‘Krypton’: Here’s Why Cygnus 4019 Is Important From The Comics

Krypton- Darkseid - Cygnus 4019

There’s a lot to unpack from the Krypton Season 1 finale, “The Phantom Zone” as we eagerly wait for Season 2. And when the show does come back, it has to follow up on the absolutely bananas tease dropped in the episode: the planet Cygnus 4019.

***Spoilers for Krypton past this point***

In the finale, Brainiac (Blake Ritson) is taking the city of Kandor off the face of Krypton, but already has his eyes on his next target. When General Zod (Colin Salmon) approaches him to make a deal for the survival of Krypton, he mentions the planet by name: Cygnus 4019. Zod also teases that Brainiac would probably be very interested in the technology on the planet.

Unfortunately for The Collector of Worlds, he never makes it there. Instead, Brainiac gets sucked into The Phantom Zone along with Seg-El (Cameron Cuffe), leaving his ship behind. Kandor is saved, Krypton is saved, and history is rewritten, allowing Zod to take over the universe. Oh, and Doomsday gets released, so that’s bad news.

In fact, if Zod and company are going to stop Doomsday, they might need to head to the planet we just mentioned. Why? Read on.

Cygnus 4019 In The Comics

There are a lot of alien worlds in the DC Comics source material. You probably know the name Krypton. You might even have heard of Thanagar, home of Hawkman; or Oa, the base of the Green Lanterns. But Cygnus 4019 has only briefly shown up, so you’d be forgiven if the reference passed you by.

It actually has only shown up in one comic (and a few tie-in issues of “Catwoman” and “Justice League of America”). That would be 2008’s “Salvation Run” by Bill Willingham and Lilah Sturges, with art by Sean Chen. The book was part of DC’s massive lead-up to “Final Crisis,” an event by Grant Morrison that was supposed to the, well, final crisis in the DC Universe.

In order to get events rolling, most of the major supervillains in the DC books were gathered up by Suicide Squad leader Amanda Waller, and sent to an alien planet. That includes The Joker, Lex Luthor, most of the Flash’s Rogues and dozens more.

That planet is Cygnus 4019, and it turns out to be a horrible place to visit. It’s filled to the brim with traps, deadly creatures and weird tech, because it was original a training planet for Apokolips. Yeah, the home of DC uber-villain Darkseid.

The concept, interestingly, was first created by Game of Thrones‘ George R.R. Martin.

So What Does That Mean For Cygnus 4019 On Krypton?

Potentially a lot. I’d doubt Season 2 will show a repeat of the “Salvation Run” comic. But it might mean that the insane roster of supervillains we’ve seen in Season 1 will expand beyond heavy hitters Doomsday, General Zod and Brainiac, to include the number one DC bad guy Darkseid. Or, at the very least, we’ll start to get teases of the New Gods and Apokolips tech.

Suffice to say going from Krypton to Cygnus 4019 to the introduction of a live-action TV Darkseid is… A stretch. But hey, I would not have predicted the insane places this show went in its first season.

And Zod with parademons? Not great, Bob.

Be sure to subscribe to our Krypton podcast for recaps as soon each episode is done airing!

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