When we first saw that desecrated Robin suit in Batman V Superman, we assumed we’d eventually get the backstory about what happened to the Dark Knight’s protégé in future DCEU movies. As it happens, though, the franchise has gone in a different direction and we never got the full story. We’ve had to rely on revelations from the filmmakers, then, to help us piece together what happened.
Now, thanks to the movie’s costume designer, we’ve learned exactly how Robin died. Douglas J. Stewart, AKA @AgentBrown1, explained the truth on Instagram. He shared a close-up image of one of Robin’s gauntlets, blackened and peeling, and revealed “a bit of detail” about it in his caption. It turns out Jared Leto’s Joker “brutally murdered” the Boy Wonder and then, just for laughs, set him alight.
Here’s Stewart’s full caption:
“A bit of detail on Robin’s gauntlet. He was brutally murdered and then set ablaze by the Joker. The story had to be told in the salvaged costume on display inside the Batcave. Aging and specialty distressing needs to tell these unscripted tales that support the main framework of the film. Here we had to create a Robin Suit in a matter of days. Using what we had and then figure out how to modify it all as well as building the support interior. It was a lot of fun.”
Originally, we assumed that Zack Snyder had simply lifted Robin’s death from the comics, where Jason Todd is beaten to death by the Joker in “A Death in the Family.” We’ve since discovered, though, that the dead Robin is Dick Grayson. And now we’ve been told that not only was Grayson brutally beaten like Todd was in the comics, but then his body was burned. Yup, that sounds like something suitably grimdark that Snyder would do.
The interesting thing here is that there’s a chance we could get to see this tragic event play out, after all. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is set to be the missing chapter in the director’s DC saga that the 2017 team-up flick failed to be, so he’s expected to further explore ongoing plot threads like the coming of Darkseid and the Knightmare timeline. Remember, Leto is also on board for the reshoots and we’ve recently heard that one of his scenes is a flashback to Robin’s death, so we might just get to see it unfold on screen.
