Superman's Animated Krypto Shorts Rescue The Best Abandoned MCU Idea

James Gunn's "Superman" has performed well theatrically. It's a movie that has resonated both with critics weary of superhero movie slop and also with audiences who were hesitant to believe in yet another attempt at bringing the Man of Steel to the big screen.

In true Gunn fashion, this is an earnest, sincere, and silly superhero movie that fully embraces its comic book roots rather than try and hide them behind a gloomy and uber-serious tone. Indeed, "Superman" features kaiju fights, a Green Lantern with a ridiculous haircut, Lex Luthor yelling video game fight combos, literal monkeys working on keyboards as internet trolls, and also Krypto the Superdog being simultaneously the cutest and also worst dog on the planet.

Of course, the success of Krypto was rather immediate and noticeable, with the movie inspiring an increase in dog adoptions in the U.S., and leading to us speculating whether James Gunn's newly announced follow-up to "Superman" might just be a Krypto movie. Even if he doesn't get his own feature film (though don't forget about that recent animated "DC League of Super-Pets" movie), Krypto did just get his own series of short animated films.

That's right, Krypto is the star of his own show! Warner Bros. just released the first episode of an animated shorts series titled "Krypto Saves the Day" on HBO Max, with more episodes dropping throughout the year and into 2026. The shorts are 2D animated, with the first episode following Krypto causing all sorts of chaos through Metropolis before saving a school bus full of children. It's cute, funny, and it also rescues an abandoned idea from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Back in the early days of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel released a few short films titled One Shots that were included as special features on some Blu-ray and home video releases of its movies. These were meant to be self-contained stories that answered some small unanswered questions or simply spent time with side characters people liked. There were a couple that told stories about Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) going about his daily life as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., one about a random couple who find a discarded Chitauri gun in the aftermath of "The Avengers," and also the silly "Team Thor" mockumentary short videos about Thor moving to Australia and living with a roommate in the aftermath of "Captain America: Civil War."

Though these were mostly silly and unnecessary, the shorts could also have an impact or fill in the gaps of the movies. "All Hail the King" followed up "Iron Man 3" and focused on Ben Kingsley's character from that movie, shown to be an actor hired to pose as The Mandarin. (The company initially had very different plans for that character.) There was also "Agent Carter," which directly led to Hayley Atwell starring in her own TV series of the same name as the titular Peggy Carter.

The "Krypto" shorts seem to be in the same vein as Marvel's One Shots. They're silly, cute shorts that expand the world of the movie and the cinematic universe, while still remaining their own separate thing. It lets people spend more time with characters they like without forcing them to do homework to understand what will happen next in the cinematic universe. And after the credits scenes in "Superman" didn't present any world-changing teases for what's to come, we're glad DC is embracing this methodology and taking the "no homework required" approach so far. Let's see how long they keep it up.