DC’s Darkest Year Yet: The Biggest DC Deaths That Defined 2024

Warning! This article contains spoilers for all of DC’s 2024 releases.

2024 has been quite a deadly year for the DC Universe, with plenty of movies and TV shows being released with a high body count. Compared to years past, which saw frequent releases of DCEU movies, 2024 constituted something of a gap year for DC’s live-action projects, with Batman villain solo stories like Joker: Folie Á Deux and The Penguin eating the lion’s share of the notoriety. Both of these projects presented audiences with some shocking moments, including deaths carrying huge implications for their respective continuities.

2024 also saw DC release a number of high-profile animated projects, from the start of the DCU with Creature Commandos to the finale of the animated Tomorrowverse 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 DC movies of 2024 certainly proved that life can be cheap in the adapted comic universe.

10. Superman Dies (Twice) In Superman & Lois

Superman & Lois

2024 represented the end of an era for DC, with the final season of live-action CW drama created in the franchise’s name debuting thanks to Superman & Lois. Though not technically part of the CW’s Arrowverse, the final season of Superman & Lois brought with it a sense of finality, saying goodbye to the DC banner on the network channel. That also meant the death of DC’s flagship hero, the Man of Steel himself.

Superman technically dies twice in the final season of Superman & Lois. Thanks to his arduous battle with Darkseid, the series ended up re-creating the infamous The Death of Superman arc from the comics, only to have Tyler Hoechlin’s Superman brought back to life. However, after revealing his secret identity to the world and passing the mantle of Superman on 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 & Lois

Of course, Superman wasn’t the only one to lose his life in the season finale of Superman & Lois. Throughout the entire series, Lois’ recurring battle with breast cancer had been a shockingly tender and down-to-earth storyline that kept the high-flying drama of the show somewhat grounded. In the end, Lois passes away relatively peacefully at an old age in the finale, finally succumbing to the disease which she had long struggled with.

Lois’ breast cancer made for some poignant moments throughout Superman & Lois, so it was fitting that the looming threat of the condition would be what finally did her in. Despite how mundane Lois’ death might’ve been, it was incredibly emotionally effective, leaving Clark a widower. Saying goodbye to both titular characters, even in a flash-forward, made for a bittersweet ending to DC’s presence on The CW.

8. Arthur Fleck Dies Is Killed By The “Real” Joker

Joker: Folie Á Deux

DC only released a single live-action film in 2024 with the sequel to 2019’s Joker, Joker: Folie Á Deux. A downtrodden, neurotic, sensitive soul, Arthur Fleck always seemed like a strange candidate for the Clown Prince of Crime, despite the duology ostensibly representing his origin story as the titular supervillain. However, the ending of Joker: Folie Á Deux seems to explain that the “real” Joker was yet to come by the end of the first movie.

The influence of his persona having gotten away from him, the Joker disappoints some of the violent anarchists hoping 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 go on to become the classic Joker from the original Batman mythos. This ends up being a fittingly tragic end to Arthur’s dour tale.

7. Harvey Dent Goes Out A Hero

Batman: Caped Crusader

Joining the ranks of Batman’s many cartoon shows this year was Batman: Caped Crusader, a 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 gritty, violent period piece that returns to the days of Batman as a noir detective in a grimy, villain-infested version of Gotham in the 40s. The first season saw the genesis of several classic Batman villains, including Two-Face, a.k.a. Harvey Dent.

Harvey’s transformation into Two-Face is as tragic as ever, following the original comic origin of an acid attack fairly closely. In the end, however, Two-Face is able to go out as something of a hero, giving up his life to protect Barbara Gordon, a fellow attorney in this continuity. With his Harvey persona in full control, Two-Face is at least able to end his life doing something positive, though the tragic death infuriates Batman.

6. Victor Aguilar Is Killed By The Penguin

The Penguin

Easily the single most shocking death in DC’s lineup of 2024 releases was Oz Cobb’s callous 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 comes to seemingly trust Victor more and more as his right-hand-man in his ascent through Gotham’s criminal hierarchy. Sadly, in the end Oz proves that he’s just as despicable as most people think he is.

In the season finale of The Penguin, Oz 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 all the more heart-wrenching by the fact that he does so in such a personal manner, watching the life slowly drain out of Victor’s eyes. Unlike some villain-focused projects overly concerned with casting sympathy on their subjects, The Penguin makes no mistake that its titular bad guy 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 by the end of The Penguin. The entire premise of the series relies on another shocking death doled out by his hand, the murder of Alberto Falcone. The arrogant son of mob boss Carmine Falcone, who perishes in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, Alberto confronts Oz with the knowledge that he had been cooking the books of the Falcone family’s crime operations.

Infuriated by his flagrant disrespect, Oz is quick to dispatch his cocky new boss by quickly pulling a piece on him like something out of a Western, gunning down Alberto with thoughtless indifference. A sudden crime of passion, The Penguin’s efforts to obscure the details of Alberto’s murder from the rest of his family becomes 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 off.

4. Primus Brainiac Is Destroyed By Supergirl

My Adventures with Superman

Compared to most other animated DC projects, My Adventures with Superman is a fairly light show, embodying the kind of cheerful optimism Superman was made for. However, the series can still dish out some impactful deaths when necessary, as with the defeat of Primus Brainiac in 2024’s season 2. Set up to be the main villain of My Adventures with Superman in the first season, Primus Brainiac is explored more thoroughly in 2024, revealed to be the mastermind behind Krypton’s destruction in the first place.

In the narrative present, Brainiac becomes ever more dangerous by brainwashing Supergirl, though Clark and company are eventually able to free her from his mind control. In retaliation, Kara and Clark manage to power up with the sun, destroying Kandor as Supergirl personally rips apart Brainiac’s body, neutralizing his core once and for all. With Brainiac out of the picture, season 3 of My Adventures with Superman will need a new roster of villains.

3. G.I. Robot Is Killed By Calypso

Creature Commandos

Sneaking in at the tail end of 2024, James Gunn’s animated series Creature Commandos heralds in the official start of the new DCU. Starring a new Suicide Squad populated by non-human monsters, Creature Commandos proved that its plucky team of misfits and outcasts are just as expendable as the original members of Task Force X. By only the third episode, a core member of the original starting team, G.I. Robot, was haphazardly killed off.

In his focus episode, flashbacks dart back and forth across the narrative, elaborating on G.I.’s long history of killing Nazis and desiring to be reunited with his old squad. His latest barrage of murders, set to the tune of The Dresden Dolls’ Coin Operated Boy, is cruelly interrupted by the sorceress Calypso, who blasts the lovable metallic soldier to bits with her magic. Only James Gunn is capable of making the death of a literal weapon of war tragic in the span 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 being killed by Supergirl in 2024. The year saw the final movies of the Tomorrowverse 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 Two, it’s 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 strays from his mission, adopting the displaced Kryptonian.

Supergirl and her new father figure butt heads quite a bit throughout the film, but it’s only thanks to the destructive Anti-Monitor’s influence that Supergirl actually kills him, roasting him alive with heat vision. In Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three, we get to see their reconciliation in the Monitor’s dying breaths, recognizing that Kara herself wasn’t the one who wanted him dead. This tear-jerking goodbye was one of the pantamount deaths in a dour trilogy in which entire universes of people were wiped out.

1. Darkseid Is Killed As An Infant

Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three

While the MCU may have joked about killing Thanos as a baby in Avengers: Endgame, DC actually did present a timeline in which its heroes resorted to murdering the franchise’s greatest villain while he was still wearing diapers. As Darkseid’s presence ends up becoming key to the multiversal fracture which led to the titular crisis, Constantine develops a solution in Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Three; Kill Thanos as an infant. He sends The Flash back in time to do so, finding the world-conquering tyrant as a baby sleeping in a crib.

Of course, the pure-hearted Barry Allen doesn’t have it in him to murder an infant in cold blood, even if he does grow 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 being all he needs to do to kill him. This dark exploration of a hilarious hypothetical was one of the most shocking and oddly creative deaths in the DC Universe in 2024.