4. Braniac Reveals His Master Plan - Justice League Unlimited
Warner Bros.
Justice League Unlimited's Cadmus arc is one of the all-time great superhero stories. I don't just mean that in terms of animation either - the entire thing rivals some of the best Justice League stories ever told.
Building upon previous episodes and themes from Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League, the arc delved deep into the ethical questions surrounding the relationship between superheroes, everyday people and the government, and injected a healthy dose of moral ambiguity and political tension into the series.
It also happens to feature one of the most horrifying images ever conceived in DC's history. So uhh, it has that going for it too.
Dwayne McDuffie made sure the arc had it all, and so revealed in its penultimate episode that Lex Luthor had really been a vessel for Braniac the entire time, making a huge throwback to Season 2 of Superman by revealing the Kryptonian AI had installed a version of itself in Luthor's DNA in their last encounter.
Said reveal comes as Braniac rips Luthor's flesh apart to unveil a metallic face hidden in his stomach. Lovely.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
