Warning: The following article contains spoilers for The Batman’s ending. Please proceed with caution if you have yet to watch the film.
When it comes to Matt Reeves’ The Batman, two villains — Paul Dano’s Riddler and Colin Farrell’s Penguin, drive the narrative and give the titular hero some major grief. But the cinematic adaptations of comic books are nothing without subtle references about other characters hiding in plain sight, and the rebooted version of the Gotham city savior is the same, as it seemingly hints at the supervillain, Bane, with a brief but divisive scene towards the end of the film.
In case you are still holding out on watching The Batman, here is the last warning that the article will contain spoilers for The Batman’s ending.
Robert Pattinson’s Batman and his ties to Bane
The said hint hides in the closing minutes of the film where Batman suffers a close-range shotgun blast to his chest and is about to be finished off by one of the many Riddler fanatics. Thankfully, Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz) arrives at the last second and pulls him to safety after quickly dispatching the threat. But Bruce is too injured and dazed to even lift his head and can only watch helplessly as another Riddler copycat attacks her, ready to kill her in front of him.
Refusing to let Selina die, Batman musters enough courage to get up and injects himself with a bright green liquid which instantly rejuvenates him. He attacks the thugs aggressively, hitting him repeatedly without a single thought about his maxim to not take lives no matter how corrupt or evil the individual is.
But Inspector Gordon arrives in time and stops Bruce from turning into a killer. And the injured Batman, who was unable to even speak a few seconds ago, jumps down into the dangerously flooded Gotham Square Garden to help the citizens.
The mystery around the green liquid is one currently being the object of DC fans’ obsessive speculations. While some feel it was just something that gave Bruce a temporary boost of energy, many have rightly pointed out the anger and extreme aggressiveness that envelops the superhero the second he injects himself.
On the other side of the fence, user @ybtoren steadfastly argues that Wayne hit himself with a dose of adrenaline.
To which another replied by digging up lore from the source material.
To say the truth, its appearance and after-effects look a lot like the Venom that turned Bane into a superhuman in the comics. Also, the fact that the camera lingered a second too long at the injection in Batman’s hand only fuels theories that it was indeed Bane’s Venom.
What is Bane’s Venom?
Venom is majorly known for being the chemical substance that was altered by a scientist and used to experiment on the inmates of a prison, which included Bane. He was the only one who survived the new version of the drug and gained superhuman strength from it. DC fans have already met the live-action adaptation of the villain in the form of Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises.
But the chemical originally appeared in the five-part story arc, Batman: Venom, where Bruce got his hands on the performance-enhancing drug and got addicted to it. Given that we just saw a version of Batman who is stretching himself to his limits to carry out justice and apprehend criminals, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to speculate that Reeves actually included the Venom to hint at a near future (The Batman 2?) where we will get to see the mighty hero becoming a slave to the effects of this addictive drug as he wants to ditch his weaknesses as a mere human.
While The Batman openly teases the arrival of villains like Joker and Hush in future installments, if it is indeed the Venom that Bruce uses, then the arrival of Bane isn’t too far off either.