We're sure you've all had a chance to watch The Batman at this stage, but just in case, spoilers for the ending of the movie follow.
Matt Reeves' acclaimed reboot is now streaming on HBO Max, and during the director’s commentary (currently available as an Apple exclusive), the filmmaker explained why he decided to include the much-discussed "Unnamed Arkham Prisoner" scene at the end of the movie.
The sequence introduces a mysterious individual with a very distinctive laugh (played by Eternals actor Barry Keoghan), who encourages The Riddler (Paul Dano) to keep his shin up after The Dark Knight (Robert Pattinson) foils his scheme. The scene certainly seems to imply that a team-up could be on the cards for the inevitable sequel, but Reeves has now clarified that it wasn't necessarily supposed to set up the next film.
“A lot of people ask me, ‘Is this a set up for another movie?’ and to be honest it really isn’t,” said the director. “This for me was tracking because Paul and The Riddler was in the action of the third act in a very particular way, and the last we’d seen him he was saying ‘Boom!’ in his window as the bombs went off, and we hadn’t yet seen him take in the fact that Batman had been able to pull things back from the brink and that his plan had not played out, I really wanted to see the end of that arc for Riddler.”
Reeves went on to reveal that he wanted to add the scene to bring closure to The Riddler's arc and give audiences the opportunity see Dano and Keoghan share the screen.
“So that was critical, actually, to the ending of the movie and to the finishing of the Riddler’s arc as well. What we’ll do with these characters in the future remains to be seen, but it was never meant to be an Easter egg scene, to say like, ‘Oh guess who we’re using in the next movie.’ It was meant to be something delicious for the audience to sort of experience those two characters meeting, and in fact for the Unseen Prisoner to say to him, ‘Riddle me this,’ which is of course right out of ‘Batman’ 66.”
Of course, this doesn't mean Keoghan definitely won't reprise the role for the sequel (a follow-up still hasn't been officially announced), but there's a lot of speculation that The Joker will have a part to play in the planned HBO Max Arkham Asylum series.
The movie originally included another scene with The Batman meeting The Joker in Arkham, which you can check out below.