Spoiler Warning: This article briefly mentions plot elements of The Batman (2022).
There have now been 12 live-action movies starring Batman. There have been more animated Batman movies than there are blimps in the world. The Batman Arkham trilogy of games (Asylum, City, Knight) is now nine games long. Batman has his own LEGO sets, which were translated into four video games, which were then adapted into two big-budget movies, which were, in turn, translated into another three video games. Where Marvel grows dozens of nearly identical crops for mass circulation, DC focuses on a giant ear of Batman and rolls it around the country for comic fans to gnaw as it passes. The Dark Knight has no interest in dying any time soon, except for the 15 or so times in the comics where he dies.
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Matt Reeves’ The Batman was a smash hit for audiences and critics, netting an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and well-earning its upcoming sequels. Given the over-over-over saturation of Batman villains, with their own spin-off movies now winning Oscars, for Reeves to introduce a Batman with almost campy grime and thrillingly choreographed fight sequences would encourage him to find new villains to introduce as well. Audiences know Joker, Two-Face, Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze — now refilled doses of The Penguin, The Riddler, and Catwoman — while Batman has the greatest collection of villains of any comic superhero in history. Looking towards the sequels of the Reeves-verse, here are three possible villain team-ups that can maintain a hyperrealist aesthetic for the world’s greatest detective.
Team-Up 1: Hush, Black Mask, Killer Moth
Enter Thomas Elliot, Bruce Wayne’s childhood friend who tried to kill his parents for their inheritance and, now jealous of Wayne’s fortune, wants to kill him under the bandaged moniker of “Hush.” Enter Roman Sionis, who also killed his parents for their fortune and, now jealous of Wayne buying out his family’s company, wants to kill him under the masked moniker of “Black Mask.” Enter Prisoner 234026, also known as Cameron van Cleer, who crafted a false millionaire philanthropist persona to be the anti-Batman, with a Mothcave, Mothmobile, and the moniker “Killer Moth.” You now have a Gotham with four masked vigilantes with seemingly endless financial resources who are doing what they think is right.
Similar to how The Riddler was remodeled with anti-corruption sympathies for The Batman, each of these characters can be slightly remodeled to want to destroy Bruce Wayne and/or Batman in order to rid Gotham of its ultimate dictator, be that its billionaire or its police darling. Maybe Hush is willing to work with Batman in order to kill Bruce Wayne. Maybe Killer Moth is willing to work with Bruce Wayne in order to kill Batman. Maybe other noted foils of Batman from the comics, such as Wrath (trying to avenge the police shooting of his criminal parents) or Prometheus (trying to do the same thing for the same reasons) could be developed into a whole spectrum of off-brand bats. If the celebrity of Batman has taken Gotham, the real question isn’t if Batman can prove he’s the only one “not wearing hockey pads,” but if their attempted reigns cast questions on the ethics of Batman.
Team-Up 2: Poison Ivy, Anarky, Phantasm
Yes, Poison Ivy is not an obscure villain and has already been portrayed in a live-action Batman movie, but if you removed her unrealistic powers and focused on her violent activism to save the planet against corporate slaughter by fossil fuel companies, coal companies, and perhaps Wayne Enterprises, she’s a distinct character from the one Uma Thurman portrayed in Batman & Robin. If she’s poised alongside Anarky, a young vigilante seeking to stop capitalism, the military, and the police from harming the city’s working class and vulnerable, Batman has to reconcile with the fact that he’s a “corporate” superhero fusing Mickey Mouse and Henry Kissinger to promote and protect the interests of Gotham’s elite, simultaneously destroying both “small business” superheroes who threaten to harm his status quo and “charity” superheroes who threaten his PR as the messiah.
But maybe Batman doesn’t have to be the bad good guy, falling in love with a fellow Gotham University alum Andrea Beaumont and choosing to forfeit a life of crime-fighting for a peaceful one with Andrea. However, when Andrea’s father is killed due to debts to the mob, she dons a Grim Reaper outfit and becomes the Phantasm, killing the men responsible. If Batman felt the ethical thing to do was step back and allow Poison Ivy and Anarky to be Gotham’s vigilantes, what does he do if one of the villains they have to vanquish is the love of his life? How does Batman, a character created in 1939 under archaically justified top-down power systems, dispute that his purpose of “eradicating crime” isn’t just ineffective, but unjust, given crime is just a byproduct of hierarchal desperation?
Team-Up 3: The Court of Owls, Firefly, Mr. Zsasz, Professor Pyg, Calendar Man
When the British were colonizing India, they found venomous cobras in Delhi. They paid out bounties for cobra heads, then Indian entrepreneurs began breeding cobras to turn in the heads, then the aghast British canceled the program, then the breeders set their worthless snakes free, then the cobra problem worsened in Delhi. This “cobra effect” theorizes why road construction projects, police forces, and acne products are monetarily incentivized to do poor work: if the problem is solved, they can’t be paid to solve it anymore. It’s even a possible reason why Batman doesn’t kill: escaping from Arkham Asylum and Blackgate has become child’s play, and he’s only knighted if there are still dragons among us.
Gotham’s new mayor has taxed the living hell out of billionaires, has set up a multitude of social programs to aid the impoverished into the middle class, and half of Blackgate Prison had to be converted into Airbnbs because they simply don’t have enough crime anymore. Bruce Wayne no longer has the excess billions to buy space yachts every day, and Batman has no burglars to beat. The man thought this was his dream ending, but he’s still so filled with rage at the unjust killing of his parents that he needs to fight crime that doesn’t exist anymore.
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Bruce Wayne is approached by the Court of Owls, a secret organization of wealthy socialites interested in returning Gotham to a criminal cesspool where the rich were gods and the mortals chose between crime and poverty. Shamefully and for his own catharsis, Wayne accepts, so long as no villain ever gets as powerful and seemingly unbeatable as The Riddler again, and Wayne cosplays as a new mob boss under the alter ego of “Matches Malone.” He gives Garfield Lynns the flame technology to become Firefly and decimate poor neighborhoods to overwhelm city housing programs, able to deactivate the device himself should Firefly try to cross him. The Court pumps drugs laced with venom and fear toxin (the chemicals used by Bane and Scarecrow to induce strength and madness, respectively) into dealers’ portfolios to cause more violent crime and flood mental health programs, given Court members own Bannerman Pharmaceuticals and Ace Chemicals, the drugs’ manufacturers. The city’s housing and mental health programs are suddenly overwhelmed and like clockwork criminals emerge — the most exotic being serial killers Mr. Zsasz and Professor Pyg — the world’s greatest detective enlisted to capture them. All is well.
But things get far out of Wayne’s control. Now Calendar Man, directly inspired by The Riddler, creates elaborate mass slaughters around holidays and Batman is incapable of playing piper to all these serpents. He pleads with the Court of Owls to reduce some of their shared damage to the city, but they refuse, celebrating that the mayor is being blamed and the wealthy and mobs are soon to run the city again. Given the ultimatum, Batman chooses to defeat the Court’s assassins, the Talons, and ultimately tries to jail the Court’s members, who are protected by Gotham’s re-corrupted police and justice system. In the end, the Court goes back into hiding and Batman is left with a Gotham ravaged by crime, Batman recognized as its needed savior, and forever has to bear the guilt of knowing that for Batman to fight crime is an act of infanticide.
