With James Gunn’s Superman set to kick off a new live-action DC Universe, with Creature Commandos having set the animated foundation, any and all hopes of seeing Jeffrey Dean Morgan reprising the role of Thomas Wayne have been vanquished. Which remains disappointing, especially given Zack Snyder’s plans to adapt the revered “Flashpoint” storyline, with Morgan donning a revised cape and cowl as Batman. Even hearing the Walking Dead actor reflecting on it now gets me riled up.
Morgan is currently promoting AMC’s latest zombie spinoff The Walking Dead: Dead City, with the second season hitting the 2025 TV schedule in early May. But his deadly anti-hero Negan wasn’t the only comic book character on tap for an interview with him and co-star Lauren Cohan shared on Den Of Geek’s TikTok. When asked if Snyder cast them as Thomas and Martha Wayne as a jokey TWD reference, JDM pointed out that he wasn’t in that world yet. In his words:
That was the first time we’d ever met or worked together. Truthfully, Zack was gonna do more movies, and I think there was a time when Flashpoint Batman would have seen these two characters in a much bigger role. And that was part of the Zack world of all of it, and then I never got a chance to do that unfortunately.
“Unfortunately” is underplaying things considerably, especially with the idea that Snyder already had some goalposts in mind for how he wanted to adapt Flashpoint’s timeline-changing narrative. It’d be one thing if that was just a fleeting pipe dream of an idea in Snyder’s brain when casting Jeffrey Dean Morgan for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
But we were closer than ever to seeing Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert's timeline-shifting arc come to life, with Justice League setting up the pieces, and Morgan seemingly down to reprise the role of Thomas Wayne in whichever capacity was landed on. Somehow, though, amidst all the behind-the-scenes turmoil over Justice League's production and Ezra Miller's controversies, we only ever got Andy Muschietti's The Flash movie in its place.
Maybe one day Zack Snyder will turn his "Flashpoint" ideas into a novelized narrative, or even a storyboarded comic or something. Even an audiobook would work, so long as Morgan returned to voice Big Papa Batman.
Circling back to the topic of sharing the screen with Lauren Cohan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan said that the Batman v Superman casting may have been the catalyst that inspired The Walking Dead's showrunner to reach out when casting Negan. As he put it:
I think Zack just luckily put us together. I don’t know why or how, other than maybe thinking into the future of what could happen. I think that’s Gimple, because maybe more of the joke is him casting us opposite each other.
All things considered, Morgan still has quite a few years left to go before he would be wildly out of place to play Thomas Wayne age-wise. So here's hoping James Gunn doubles down on the idea of telling Elseworlds tales, and takes that opportunity to give "Flashpoint" another go.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan can be seen reprising the role of Negan alongside Lucille and Lauren Cohan's Maggie every Sunday night on AMC, with new episodes of The Walking Dead: Dead City airing at 8:00 p.m. ET.
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