With The Penguin a few weeks away, Matt Reeves has already begun work on The Batman – Part II, and has now revealed how “fantastical” the franchise will be going forward. The first film featured supervillains The Riddler, Catwoman, and The Penguin, with a tease of the Joker for a potential sequel, and many fans have begun to speculate what foe Batman might fight against in the second movie. While Joker was teased, fans have also theorized The Court of Owls, Two-Face, and even Clayface could feature in the follow-up. Amid the speculation, Reeves has now seemingly ruled out several of the more outlandish supervillains, rejecting the use of one villain in particular.
Speaking with SFX Magazine (via Variety), Reeves addressed whether The Batman – Part II will feature some of Batman’s more supernatural or otherworldly foes, specifically The Gentlemen Ghost. The Gentlemen Ghost first appeared in “Flash Comics #88″ in October 1947 and is typically associated more as a foe of Hawkman and Hawkgirl or the Justice Society of America. However, Gentlemen Ghost recently appeared in Batman: Caped Crusader on Prime Video, a series Reeves produced, which led fans to wonder if this was potentially teasing less grounded villains for Reeves’s live-action Gotham City.
While Reeves has now said Gentlemen Ghost is too fantastical for what he has planned, he is not opposed to bringing villains with superpowers into The Batman universe if they can find a way that makes sense. Check out what Reeves had to say below:
“What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world. We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It’s meant to feel quite grounded. It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love.
That’s exactly what we want to do. Gentleman Ghost is probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”
What Villains Are Likely to Feature in The Batman Part 2?
Matt Reeves is seemingly taking a similar approach to Christopher Nolan when it comes to adapting Batman villains, going for more grounded characters like Joker, Catwoman, and Two-Face or taking villains like Bane and Ra’s Al Ghul and making them fit within the real world as opposed to super-powered foes such as Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, or Man-Bat. Of course, there are still plenty of villains that fit with Reeves’ parameters, from Hush to Professor Pyg to even Mad Hatter. All of which might mean the more fantastical villains could be saved for James Gunn’s DCU Batman in Brave in the Bold.
Reeves does leave the door open for some classic Batman foes to be reimagined within his world. Batman: Caped Crusader features the first DC incarnation of Clayface, who had no superpowers and was a former movie star turned criminal, which Reeves could bring into The Batman Part II. While The Batman was inspired by gritty 70’s crime dramas like Chinatown and Taxi Driver, as well as the work of David Fincher, The Batman – Part II could go for a body horror route inspired by the work of David Cronenberg or John Carpenter and put horrific new spins on Man-Bat, Killer Croc, or the classic Clayface.
In many ways, seeing Reeves try to take one of Batman’s more fantastical foes and make them fit within the world he created could be more interesting than accurate adaptations.
The Batman – Part II
opens in theaters on October 2, 2026.
