In the space of a single movie, admittedly one that was close to three hours long, Matt Reeves’ The Batman did an incredible job laying the groundwork for the continued adventures of Robert Pattinson’s title hero.
On top of establishing a slightly tweaked origin story for Bruce Wayne that would go on to both inform the Dark Knight he’d become and drive the narrative, the supporting ensemble were given plenty of time to establish their own place in Reeves’ Gotham City, and almost all of the key players survived through to the end credits to set them up for potential returns.
The arcs of Jeffrey Wright’s Jim Gordon, Zoë Kravitz’s Catwoman, Paul Dano’s Riddler, Andy Serkis’ Alfred, Colin Farrell’s Penguin, and Paul Dano’s Riddler were left open to continue, and that’s without even mentioning the cameo appearance from a certain person guaranteed to factor heavily into the inevitable sequels.
You might have thought that Robin wouldn’t fit particularly easily into the gritty and grounded aesthetic of The Batman universe, but during an appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Reeves wasn’t ruling out a future appearance from the Boy Wonder by any stretch.
“Maybe. We’ll just say maybe. I don’t know. Here’s the thing, I have a lot of ideas about what I want to do. I’m not sure what the next story is. For me, whatever that story’s going to be, it’s going to be to take these characters — and specifically Batman’s character — and put them in some kind of emotional jeopardy. So when you talk about what you’re talking about, there may be a really interesting story. There’d have to be emotional stakes to get drawn into that character’s story.
I don’t want that character to become a cypher. I don’t want to be like, ‘Okay, so we saw it wasn’t an origin tale, but you know what, that was kind of [Batman’s] origins and now he’s just perfect.’ No, you need to test the character again and again and again. And for me, yeah, there might be something in that. I don’t know. There’s a deep-dive that already happened at the beginning and now I’m gonna have to deep-dive again if we have the chance to make another one and so we shall see.”
There are definitely plenty of options on the table from a storytelling perspective, but fans would likely agree it’s about time Robin returned to the big screen. We haven’t seen Dick Grayson since Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin (unless you count the Joseph Gordon-Levitt reveal at the end of The Dark Knight Rises), so we’re about due.
