If you haven't seen The Batman, there are a few spoilers ahead.

Director Matt Reeves, who is enjoying a huge success with his noir take on The Batman, has a few hints as to the future of one of Batman's main villains in his rogues gallery, The Joker. While he was speaking with Den of Geeks DC Stardom, Reeves spoke about his version of the character and where he may end up in the new Batman universe which will span both film and television series on HBO Max.

At the end of the film, Paul Dano's The Riddler is locked away next to a fellow Arkham Asylum inmate who is seen mostly through a grimey cell door window. His jovial demeanor is a dead give away as to who this character is, though he is simply credited as "Unseen Arkham Prisoner," played by Barry Koeghan.

"What you're seeing is a pre-Joker Joker, actually. We go back to the Conrad Veidt, The Man Who Laughs inspiration, which is a Bob Kane-Bill Finger reference. Obviously, that guy has a congenital disease. He's sort of like Phantom of the Opera, he can't not smile. Instead of being like the story of the Elephant Man, where his grotesque outward appearance sort of belied the beautiful inside, this would form his nihilistic worldview and he would have an insidious understanding of human nature. That's kind of where this psychology comes from in who this guy would be."

There is, however, a deleted scene which should be available when the film hits home release, where The Batman visits this early iteration of The Joker in Arkham. Reeves talked to IGN about the missing introduction to the character.

"He goes to see another killer that he's clearly had an experience with in these first two years. And this killer in this story is not yet the character that we come to know, right? So everybody's in their infancy. So in the comics, these characters often declare their alter egos in response to the fact that there's a Batman out there. And so here, we have a Joker who's not yet the Joker."

Matt Reeves seems to have one of the strongest handles on the denizens of Gotham City. I mean, the idea of actually making him an actual detective and not just an arm breaking brute. It's going to be interesting to see how he goes forward after The Batman's success.

Tags
Matt Reeves, The Batman, The Joker