SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for The Batman. If you have not yet seen the film, proceed at your own risk!
The ending of Matt Reeves’ The Batman is not one that most savvy movie-goers would classify as “happy.” Not only is the entirety of Gotham flooded, but the political and judicial systems are a total wreck thanks to the deaths of multiple important figures and the exposure of spectacular corruption. The city is a mess – and the circumstances leave all of the principal players in the blockbuster in dramatically enticing and fascinating positions.
Where exactly do all of the major characters land at the end of The Batman, and what kinds of futures do they individually face? It’s in attempting to answer that broad question that I have built this guide, summarizing the status of the principal heroes and villains going into the development of a sequel…
Bruce Wayne/Batman
At the start of The Batman, Bruce Wayne is faced with a confounding conundrum. While he has spent two years putting on the cape and cowl to try and stop crime in Gotham, statistics only show things in the city getting worse. He’s been effective in his investigations and inspired fear from the shadows, but he finds himself no closer to reaching his goals.
By the end of the long week that stretches from Halloween to Election Day, he figures it out: fear is not an effective tool in creating positive change, but hope is. His aim should not be vengeance, but justice – and it’s with that evolved philosophy that he plans to truly help the city he loves during a time of great panic and destruction.
Edward Nashton/The Riddler
The Riddler scores a large number of terrifying victories in the execution of his master plan in The Batman. He misses his shot trying to kill Bruce Wayne and Gotham’s mayor-elect (more on her in a minute), but he does orchestrate the deaths of the former mayor, the police commissioner, the district attorney, and Carmine Falcone – not to mention that he and his army of followers flood the city in detonating a coordinated series of explosions.
Of course, at the end of the film he is successfully captured and put behind bars thanks to the efforts of Batman – but just because he’s the latest inhabitant of Arkham Asylum doesn’t mean he’s no longer dangerous. In fact, a real threat is now brewing thanks to the fact that he’s made a new friend in an unidentified fellow prisoner who is very clearly The Joker.
Selina Kyle/Catwoman
We learn a lot about Selina Kyle through her brief relationship with the titular Dark Knight in The Batman, and one thing that stands out is that Gotham has brought her a lot of pain. Her history and relationship with Carmine Falcone, who is revealed to be her father, is all kinds of awful, and her girlfriend is murdered because she knows a secret big enough to tear the city apart. Can you blame her for wanting to leave?
In Catwoman’s final scene in The Batman, she says a somber goodbye to her new heroic friend and says that she is going to try and start a new life for herself in Bludhaven – another city from the pages of DC comics that isn’t terribly far away from Gotham. She drives off on her motorcycle, her cats safely contained in crates on the back… though something tells us that we’ll see more of her in the future.
Lt. James Gordon
Within the Gotham Police Department, Lt. James Gordon is shown to be a kind of controversial figure. He has fully embraced Batman as a positive force for the city, and it’s clearly shown that it’s not a majority opinion. Still, he stands by the masked vigilante, and he is proven to be right for doing so given everything that unfolds at Gotham Square Garden and the attempted assassination of Bella Reál.
We all know that James Gordon will eventually be named Commissioner of Gotham PD, and while The Batman features the murder of Commissioner Pete Savage, it feels unlikely that he will be thrust into that job immediately after the events that transpire in the movie.
Carmine Falcone
This one is pretty simple, as Carmine Falcone doesn’t actually make it to the end of the movie. As The Riddler discovers before any of the heroes, Falcone was the informant who provided the Gotham Police Department with the necessary evidence to take down Sal Maroni, and he is assassinated by the film’s principal antagonist when he exits the Iceberg Lounge as is brought “into the light.”
It’s a common trope in comic book movies that characters never actually stay dead, but given Matt Reeves’ commitment to realism in this canon, it seems pretty fair to say that we won’t see Carmine Falcone in the sequel.
Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin
Is Gotham ready for the rise of The Penguin? If not, it should be, as the end of The Batman finds him in a fortuitous position that is in no way of his own making. At the start of the film, Oswald Cobblepot is the right hand man for Carmine Falcone, but, as discussed, he winds up without a heartbeat prior to the movie’s big climax. With Sal Maroni still in prison thanks to the information that Falcone provided the police, there is a serious power vacuum created in the Gotham crime world, and Cobblepot is in a better position than any to fill it.
But while Cobblepot’s circumstances are advantageous from one perspective, one also can’t ignore that making his move would mean putting a big target on his back for the Caped Crusader. The Batman already establishes animosity between the two characters, and comic book and live-action history with The Penguin suggests that they don’t end up making peace with their moral differences.
Alfred Pennyworth
The Riddler may have missed his opportunity to assassinate Bruce Wayne, but he most definitely did come close to killing the person nearest and dearest to the billionaire’s heart: his loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth. There is a brief moment in The Batman when you wonder if the character might be dead, but that fear quickly fades when it shows him recovering in a hospital bed.
Because of his sustained injuries, Alfred doesn’t have a particularly big role to play in the third act of Matt Reeves’ blockbuster, but he is shown to be on the mend in the back half of the story. He is shown to be conscious and communicative when Bruce comes to see him asking for the truth about his parents, and it looks like he will make a full recovery before the start of the next chapter in this series.
Mayor Bella Reál
The good news: Bella Reál has been elected as the new mayor of Gotham. The bad news: Bella Reál has been elected as the new mayor of Gotham. Being the leader of a major metropolitan city is an amazing opportunity to kick start change and make things better for the citizenry, but it’s also a sincerely dangerous job, as perfectly illustrated by what happened to her predecessor, Mayor Don Mitchell, Jr., and the attempt on her life during her Election Day speech.
Certainly one interesting aspect of Bella Reál’s first term will be her relationship with Batman, as she might not totally approve of his methods, but must appreciate the fact that he saved her life. That’s a pretty damn powerful ally for the Caped Crusader to have, and it will be interesting to see how it affects things moving forward.
The Batman is now playing in theaters (crushing at the box office), and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for all of the latest updates about sequel and where the series goes from here. To read about all of the features that are presently in development for theatrical and streaming release, check out our Upcoming DC Movies guide.
