Latest Batgirl Leaks Seem To Confirm Lex Luthor Is In Belle Reve And Danny DeVito’s Penguin Is Still Alive

JB Augustine |

Feb 25, 2022

Source: Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021), HBO Max

A new round of photos coming in from the set of Batgirl indicates how much Michael Keaton’s Batman is going to be incorporated into the larger DCEU, and continuity does not seem to come into play.

Via The Direct, we’ve learned The Gotham Globe — the newspaper in Batman and Batman Returns that Vicki Vale works for — exists, at least in the background, and the headlines reveal some telling things.

On the prop edition of the Globe, a piece of “Gotham litter,” shared by a Twitter user named Iain Shaw in a photo is the cover story “Lex Luther Jailed in Belle Reve Prison.”

Shaw’s photo was deleted but now that his tip is out there the headline verifies one of two things: Lex Luthor either exists in the universe of the Tim Burton movies or Keaton’s Batman, as suspected, is fully ensconced in the DCEU started by Zack Snyder after the events in The Flash.

With the latter being the likely case, the paper is obviously talking about the Lex played by Jesse Eisenberg and he’s been moved to Belle Reve from Arkham, where he was left at the end of Batman v Superman.

This baffling transfer puts him under the watchful eye of one Amanda Waller, the recruiter and ringleader of the Suicide Squad. Given that status, her intentions could be to nefariously use his genius for Black Ops or Waller might have more propitious plans.

Considering the two of them worked together in the past, she might be giving Luthor a base of operations away from the intrusive purview of capes to hatch a plot. What could that be? If he has easy access to metahumans, a certain Legion comes to mind.

That is just a theory which, honestly, probably won’t be developed or resolved by DC Films. And the same can be said for other Easter eggs contained in the Gotham paper.

For instance, a smaller headline at the bottom of the front page reads ”A Comeback for Cobblepot,” an obvious and problematic reference to The Penguin.

As you may know, Penguin died at the end of Batman Returns so the Oswald referenced, though he sounds like he’s involved in politics, can’t be the same one played by Danny DeVito unless the actions of The Flash in his movie erase events of the Burton films.

That’s only a remote possibility and it isn’t far-fetched to think the DCEU already has a Penguin we haven’t met who could be a threat in upcoming films outside of what Matt Reeves is planning.

How Michael Keaton and anything to do with his return to the cape and cowl fits into the larger plans at DC and HBO Max won’t be clear until The Flash and Batgirl premiere toward the end of 2022.

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