The Batman: Part II is now filming, and DC fans are keeping a watchful eye on everything that leaks from the production, including teases that come from director Matt Reeves himself. Recently, Reeves treated fans to an unofficial rollout of The Batman 2‘s cast, including all of the principal actors from the first film making a return, and the new additions making their debut in the sequel.
One of the most high-profile castings for The Batman: Part II is Marvel’s Black Widow star, Scarlett Johansson. It’s been revealed that Johansson is playing Gilda Dent, the wife of Gotham City District Attorney Harvey Dent. While a lot of fans may know Gilda from her role in one of Batman’s most infamous stories, the DC Universe has made it a straight adaptation of that story implausible. Now, there are some much bigger questions looming over ScarJo’s performance in The Batman: Part II.
Gilda Dent is best known for her role in the infamous 1990s story arc, Batman: The Long Halloween. The story centers on Batman, Jim Gordon, and D.A. Harvey Dent coming together in Batman’s second year of crimefighting, with the lofty goal of finally bringing down Gotham’s mob families, the Falcones and the Maronis. The mission goes sideways when a mysterious assassin starts killing members of the Falcone and Maroni Crime Families on the date of every major holiday. Before long, the chaos caused by the “Holiday Killer” murders threatens not only to ignite a war between the Falcone and Maroni families, but also between the mobsters and the new generation of masked “freaks” that have begun terrorizing Gotham. Even the World’s Greatest Detective (Batman) has no clue how to identify, let alone stop, the killer.
(MAJOR COMIC SPOILERS!)
Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s The Long Halloween has gone down in infamy largely because it’s a major case that Batman doesn’t solve. For a year, Batman fails to stop the Holiday Killer from whittling down the members of Falcone’s mob; he also fails to stop Harvey Dent from being lured into a trap and disfigured by acid, transforming the D.A. into the mad villain, Two-Face. In the end, Batman and Gordon trap the killer (who is revealed to be Carmine Falcone’s meek son, Alberto) at high cost: Dent’s mission to save Gotham (legally) is ruined when the mob is killed through bloody retribution, instead of through the legal system. Meanwhile, Two-Face ushers in a new era in which “freaks” like The Joker, Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Riddler, and Solomon Grundy are the new crimelords of the city.
A final epilogue to the story twists the knife so much deeper when it’s revealed that Gilda Dent (meek and quiet throughout the story) was the real Holiday Killer. After seeing Harvey’s mission become an obsession, and their safety get put on the line, Gilda decided (in her psychotic mind) that killing the mobsters was the only way to free her husband. Alberto took up the final murders (after faking his death) to free himself of his family burdens, while Gilda burns all evidence of her crime, and is never caught.
When the role of Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) was announced for The Batman spinoff show, The Penguin (2024), DC fans got really excited that things were headed for a sequel that would adapt The Long Halloween. However, those hopes got dashed in record time when (SPOILERS) Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell) blew away Alberto Falcone in the very first scene of the pilot episode. It didn’t get better from there: Oz Cobb basically fulfilled the role of the Holiday Killer by taking out both the Falcone and Maroni families with his lies and schemes. And it didn’t even take him a year to do it. When the series ended, Penguin had established himself as the sole crime boss in Gotham.
The Penguin has made a straightforward adaptation of The Long Halloween impossible, obviously, but that doesn’t mean Matt Reeves can’t mine aspects of the story for the mythos he’s building around The Batman. Harvey Dent will still have organized crime (Penguin) to fight, and rumors say that a whole evil power structure lurking in Gotham (the Court of Owls) could use the destruction and chaos caused by the Riddler to seize hold of the city. In the midst of a war between law enforcement, Penguin’s mob, the Court of Owls, Batman, and any “freaks” (like Joker?) caught in between, Gilda Dent could still be a random “x” factor no one counted on, which tips the scales.
The Batman: Part II has a release date of October 1, 2027. Let us know your theories on how the sequel will use Scarlett Johansson’s Gilda Dent, over on the discussion forum!
