Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, audiences have become accustomed and conditioned to blockbuster movies peppering plenty of sequel teases throughout the running time, which then typically culminates in a post-credits scene or two. While The Batman did tick those two boxes, director Matt Reeves says it wasn’t done as blatant bait.
Of course, that begs the question as to why you would hire Barry Keoghan for the role, spend hours applying terrifying prosthetic makeup to turn him into a hideously deformed Clown Prince of Crime, disseminate false information about the character he was playing, and then release a five-minute deleted scene, if there wasn’t a plan in mind.
Speaking on The Batman‘s commentary track, the filmmaker explained what he was hoping to accomplish by adding the Dark Knight’s most iconic arch-enemy into a movie that already boasted the Riddler, Catwoman, and Penguin.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Is this a set up for another movie?’ and to be honest it really isn’t … the last we’d seen [the Riddler] he was saying ‘Boom!’ in his window as the bombs went off, and we hadn’t yet seen him take in the fact that Batman had been able to pull things back from the brink.
So that was critical, actually, to the ending of the movie and to the finishing of the Riddler’s arc as well. What we’ll do with these characters in the future remains to be seen, but it was never meant to be an Easter egg scene, to say like, ‘Oh guess who we’re using in the next movie.’ “
From the outside looking in, The Batman and the subsequently unveiled extended interaction between Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader and Keoghan’s Joker definitely looks, sounds, and smells like sequel bait, but we’ll just have to see what the future of the BatVerse holds for the Jester of Genocide.
