We knew that the long-awaited second coming of Justice League, the new, irresponsibly long cut of the not-great movie from 2017, was going to change things. We knew, for example, that Batman would at long last be able to say “fuck” on film (perhaps when stubbing his toe really hard) and that some people were probably going to get hacked up real good. But we weren’t prepared for just how apocalyptic the arrival of the Snyder Cut would truly be—that it would, in fact, give us Jared Leto’s Joker in full-on Jesus Christ cosplay.
Vanity Fair first heralded the arrival of this new, even more twisted version of Leto’s Joker by showing off his long, greasy, turned-his-back-on-the-social-norms-of-regular-haircuts look earlier this month. And now that the rest of the seals have opened, they’ve returned with a longer piece on the making of the Snyder Cut that shows us a photo of Joker, comic book supervillain, dressed up in a grimy robe, hands and eyes raised toward God, with a crown of thorns atop his clown head.
Time is already running out to take this image—or icon, we guess—and use it for Twitter memes. Within hours, the unholy trinity of Jesus-Jared-Joker has been turned into an album cover, compared to one of Ricky Gervais’ greatest contributions to popular culture, and generally goofed on by the internet at large.
By the end of the week, the photo will have become so commonplace that we’ll be unable to imagine a time when we didn’t immediately associate one of the world’s largest religions with a multi-millionaire doing a Christ pose in off-brand Juggalo make-up. In other words, get your Joker H. Christ memes in while you can. The end is nigh.
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