By Madison Garcia | Technology & Gaming Correspondent
Films and stuff are usually Jackie’s thing, but he doesn’t mind me doing CBMs because he won't and I will anyway.
GOTHAM CITY (INTERNET) — At approximately 9:47 a.m. on a Tuesday that will be remembered by approximately forty-three thousand people until lunch, director Matt Reeves released the official cast announcement for The Batman Part II, confirming what two years of obsessive Reddit triangulation had predicted with roughly forty percent accuracy, which is worse than a coin flip but better than my GPA.
The film arrives October 1, 2027. Gotham will be covered in snow. The villain, Reeves has teased, “hasn’t really been done before.” I have spent eleven hours thinking about what that means and have reached several conclusions, all of which are probably wrong, and one of which involves a character I invented while dehydrated at 3 a.m.
What We Know
The returning cast is substantial: Robert Pattinson as Batman, Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, Andy Serkis as Alfred, Colin Farrell as the Penguin, Jayme Lawson as Mayor Bella Reál, and Gil Perez-Abraham as Officer Martinez. This is the core of what made the first film work — a Gotham that felt less like a comic book and more like a mid-century noir photograph someone left out in the rain, which is to say: beautiful, damaged, and probably carrying tuberculosis.
New additions: Sebastian Stan as Harvey Dent (rumored), Scarlett Johansson as Gilda Dent (rumored), Charles Dance as Christopher Dent (a character I initially could not locate in any canonical Batman text, which I take as a personal challenge and also a sign that I need to touch grass), Sebastian Koch in an unspecified role, and Brian Tyree Henry in an unspecified role that I will now spend the next eighteen months speculating about instead of doing literally anything else.
Notably absent: Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle and Barry Keoghan as the Joker. The internet has already filed the appropriate grievances. I counted thirty-one separate threads on the subject before lunch. I ate lunch at 11:15.
A Field Report from the Comment Sections
User @GothamNightWatch posted: “Sebastian Stan as Two-Face is the most obvious casting choice since they cast the guy who looks exactly like Batman as Batman.” This received 4,208 upvotes. By noon it had a Wikipedia citation. By 2 p.m. someone had added it to their graduate thesis.
The Joker discourse is operating on a separate emotional register. “Barry Keoghan’s absence from this list is a tragedy the scale of which I am not equipped to discuss,” wrote @KeoghanOrNothing in a thread that has since been locked by moderators. The moderator’s note: “Please use the designated grief thread. Grief thread users are reminded that this is a Batman sequel, not a funeral.”
There is a designated grief thread. It has 947 replies. Seventy-three of them are just the word “BETRAYED” in all caps.
My Speculation, Which Is Almost Certainly Incorrect
Christopher Dent exists in the comics as Harvey’s abusive, mentally ill father, a detail I discovered approximately forty minutes after filing my first draft, which means Charles Dance is playing a character whose entire personality is ‘menacing patriarch.’ I am not saying this is typecasting. I am also not not saying it. The alternative is that Reeves has expanded the role into a full-blown villain, or that Christopher Dent is actually Ra’s al Ghul, or this is all an elaborate setup that will make sense in retrospect and embarrass me specifically.
I believe the plot will involve Gotham’s water supply, a secret society of city planners, and a flashback to a 1960s municipal corruption scandal that Harvey Dent uncovers while prosecuting the wrong person. I have no evidence for this. I feel strongly about it. I have drawn a diagram. It's more elaborate than I'll ever admit.
Brian Tyree Henry is playing either Lucius Fox, a corrupt alderman, or someone named Victor who will die in the second act to motivate Batman. I will update this prediction as new information becomes available. I will not update my resume.
On Robert Pattinson Specifically
I want to be transparent: I am not an unbiased observer. I watched Twilight seven times in middle school. I watched it twice more after The Batman came out, which I told myself was for thematic research. It was not for thematic research. I have also watched the lighthouse scene from The Lighthouse seventeen times, which I told myself was for atmospheric comparison. It was not for atmospheric comparison. Robert Pattinson playing a brooding, nocturnal creature who struggles with his nature and has complicated relationships with authority figures is a casting choice that works on more levels than I am comfortable talking about in IRREVERENT.
The Institutional Response
Warner Bros. released a statement noting that The Batman Part II “exists within its own independent narrative framework,” which is corporate speak for ‘this is an Elseworlds project and please stop asking if it connects to the Peacemaker universe.’ Three fans in /r/DCEUleaks immediately interpreted this as confirmation of a multiverse crossover. Warner Bros. has not responded to follow-up inquiries, which is either significant or simply because it was a Tuesday afternoon and they had other things going on, such as existing.
What Comes Next
October 1, 2027 is 504 days from today. The snow-covered Gotham aesthetic suggests a film that will feel, tonally, like standing outside at 2 a.m. waiting for something to happen. That is not a criticism. That is a promise. I have done this. I will do it again.
The villain “hasn’t really been done before.” I have a list and it's twenty-two characters long. Seven are probably too expensive. Three would require extensive prosthetics. One I invented myself and then forgot wasn’t real. His name is Cornelius P. Hinge and he controls all the doors in Gotham. I will not be taking questions.
I will be in the theater on opening weekend. I will have seen the trailer approximately forty times. I will have been wrong about the plot in ways that will seem obvious in retrospect.
That’s the deal. See you in Gotham.
Madison Garcia covers tech, gaming, and occasionally comic book movies.
Editor's Note: Christopher Dent does exist in the comics. I know this because I have a filing cabinet full of Batman back issues that I absolutely did not buy for "research" in 2019. He's Harvey's abusive father. Charles Dance playing a menacing patriarch is great typecasting: give him a glass eye that doubles as an explosive device, and it becomes genius. I'm leaving your discovery timeline in because it's funny and also because I found out about Christopher Dent in 2019 while not doing research.