Henry Cavill’s last appearance as Superman might be his most disappointing

It’s never been easy, being Henry Cavill. Dating a teenager in your 30s is hard enough – so many Phineas and Ferb character names to memorize – but then you get dropped from the Superman franchise by Warner Bros., dropped from The Witcher series by Netflix, and dropped from the side of a cliff by Ethan Hunt.

And after all of that, DC still just can’t let go of what might have been. For receipts, we turn to The Flash, WB’s answer to the question “how quickly can you burn $200 million?” It’s no secret that the critically-maligned and audience-ignored solo film threw every possible cameo into the mix through the use of CGI necromancy, and with an internet-wide symposium on the ethics of digitally reanimating the dead playing at full volume, it only makes sense that talk of one of The Flash’s less morally reprehensible (but more visually unsettling) guest appearances got lost in the mix.

More powerful than a locomotive but with fewer polygons, a shirtless and dead-eyed Henry Cavill Superman makes a brief and haunting appearance during the Fastest Man Alive’s journey through the speed force. He looks rough, like he’d be at home giving you a fetch quest in a PS3-era Bethesda game. His muscles shine weirdly. His eyebrows appear penciled-on. His upper lip, ironically, looks fine.

Adding insult to cringe-ury, after half a dozen or so false starts, this really does appear to be the final appearance of Henry Cavill’s Superman. He doesn’t even get the dignity of having a last hurrah in the post-credits Black Adam scene and its promise of further adventures. Now, fans will always know that the Clark Kent of the SnyderVerse era must live on forever, trapped in the form of an Xbox 360 cutscene character. Disappointing? Yes. More disappointing than Batman v Superman? Debatable.