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Gotham City is about to get even more interesting. According to Deadline, Sebastian Stan is in talks to join the cast of The Batman: Part II. If Stan makes the leap to DC, he’ll join his fellow Avengers co-star Scarlett Johansson in exchanging the MCU for director Matt Reeves‘ grounded take on the Caped Crusader.
Like Johansson, Stan has a resume far stranger and more varied than his MCU work might suggest. Between Stan’s abilities and Reeve’s willingness to reinterpret even classic characters like the Penguin, the actor could play nearly anyone from Batman comics. Nonetheless, here are the six most likely candidates from Gotham who could next face off with Robert Pattinson‘s Batman.
DC Comics
Harvey Dent
Stan may be a couple years older than Pattinson, but both are high-profile leading men who can do Hollywood blockbusters and weird indie flicks, sometimes in the same year. So it would make sense for Stan to play an analogue to Bruce Wayne, and no character fits that description better than Harvey Dent. In every incarnation, Harvey is a handsome crusader who becomes Gotham City’s district attorney before a criminal attack (often by the Maroni crime family) leaves half of his face scarred. Given Stan’s ability to play intense leading men and weirdos, the switch from Harvey to Two-Face could take advantage of all of Stan’s strength’s as a performer.
Reeves has said that the villain in The Batman: Part II has “never really been done in a movie before,” which would obviously rule out Two-Face, a baddie in Batman Forever and most famously in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. But Reeves has also been drawing heavily from The Long Halloween, the classic 1996-1997 story by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale. Two-Face does appear in that story, but most of the time he’s just Harvey Dent. Furthermore, Harvey’s wife Gilda is the major killer in The Long Halloween.
In other words, Stan could play Harvey, but not necessarily Two-Face, and the villain of The Batman II is Gilda Dent instead of Two-Face. And with Johansson certain to be a major character, it would make sense for the two Marvel stars to become Gotham’s most notorious power couple.
DC Comics
Tommy Elliot/Hush
Speaking of Jeph Loeb, the writer also created another high-profile double for Bruce Wayne when he and Jim Lee gave the world Hush. Before he became the bandaged titular baddie of the series, Tommy Elliot was Bruce Wayne’s best friend. But where Thomas and Martha Wayne loved and cared for their son, the Elliots abused Tommy. Young Tom thus sought escape by killing his parents, ending their abuse and inheriting their fortune. But after Thomas Wayne saved Mrs. Elliot, the child develops a grudge that leads him to not only become a brilliant surgeon (like Thomas Wayne) but also the villain Hush. And Elliot furthermore schemes to ruin Bruce Wayne’s life.
Look, Hush isn’t the most interesting character (outside of the excellent Paul Dini story The Heart of Hush), but he is relatively well-known and he hasn’t appeared in a live-action Batman film yet. Moreover, The Batman set up a lot of breadcrumbs about Thomas and Martha Wayne’s imperfect past, including Thomas performing surgery on Carmine Falcone. It would be relatively easy to slot Hush into that world, and maybe Stan and Reeves could find something compelling to do with the baddie. At the very least he has a cool design.
DC Comics
Umberto or Pini Maroni
As much fun as the costumed baddies are, The Batman and its sequel still draw prime inspiration from The Long Halloween, which is mostly about Batman battling the Falcone and Maroni crime families. Between The Batman and The Penguin, the Falcones are mostly wiped out. However, The Penguin did introduce Clancy Brown as Sal Maroni, the head of the rival family. In that show, Cristin Milioti played Sofia Gigante (née Falcone), who manipulated them to get back at her own family. The time is right for the Maronis to menace Gotham once more.
Twin brothers Umberto and Pini Maroni are prominent characters in Batman: Dark Victory, Loeb and Sale’s sequel to The Long Halloween. After the death of their father Sal, Umberto and Pini become the heads of the family and enter into an alliance with Sofia Gigante to kill Two-Face, who murdered her father Carmine. Obviously, Reeves would have to change the characters to make them fit in the world of The Batman, but it would be fun to see Stan play a composite of the two, or to see him pull a Michael B. Jordan in Sinners and portray both Maroni twins.
DC Comics
Catman or Prometheus
To those who know him from the MCU, Stan excels at playing tortured but handsome heroes. In indie films such as I, Tonya, A Different Man, and The Apprentice, however, Stan tends to play pathetic losers and sad weirdos. Fortunately, DC Comics does have several characters who work as both Batman analogues and pathetic weirdos.
Both Prometheus and Catman were conceived as anti-Batmen, people who reached the pinnacle of humanity but put those skills to use for evil. Catman was a rich, bored guy who took to committing cat-themed crimes after getting tired of going on safaris. Gail Simone‘s Secret Six reimagined him as a highly capable fighter and decent human, but never lost sight of him being a kind of pathetic guy called Catman. Created by Grant Morrison, Prometheus was the son of two Manson-style hippie murderers killed by police. He subsequently devotes himself to waging war against the law. He achieves that goal by wearing a convoluted dumb helmet and regularly getting beat up by Batman, Huntress, and Green Arrow.
In short, both Catman and Prometheus are sad losers who would make for interesting counters to Pattinson’s Batman.
DC Comics
Victor Fries/Mr. Freeze
One of the most compelling rumors around Scarlet Johansson’s casting is that she will play Andrea Beaumont, Bruce Wayne’s lost love from Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm. That movie doesn’t really have a good analogue for Stan to play, but he would do a great job portraying the best villain from Batman: The Animated Series, Mr. Freeze. Before the great two-part episode “Heart of Ice,” Mr. Freeze was a corny gimmick villain. “Heart of Ice” made him a tragic character, someone whose outrageous plans stemmed from his love for doomed wife Nora.
Still, as soulful as Mr. Freeze can be, he remains a dude in a form-fitting refrigerator. Stan could certainly hit both the dramatic beats of the character while retaining his fundamental silliness. And if Stan brings any depth to Mr. Freeze, then his take would fit Reeves’ “not really done before” rule for the Batman II villain, as even a modicum of humanity would distinguish him from the goofy character that Arnold Schwarzenegger played in Batman & Robin.
DC Comics
Jervis Tetch/Mad Hatter
Fundamentally most Batman villains are guys with undiagnosed mental or behavioral issues. Nowhere is that more apparent than Gotham’s ultimate creepy weirdo, Jervis Tetch, aka the Mad Hatter. An awkward scientist with a love for Lewis Carroll, Mad Hatter uses the headwear he creates to read or control the minds of his enemies. Throughout the Bronze and Modern Ages of comics, Tetch has become even more unsavory, playing up the ickier parts of Carroll’s portrayal of the young girl in Alice in Wonderland.
While Reeves doesn’t have to go that far, even in a presumably hard PG-13 movie like The Batman: Part II, he can key into the character’s essential ickiness. But Stan could bring a different energy to the character, often portrayed as slight and odd-looking. In fact, Stan already gave us a unique take on the Hatter for the Disney series Once Upon a Time, so he’ll be well-practiced for this weirdo.
The Batman: Part II releases on Oct. 1, 2027.
The post The Batman 2 – Who Will Sebastian Stan Play? appeared first on Den of Geek.
