Notice! This article contains spoilers for all of DC's 2024 releases.2024 was a pretty deadly year for the DC Universewith many films and TV shows being released with a large body count. Compared to previous years, which saw frequent DCEU film releases, 2024 constituted something of a sabbatical for DC's live-action projects, with solo stories from Batman villains like Joker: Folie Á Deux and The Penguin eating most of the notoriety. Both projects presented audiences with some shocking moments, including deaths with huge implications for their respective continuities.
2024 has also seen DC launch a number of high-profile animated projects, dating back to the start of the DCU with Creature Commands for the finale of the Tomorrowverse animated series with the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy. These animated shows and films were arguably even more audacious with character deaths, rounding out the year for the company. The 2024 DC movies certainly proved that life can be cheap in the adapted comic book universe.
10
Superman dies (twice) in Superman & Lois
Superman and Lois
2024 represented the end of an era for DC, with the final season of The CW's live-action drama created in the franchise's name debuting thanks to Superman and Lois. While not technically part of the CW's Arrowverse, the final season of Superman and Lois brought with it a sense of finality, saying goodbye to the DC banner on the network's channel. This also meant the death of DC's main hero, the Man of Steel himself.
Superman technically dies twice in the final season of Superman and Lois. Thanks to his arduous battle with Darkseid, the series ended up recreating the infamous THE Death of Superman comic book arc, only to have Tyler Hoechlin's Superman brought back to life. However, after revealing his secret identity to the world and passing on the mantle of Superman to his sons, Clark Kent dies for real in a flash-forward, his heart finally giving out in the same spot where his own father died.
9
Lois Lane loses her battle with cancer
Superman and Lois
Of course, Superman wasn't the only one to lose his life in the season finale. Superman and Lois. Throughout the entire series, Lois's recurring battle with breast cancer was a shockingly tender and realistic storyline that kept the show's sky-high drama somewhat grounded. In the end, Lois passes away relatively peacefully at an old age, finally succumbing to the illness she had long battled.
Lois' breast cancer caused some heartbreaking moments Superman and Loisso it was fitting that the imminent threat of the condition was what finally killed her. Despite how mundane Lois' death may have been, it was incredibly emotionally effective, leaving Clark a widower. Saying goodbye to the two titular characters, even in a flash-forward, provided a bittersweet ending to DC's presence on The CW.
8
Arthur Fleck dies and is killed by the “real” Joker
Joker: Folie Á Deux
DC has only released a single live-action film in 2024 with the 2019 sequel Joker, Joker: Folie Á Deux. A downtrodden, neurotic, and sensitive soul, Arthur Fleck has always seemed like an odd candidate for the Clown Prince of Crime, despite the duology ostensibly depicting his origin story as the titular supervillain. However, the end of Joker: Folie Á Deux seems to explain that the “real” Joker was still to come at the end of the first film.
With the influence of his personality moving away from him, the Joker disappointed some of the violent anarchists who had hoped to use him as a rallying cry. This ends up coming back to bite Arthur when he is unceremoniously stabbed by a fellow Arkham Asylum inmate, who is implied to become the classic Joker from the original Batman mythos. This turns out to be a suitably tragic ending to Arthur's dark story.
7
Harvey Dent becomes a hero
Batman: Caped Crusader
Joining the ranks of the many Batman cartoons this year was Batman: Caped Crusadera surprise release for 2024. Produced by some of the same minds behind the iconic Batman: The Animated Series from the 90s, Batman: Caped Crusader is a violent and gritty period piece that returns to Batman's days as a noir detective in a grimy, villain-infested version of Gotham in the 1940s. The first season saw the genesis of several classic Batman villains, including Two-Face, aka Harvey Dent.
Harvey's transformation into Two-Face is as tragic as ever, closely following the original comic origin of an acid attack. In the end, however, Two-Face manages to become something of a hero, giving up his life to protect Barbara Gordon, a fellow lawyer in this continuity. With his Harvey personality under full control, Two-Face is at least able to end his life by doing something positive, although the tragic death enrages Batman.
6
Victor Aguilar is killed by the penguin
The Penguin
Easily the most shocking death on DC's 2024 release schedule was Oz Cobb's cruel murder of Victor Aguilar in The Penguin. From the moment Oz and Victor first meet, Oz threatens to kill him, but the audience is justified in allowing this fear to eventually subside as Oz seemingly increasingly trusts Victor as his right-hand man in his life. rise through Gotham crime. hierarchy. Unfortunately, in the end, Oz proves that he is just as despicable as most people think he is.
At the end of the season The PenguinOz ends up murdering Victor in cold blood, strangling him to death. The shock of Oz's ability to kill even someone as close to him as Victor is made even more painful by the fact that he does it in such a personal way, watching the life slowly drain from Victor's eyes. Unlike some villain-focused projects overly concerned with casting sympathy for their subjects, The Penguin is not wrong when it says that its titular villain is rotten to the core.
5
Oz shoots Alberto Falcone
The Penguin
Of course, Victor is far from the only skeleton now buried in Oz Cobb's closet at the end of The Penguin. The entire premise of the series is based on another shocking death caused by his hand, the murder of Alberto Falcone. The arrogant son of mob boss Carmine Falcone, who dies in Matt Reeves' house Batman, Alberto confronts Oz with the knowledge that he was defrauding the Falcone family's criminal operations.
Enraged by his blatant disrespect, Oz is quick to dispatch his arrogant new boss, pulling him in quickly like something out of a Western, shooting Alberto with thoughtless indifference. A sudden crime of passion, the Penguin's efforts to hide the details of Alberto's murder from the rest of his family become the inciting incident of the entire first season. By the end of the series, Oz has more blood on his hands than any amount of money can wash away.
4
Primus Brainiac is destroyed by Supergirl
My Adventures with Superman
Compared to most other DC animated projects, My Adventures with Superman is a fairly lighthearted show, embodying the kind of joyful optimism that Superman was created for. However, the series can still deliver some impactful deaths when necessary, as happened with Primus Brainiac's defeat in 2024 Season 2. Primed to be the main villain of My Adventures with Superman In the first season, Primus Brainiac is explored in more detail in 2024, revealed to be the mastermind behind the destruction of Krypton in the first place.
In the present narrative, Brainiac becomes increasingly dangerous as he brainwashes Supergirl, although Clark and company manage to free her from his mind control. In retaliation, Kara and Clark manage to power themselves with the sun, destroying Kandor while Supergirl personally shatters Brainiac's body, neutralizing his core once and for all. With Brainiac out of the picture, season three of My Adventures with Superman will need a new roster of villains.
3
GI robot is killed by Calypso
Creature Commands
Sneaking in late 2024, James Gunn's animated series Creature Commands announces the official start of the new DCU. Starring a new Suicide Squad populated by non-human monsters, Creature Commands proved that their plucky team of misfits and outcasts are just as expendable as the original members of Task Force
In its main episode, flashbacks move back and forth through the narrative, elaborating on G.I.'s long history of killing Nazis and wanting to reunite with his old squad. His latest spate of murders, to the tune of The Dresden Dolls' Boy operating with coinsis cruelly interrupted by the sorceress Calypso, who destroys the adorable metallic soldier with her magic. Only James Gunn is capable of making the death of a literal weapon of war tragic in the space of 20 minutes or less.
2
Supergirl kills the monitor
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two
Primus Brainiac wasn't the only powerful person killed by Supergirl in 2024. The year saw the final Tomorrowverse films released with the Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths trilogy, adopting the comic crossover of the same name with a multiverse-spanning battle against the Anti-Monitor. In Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Twoit is revealed that Supergirl was saved from Krypton's destruction by the Monitor, an all-powerful, emotionless being sworn only to observe significant events in the universe who deviates from her mission by adopting the displaced Kryptonian.
Supergirl and her new father figure clash a lot throughout the film, but it's only thanks to the Anti-Monitor's destructive influence that Supergirl actually kills him, roasting him alive with heat vision. In Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Threewe can see their reconciliation in the Monitor's final breaths, recognizing that Kara herself wasn't the one who wanted him dead. This emotional goodbye was one of the biggest deaths in a dark trilogy in which entire universes of people were wiped out.
1
Darkseid is killed as a child
Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three
While the MCU may have joked about killing off Thanos as a baby in Avengers: Endgame, DC actually presented a timeline where its heroes resorted to murdering the franchise's biggest villain while he was still in diapers. As Darkseid's presence turns out to be the key to the multiversal fracture that led to the titular crisis, Constantine develops a solution in Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three; Kill Thanos as a child. He sends the Flash back in time to do so, finding the world-conquering tyrant as a baby sleeping in a crib.
It's clear that pure-hearted Barry Allen doesn't have the courage to murder a child in cold blood, even if he grows up to become Darkseid. Knowing this, Constantine casts a spell on the Scarlet Speedster that turns him into a living poison, simply standing near Darkseid's nascent body is all he needs to do to kill him. This dark exploration of a hilarious hypothesis was one of the most shocking and strangely creative deaths in history. DC Universe in 2024.
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