Matt Reeves Talks 'The Batman 2' Plans, Says [SPOILER] Might Not Return in Next Movie

There as a huge surprise cameo in the final moments of The Batman, but don’t expect that character to be featured in a sequel.

Matt Reeves, the director of the new film, is opening up about his choice to include that iconic character in the movie and why the character is not guaranteed to return for future installments.

Click inside to check out the spoilers…

Barry Keoghan shows up in one of the final scenes as “Unseen Arkham Prisoner” and it was pretty clear that he’s playing the Joker.

“You’re right,” Matt told Variety. “It is the Joker.”

“It’s not an Easter egg scene,” he added. “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.”

Barry‘s Joker originally had a larger presence in The Batman, but the other scenes were cut from the film.

“It wasn’t necessary,” he 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.”

“It’s a really creepy, cool scene,” Matt continued, saying he’ll likely release the scene after the movie has been in theaters for a bit. “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.”

Matt decided to keep the final scene in the movie while testing it with audiences.

“I initially tested it without it; when I put it back in, the scores for the ending went back up,” he said. “And I think it wasn’t just that people enjoyed seeing that character. It changed people’s response to the very ending of the movie, to see that Gotham was still Gotham, and that Batman really didn’t have a choice. He has to keep doing what he’s gonna do.”

So, will Barry ever play the Joker again?

“There might be places,” Matt said. “There’s stuff I’m very interested in doing in an Arkham space, potentially for HBO Max. There are things we’ve talked about there. So it’s very possible. It also isn’t impossible, that there is some story that comes back where Joker comes into our world.”

Did you see that there really is an end credits scene for the movie?