DC Just Set A Seriously High Bar For The Franchise’s Most Brutal On-Screen Death Only 30 Days Into 2025

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The first DC release of 2025 has set a high bar for the most brutal on-screen death of the year for the franchise. While Marvel is no stranger to having some intense deaths - as comic stories like Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe and MCU moments like John Walker killing someone with the Captain America shield can attest to - DC is often more associated with the darker side of the superhero genre, in part because of the franchise"s own wide range of brutal demises.
Be it Max Schreck being electrocuted to a crisp in Batman Returns, the Joker"s "pencil trick" bringing about an eye-watering demise in The Dark Knight, or the Riddler"s unhinged traps bringing about Saw-like murders in The Batman, every era of DC"s history has brought about at least one brutal death for whatever character was unfortunate enough to face it. As it stands, 2025"s DC releases have already proved to be no different, with the year having already set a considerable precedent for the most intense death of 2025 less than a full month into it.
2025's First Month Has Set A High Bar For DC's Most Brutal On-Screen Death Of The Year Close Harley Quinn season 5, episode 3 continues to pave the way for the story by giving an unpleasant villain a particularly brutal death. Season 5 previously saw Poison Ivy try to murder professor Jason Woodrue, who tried to kill her after failing to use his clandestine relationship with her to manipulate Ivy into giving him credit for her project, resulting in her becoming Poison Ivy after she"s forced to inject herself with an experimental serum to survive his murder attempt. However, Ivy"s attempt to kill Woodrue fails in the same way, with the character becoming DC villain the Floronic Man.
Surviving a murder attempt and becoming a sentient tree being seemingly only makes Woodrue worse, and he then endeavors to destroy Ivy altogether, first haunting her dreams like a superhero version of Nightmare on Elm Street, and then drawing her into The Green - a nature-based force all DC plant creatures are connected to - to torture and kill her. As such, it"s perhaps not that surprising that the Floronic Man"s fate is a particularly unpleasant one, with Harley finding his unconscious Green-connected body in the "real" world, and deciding to chop him to death.
While this alone doesn"t sound too unhinged for a superhero release, the plant-based nature of the Floronic Man means that Harley merely chopping bits off him - and even chopping him in half - doesn"t do the trick in terms of finishing him off. Realizing this, Harley decapitates the villain, only to learn that even this hasn"t killed him, and that she has just subjected him to more suffering. Eventually, the Floronic Man"s head is cut in half to finally end him, but the road to this point makes for a high early bar for DC"s most brutal on-screen death of 2025.
DC's Most Brutal On-Screen Death Of The Year Has Already Had Big Competition From The First Few Days Of 2025 Close As the first DC release to begin and end in 2025, Harley Quinn season 5 serves as a slightly unconventional but undeniably interesting start to DC"s 2025 release roster, very much continuing in the same fashion as the previous on-screen release for the franchise - Creature Commandos - which began at the very tail end of 2024. Creature Commandos features a range of brutal deaths for heroes and villains alike, which also vary from being emotionally devastating to feeling at least a little deserved based on the context at hand.
With that said, perhaps the most intense of these feature in Doctor Phosphorus" backstory in Creature Commandos episode 6, wherein he hunts down those responsible for his transformation and takes them down one by one in creative and unpleasant fashions. Though these scenes are certainly in close competition with Floronic Man"s death, they almost all tend to cut away from the final fatal moment, and this - combined with the fact Floronic Man is still alive and seemingly able to feel everything when his head is lopped off - seems to put him just above in terms of the sheer horrific implications.
2025's DC Releases Seem Set To Challenge The Current Death Record Close With all this said, DC"s future seems set to have this record change hands throughout the year. Though Superman is unlikely to get too intense due it being set to provide a more family-friendly installment, Peacemaker season 2 is scheduled to release shortly after Superman, and - given the bloodshed and chaos of the first season - it"s a safe bet that at least one character in the series will have a suitably unhinged death based on its prior track record. Similarly, Harley Quinn season 5 has 7 episodes left in its run, meaning it could well beat its own record.
If not, Matt Reeves" comments to Collider about Batman: Caped Crusader season 2 hopefully releasing in 2025 suggest another potential candidate for the 2025 title, as while it"s not all that bloodthirsty in its first season, deaths like the Penguin ordering her son to be put in a suitcase and then dumped in a body of water aren"t exactly lighthearted. With the Joker also seemingly set to debut in Batman: Caped Crusader season 2, there"s plenty of potential candidates who could define the future for DC and its take the 2025 death record down the line.

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