Well this is odd by any measure. In an unprecedented move, mere days after Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice hit theaters, Warner Bros. has released the first deleted scene from the film online. This isn’t a short character moment or little joke, it’s a full-on, plot-centric scene that offers a serious WTF moment for those that have seen the movie (and if you’re reading this, I hope you have—spoilers going forward).

So this scene appears to come after Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor has descended into a lake of space goo inside General Zod’s crashed ship (henceforth known as "the goo ship") to create Doomsday. We follow some soldiers into the ship, and they’re first greeted by some massive monster that resembles the Independence Day aliens, only he appears to be made of the same material that we saw in Man of Steel when Jor-El’s ghost was telling Clark the story of his people.

So…what is this thing and what in the world is going on? Our own Dave Trumbore surmises this might be the comics character of Steppenwolf, uncle to supervillain Darkseid, and that he may be holding Mother Boxes, objects of mysterious power that also have a Darkseid connection. So it’s possible that this deleted scene explains why Luthor is magically alluding to Darkseid’s impending arrival at the end of the film without any context as to how or why Luthor knows who Darkseid is. And if you need a primer on Darkseid—who is equivalent to the Thanos of the DC universe—check out my explanation of Batman’s Knightmare sequences.

What do you think folks? Who is this dude and what’s he doing in Zod’s ship? Sound off in the comments below. We’ll (hopefully) learn more when the extended R-rated cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, dubbed the “Ultimate Edition”, is released on Blu-ray this summer. That cut adds 30 more minutes of footage to Zack Snyder’s superhero epic, so I’m very curious to see exactly where this particular scene fits in.

For more on Batman v Superman, peruse our recent coverage below:

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.