Since 2022’s The Batman was released to widespread acclaim, the sequel has quickly become arguably the most anticipated superhero film release of the last few years. After the bitter, untimely collapse of Zack Snyder’s vision of the DCEU (and Ben Affleck’s commendable turn as Bruce Wayne), Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s depiction of Batman as an emotionally stunted emo manchild with the potential for something greater resonated deeply with audiences and almost immediately received a green light for a sequel. (Not to mention the successful TV spin-off with The Penguin.)Now that pre-production has started to heat up for The Batman Part 2, fans have already started running wild with speculation as to what the follow-up might have in store — from pipe dream fantasies about a crossover with David Corenswet’s Superman to rumors that Reeves and company might be building towards the Court of Owls.
Even though the film hasn’t started production yet, there are still clues as to who Battinson might be facing off against in the sequel and which comic book storylines it might be pulling from for the sequel. The recent confirmation that Sebastian Stan is playing Harvey Dent, coupled with confirmation of Scarlett Johansson’s involvement in an undisclosed role, has led some fans to think that the film will be an even more direct adaptation of The Long Halloween than Nolan achieved with The Dark Knight – but there’s a small possibility the film could be pulling from an even more obscure source.
Batman: Earth One Could Predict A Batman 2 Twist
Alongside Stan’s casting, the belief that Johansson could play Harvey Dent’s wife Gilda, is another driving force behind the rumor that the film is adapting TLH. In the storyline, Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and District Attorney Harvey Dent team up to bring down the Falcone crime family and stop a serial murderer known as Holiday from targeting both the Falcones and their rivals, the Maronis. After Harvey is scarred with acid by Salvatore Maroni on the witness stand and becomes Two-Face, the book ends with a shocking revelation: while Alberto Falcone is eventually unmasked as Holiday and arrested during an assassination attempt against Sal, the final few pages reveal that the original Holiday murderer (the one who started the Falcone/Maroni gang clash) was actually Gilda Dent, who was trying to break the grip of the Falcones on Gotham and lighten her husband’s workload in the process, as their marriage was growing strained under the pressures of his job.
While Gilda Dent is the most likely answer as to who ScarJo is playing, and a straight adaptation of The Long Halloween would emphasize this reboot’s depiction of Batman as a sharp detective, there’s another dark horse option pulled from a non-canon source: Jessica Dent, from the Batman: Earth One graphic novels. The Earth One series was an imprint that began with 2010’s Superman: Earth One, designed to present a more modern, streamlined conception of certain heroes and their origins (much in the vein of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe and DC’s current Absolute Universe).
Jessica Dent made her debut in Batman: Earth One Volume Two as Harvey’s twin sister and was elected mayor after Batman exposed the corruption of the previous one, Oswald Cobblepot, in the first volume. She and Harvey were childhood friends of Bruce when they were all younger, and as an adult, she and Bruce fell in love while he attempted to help her and her brother root out the remaining compromised officials left behind by Cobblepot’s administration. In the process of their investigation, they discover that the same corrupt officials they’re looking for are also being targeted by a serial murderer version of The Riddler (one who shares a lot in common with Paul Dano’s version of the character).
Before they can act, however, Harvey is murdered during a riot at the Gotham City Police Department, and his face is scarred by a Molotov cocktail. Out of immense, maddening grief, Jessica scars her face in kind and eventually develops dissociative identity disorder in the aftermath. When a mysterious new crime boss claiming to be Harvey emerges in volume three, it’s inevitably revealed that Jessica has become a new version of Two-Face, one who has adopted her dead brother’s identity as a split-personality obsessed with taking revenge on Gotham for “his” murder.
Not The Long Halloween?
While certainly not as popular as The Long Halloween, the Batman: Earth One series has already subtly influenced Reeves’ Batman: in The Batman, Thomas Wayne ran a failed mayoral campaign, a plot point lifted from the Earth One comics, as was the idea that Alfred was a former military official who trained Bruce in combat.
It’s also worth considering that, if Sebastian Stan does become Two-Face, this will be the third Batman reboot to use the character as a villain – it would certainly be an unexpected twist for audiences to watch Harvey Dent perish, only to see Scarlett Johansson as Jessica become a female version of the villain. It’s definitely a much less likely theory than the idea that Johansson will simply play Gilda, but for a cinematic version of Batman that has already gone out of its way to stand apart from its predecessors, it would be a bold and radical swing for the franchise and Two-Face as a character.
