of evil alien space gods (because comics); Darkseid himself is notably absent from the film, to fans’ consternation.

According to a Reddit AMA, an unnamed VFX artist calling him-/herself LND_Film says that Desaad, a more prominent Apokalyptian villain, was also planned early on.

“Desaad was in there originally, I’m not sure how far that got though. He looked grim reapery, skull like with a big cloak. Never saw Darkseid,” they said.

In the comics, Desaad is one of Darkseid’s chief servants and something of a second-in-command. As his name (based on the Marquis de Sade) suggests, Desaad is tasked with torturing the enemies of Apokalypse, a job which he takes up with twisted glee. He is not a terribly complex character, mind you, but most would agree that he has more personality and is more intimidating than Steppenwolf.

It is not clear how much of a role Desaad was planned to have, making it hard to assess the filmmakers’ decision to exclude him. Perhaps they opted to save him for a sequel film, as they seem to have decided to do with Darkseid. Unfortunately for Fourth World fans, however, that may never happen now—talk about a Justice League sequel have largely stalled, and it seems like the focus will now be on more solo films, like the upcoming Aquman and Shazam.