Summary:  Brainiac and Lex Luthor join forces, merging themselves together to create a new life form, and begin a plan to use the Dark Heart technology to strip the planet of its knowledge in one stroke.  Cut off from the extended League, it falls to the original seven members to stop both Luthor and Brainiac from destroying the world.

JL Mission Roll Call:  Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, J’onn J’onzz, Shayera Hol

Featured Characters:  Lex Luthor, The Flash

Villains:  Lex Luthor, Brainiac

Cartoon Network on “Divided We Fall”:  “When most of the Justice League is incapacitated, who will be left to stand against the League’s deadliest enemies (courtesy of The World’s Finest)?”

Dwayne McDuffie on the shift in the Cadmus arc’s direction:  “Cadmus wasn’t the point of the season, it was merely one means to externalize the League’s internal conflicts.  Frankly a League-fights-Cadmus climax would have been a big letdown.  That’s why it took place in Part Three.

“[Besides], I’m not sure I want to have the heroes fighting the President on a children’s cartoon (although Captain America did it when I was a kid and I’m not too scarred; courtesy of DwayneMcDuffie.com).”

Bruce Timm on the Luthor / Brainiac team-up:  “We had the Luthor / Brainiac thing planned pretty early on…definitely by the time we did ‘The Doomsday Sanction’ (why else would we have spent so much time in that episode setting up his presidential bid?; courtesy of Toon Zone).”

Dwayne McDuffie on the Luthor / Brainiac team-up:  “I love ‘Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow,’ but it never crossed my mind while I was working on this.  We did talk about various incarnations of the Luthor / Brainiac team, though (courtesy of DwayneMcDuffie.com).”

Bruce Timm on Luthor / Brainiac’s hybrid design:  “I didn’t have anything lying in front of me when I did the Luthor / Brainiac design.  I did tons and tons and tons of drawings before I found something I liked.  Sometimes I have an idea in my head and my hand won’t respond (courtesy of ToyFare Magazine).”

Dwayne McDuffie on Lois and Clark:  “I can say in the first draft, Clark revealed his identity to her.  We were explicitly told not to do it (courtesy of DwayneMcDuffie.com).”

Bruce Timm on “Divided We Fall”:  “Yeah, we originally wanted to have Superman finally reveal his secret identity to Lois at the end—woulda been a nice little bit of fan-service, a little last-minute icing on the cake, but it was off-point.  Clark humbly agreeing with Lois that Superman is ‘only human’ (therefore allowed to make mistakes as long as he learns from them, and never loses touch with that humanity) is exactly the correct way to end the episode (courtesy of Toon Zone).”

Commentary

Commentary coming soon!

Image courtesy of The World’s Finest.

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