Matt Reeves’ Promises For ‘The Batman 2’ Might Confirm Hush Is The Villain
Director Matt Reeves is saying his dormant follow-up to his 2022 DC Elseworlds thriller, The Batman, will go places no film with The Dark Knight has before. We’ll believe it when we see it, but his bold claims as of late open the door for a villain never seen on the big screen, supposedly.
“I had a lot of ideas, and then with Mattson Tomlin, my writing partner, began the process of deep-diving into the comics. We sat together and we watched a lot of movies, honestly, and not all the movies were from the realm of Gotham,” Reeves told Josh Horowitz of Happy Sad Confused at the Emmys (via Games Radar).
He added that himself and Tomlin are keeping the focus on Bruce Wayne and delving deeper into his past, and maybe his psyche. “One of the explorations, for me, was to do something that pushes even further into the character of Bruce Wayne because the first story is so much about…Batman. I always wanted, in the movies, to make sure [they were] focused on his character,” Reeves said.
“I never wanted to lose Rob at the center of these stories – and that’s what we set our aim on. So, we had to pick the right villain that digs into his past. I won’t tell you where we ended up, but we’re super excited about it, and I will say it’s never really been done in a movie before,” he continued.
These remarks have us and most everybody else thinking we aren’t getting just any new foe with links to Bruce’s past, but one or perhaps two that have been rumored for a big-screen turn since The Batman’s storied production.
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At the time, when pandemic protocols were the norm, there was a rumor that Reeves was planning a trilogy that would introduce new foes in each film. In the second part, according to the rumor, Hush was going to be the bad guy Batman had to contend with. Moreover, if the story followed the comics, the bandaged baddie would pull strings to make Bruce’s life hell.
The rumor, which circulated on Reddit, was to the contrary, however. Though it’s rather old, the contention was that The Batman 2‘s Hush storyline would be a pastiche of smaller stories. Still, as Reeves is saying now, they weren’t going to be narrative threads seen before, at least not in live-action.
In the comics, Hush was surgeon Thomas Elliot, a childhood friend of Bruce, who became the villain out of jealousy, and used The Riddler to tell him everything he needed to know to be a threat to Batman.
Though the character has appeared in other media, he’s never appeared in a live-action feature, and his iterations were never as true to the source material as they could’ve been. In the DC Animated Universe, for instance, the Riddler was Hush, not just a middleman. (Never mind those CW Batwoman appearances, we’re better off forgetting).
The Batman made references to the Elliot family and links to Thomas Wayne, as well as a blatant name drop in one of Riddler’s clues. That was more of a lore-fueled Easter Egg for the fandom, but it could still affect the next movie.
Reeves might have also let on that Hush was his first choice years ago in a Twitter Q&A, so none of this is coming out of thin air. If the Aristotle-spouting master manipulator is at the heart of a new conspiracy that peels back a layer of Gotham’s seedy underbelly, the clues were all there (right under the carpet).
