Based on the first trailer for The Batman, it appeared pretty clear that Paul Dano’s Riddler was going to be the primary antagonist of the Dark Knight’s latest reboot. That being said, the fact that director Matt Reeves managed to cobble such an impressive preview together with just a few weeks of shooting completed means that any further promo spots are going to have plenty more material to choose from, so the narrative might not be as cut and dried as it seems.
Reeves has already teased that Dano is going to blow people’s minds as the slightly renamed Edward Nashton, and The Batman will essentially tell the origin stories of the Riddler, Catwoman and Penguin, with Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader the relative veteran out of the central quartet despite having been on the job for little over a year.
However, there’ve been rumors and theories making their way online with some degree of frequency claiming that Dano might not even be the real Riddler or the true villain of The Batman at all, with Dunkirk star Barry Keoghan being pegged as the potential culprit. Whatever the case, we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones who told us Ben Affleck would be returning for The Flash weeks before it was confirmed – that Warner Bros. are in the early stages of developing a Riddler spinoff.
Plot details remain unclear at this early stage, but we know that it’ll take place after Reeves’ film and focus on the character’s exploits around Gotham City following the events of The Batman. Apparently, the studio is pretty confident that audiences are going to love this new take on the Riddler and are now keen to explore more of the Prince of Puzzles by giving him his very own spinoff.
