It’s incredible to think that there was a two-decade gap where nobody played the Joker on the big screen between Jack Nicholson’s scenery-chewing masterclass in Tim Burton’s Batman and Heath Ledger’s Academy Award-winning tour de force in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, because the Clown Prince of Crime seems to be popping up more regularly than ever before.
In the last seven years alone we’ve seen Jared Leto’s dismal tattooed tragedy in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad, before Joaquin Phoenix nabbed himself an Oscar of his own for Todd Phillips’ Joker, prior to Barry Keoghan surprised everyone by showing up unannounced in The Batman to confirm the arch-nemesis of Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader was alive, well, and incarcerated in Matt Reeves’ Gotham City.
With the latter two poised to return in their respective sequels, you could make a very strong argument that two iterations of the Jester of Genocide existing at the same time is plenty, if not more than necessary. And yet, James Gunn has sparked a thousand theories after the DC Studios co-CEO decided to regale his social media followers with a completely unprompted history lesson on the Joker’s origins.
Naturally, the first port of call for many was to assume the Joker will be part of The Brave and the Bold, the Gunn-backed reboot of the Dark Knight set to be directed by The Flash‘s Andy Muschietti. In all honesty, it would be a much smarter move to hold off for just a while seeing as Phoenix and Keoghan will be returning in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
We’ll see Batman’s ultimate antagonist eventually, of that there’s no doubt, but a little bit of breathing room goes a very long way.
