‘Injustice 3’ is Coming—What Will DC Do With It?

Nearly 10 years ago, NetherRealm released Injustice 2, the second game in its DC superhero fighting series. (And it’s the third superhero fighting game, beginning with 2008’s Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe.) After continuing and rebooting the story of Mortal Kombat, it seems NetherRealm is going back to superheroic punch-ups, as Green Lantern and Aquaman voice actor Phil LaMaar reportedly told a fan at a recent convention a third game is happening.

This will come as little surprise to anyone paying attention to NetherRealm. The studio ended its support for Mortal Kombat 1 earlier this year after two sets of DLC fighters and a story expansion and said it would pivot onto its next project. Before MK1’s reveal, Injustice 3 seemed a sure thing since the studio was alternating between the two franchises, but NetherRealm likely had to do two consecutive Kombat games since it was up for potential sale by WB back in 2020. It was never a question of if the developer would go back to Injustice, but “when”; the second was well-liked and had a healthy lifecycle and ended in such a way that more games were inevitable.

What’s less certain is what Injustice 3 will be in terms of tone. When the first two games were released in 2013 and 2017, they came at a time when DC was fine with positioning Superman as, if not a villain, then an apparent antagonist opposite Batman. This was most evident in Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (which was revealed back in 2020), and it wouldn’t be until fairly recently that DC and WB began moving away from that framing. The comics have made an active effort to position him as a hopeful hero and family man, and while Joss Whedon’s version of the Justice League teased a more audience-friendly take on Superman, which never manifested, that came with James Gunn’s recent Superman movie, which spends its runtime getting the hero and audiences’ perception of him back on the right track.

To NetherRealm’s credit, it has an out in that Injustice is in its own universe where a totalitarian Superman can keep trying to reassert his dominance as many times as he likes while also working with Batman and the other Justice Leaguers—or at least, the ones he didn’t personally kill—while dealing with a greater threat. As one of the most prominent examples of the “Evil Superman” trend that’s also led to the popularity of Homelander and Omni-Man, it wouldn’t be entirely wrong for Injustice to keep making Clark more evil, especially since it already pulled the “Good Superman beats the Evil one” trigger back with the first game in 2013. But if the developer stays the course, can it handle being an outlier at a time when an altruistic, heroic take on the character is so popular and beloved?

We’ll find out how NetherRealm approaches this dilemma and what the game’s launch roster will look like in the coming years.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.