Let’s Talk About Barry Keoghan in ‘The Batman’

Barry Keoghan was briefly in The Batman, and by “brief,” I mean if you did not already know that Barry Keoghan was in the movie, you probably wouldn’t have realized it was him at all, because he’s in shadows and talking to the Riddler about making a team.

**Spoilers for The Batman lie ahead.**

Keoghan is playing the Joker, something that would have been exhausting a couple of years ago, but seeing Keoghan’s body of work has shown me just how great he’d be as the Clown Prince of Gotham. In the scene, he’s hidden in shadow when he’s speaking to the Riddler. “What is it they say?” the shadowed figured says. “One day you’re on top. The next, you’re a clown.” 

He makes a riddle about the two of them being friends and laughs and that’s pretty much all we got to see of Keoghan’s take on the Joker in this film. But there is, apparently, more that was filmed for the Joker. Even if we’re not sure he’ll come back for a second film.

In an interview with Variety, director Matt Reeves confirmed that Keoghan was the Joker but didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up about when we’ll see him again. “It’s not an Easter egg scene,” he said. “It’s not one of those end credits Marvel or DC scenes where it’s going, like, ‘Hey, here’s the next movie!’ In fact, I have no idea when or if we would return to that character in the movies.”

The deleted scene

There was supposedly, at one point, more of Keoghan’s Joker in the film, but it just didn’t fit with the flow of the rest of the movie. “I thought he would be really insecure about this and he’d probably want to find some way to get into the [Riddler’s] mindset, like in ‘Manhunter’ or ‘Mindhunter’ — this idea of profiling somebody, so you can predict his next move,” Reeves told Variety.

The scene is set up as Bruce going into Arkham to talk to the Joker to try and understand what he’s up against with the Riddler. “And this guy says, ‘It’s almost our anniversary, isn’t it?’” Reeves explained. “You realize that they have a relationship, and that this guy obviously did something, and Batman somehow got him into Arkham.”

In the film, it is the Riddler who brings up to Batman that they are the same, that they’re trying to do the same thing to Gotham just in different ways, but in this missing scene, Bruce apparently asks the Joker how the Riddler thinks and he replies, “What do you mean, you want to know how he thinks? You guys think the same.”

But it isn’t meant as a helpful hint to Batman. He’s trying to trick him. “What he’s really doing is getting into Batman’s head,” Reeves said. “And [Batman] is resisting this idea violently. And so that’s what that scene was. It was a scene to unsettle him.”

It was ultimately cut from the final version, and all we got was the brief look into Arkham. “It wasn’t necessary,” Reeves said. “It was one of those scenes where, given how complex the narrative was, by taking it out, it kept the story moving in a way it needed to.”

But it seems as if Reeves really loved the scene that they got to make. “It’s a really creepy, cool scene,” he said. “That was the scene that was meant to introduce this guy and just to tease the audience to go like, ‘Oh my god, he’s here too? And he’s not yet the Joker — what’s this going to be?’ And then it seems so delicious in the story, since we’d already set him up, to have the end of the story, the completion of the Riddler arc, be that he was in a cell next to this guy.”

That doesn’t mean we won’t see it, though. Reeves plans to release it once enough moviegoers have had the chance to enjoy the film. “It’s a really creepy, cool scene,” Reeves said. “That was the scene that was meant to introduce this guy and just to tease the audience to go like, ‘Oh my god, he’s here too? And he’s not yet the Joker — what’s this going to be?’ And then it seems so delicious in the story, since we’d already set him up, to have the end of the story, the completion of the Riddler arc, be that he was in a cell next to this guy.”

Will we see the Joker’s card?

From Reeves’ comments, it seems like we might not get the Joker in the next film in the universe of The Batman. Or maybe we will, and it’ll be more of Batman turning to the Joker for insight into his foes. Who knows what Reeves has in store for Bruce? But I do hope we get to see Barry Keoghan’s scene sooner rather than later!

(image: Marvel Entertainment)