Editor's note: This story originally went live. on Friday, February 26. With The Batman out now in theaters, it's been republished.
Major spoilers for The Batman follow.
The Batman director has revealed he left a "really cool" scene out of the film's final cut – and it involved Barry Keoghan's mystery villain.
Speaking exclusively to TechRadar ahead of The Batman's release, Matt Reeves opened up on the content he removed in order to shorten the DC movie's runtime. And, interestingly, Reeves teased that one particular sequence contained more of Keoghan's enigmatic character.
The Dunkirk and Eternals star's role has been the subject of plenty of online speculation, with fans desperate to learn if any of the rumors concerning Keoghan's character are true.
Understandably, Reeves was very selective about the words he used to describe Keoghan's character so as not to spoil the surprise ahead of the Dark Knight's latest cinematic adventure. Reeves did, however, discuss a cut scene from The Batman that was "really cool" to film, before heavily suggesting that it will be released some time after the film's release.
Spoilers for The Batman's final scene follow after the image below. You have been warned.
"There were scenes we cut that I liked," Reeves said. "In fact, there's a scene with the unseen prisoner (Keoghan), who appears at the end of the movie in Arkham [Asylum] with the Riddler. There was an earlier scene where Batman went to Arkham to try to profile the Riddler, and Barry is in that scene. It's a very cool scene, and I'm sure we'll we'll release the scene after the movie comes out, because it's a really cool deleted scene."
In other spoiler-filled articles (including chats with IGN, Entertainment Weekly, and CinemaBlend), Reeves confirmed that Keoghan's character was, in fact, the Joker. So it looks like we'll be seeing the Clown Prince of Crime again very soon.
The Batman's near three-hour runtime makes it one of the longest Batman movies ever, so it's unsurprising to learn that a variety of less important scenes were removed from the final version. In fact, if previous reports are to be believed, Warner Bros. tested a four-hour cut of the film in early test screenings. It's possible, then, that The Batman could have been even longer than it is.
But, as he has said in other interviews, Reeves confirmed that there isn't a director's cut of The Batman, which Warner Bros. has squirreled away for another day.
"There's nothing that I took out of the movie that I wish was in it," Reeves added. "This is the cut of the movie. I mean, there's no, it's not like there's some other [director's cut]. The amazing thing is I got to make the movie that I wanted to make, and that's this movie."
For more content concerning The Batman, read up on why Reeves never intended to make an R-rated Caped Crusader superhero movie. You can also check out our other exclusives on how The Batman honors one particularly iconic horror director, and what excites Colin Farrell the most about The Penguin's forthcoming HBO Max spin-off.
Finally, if you've seen The Batman and need its ending and post-credits scene explained in more detail, we've got you covered.
