30 Years Later, The Batman 2 Could Finish An Iconic DC Comics Arc
The Long Halloween ain’t over yet.
Quiet as it’s kept, The Long Halloween is one of the best self-contained Batman storylines of all time. Its reign was brief, but the series has gone on to inform the Batman mythos in countless ways — especially in live-action adaptations. Both Christopher Nolan and Matt Reeves have cherry-picked from The Long Halloween when building out their respective versions of Gotham, with Nolan’s The Dark Knight lifting its origin story for Two-Face (aka Harvey Dent), and Reeves bringing Batman back to his roots as a shrewd detective.
Apart from the presence of a serial murderer, or Selina Kyle’s (Zoë Kravitz) relationship with Carmine Falcone (John Turturro), however, The Batman keeps its other ties to Halloween pretty minimal — but that might change with its upcoming sequel, The Batman Part II. Reeves seems to be following in Nolan’s footsteps by introducing Harvey Dent to his Epic Crime Saga: Sebastian Stan will next step into the shoes of Gotham’s District Attorney, while another Marvel alum, Scarlett Johansson, has been tapped to play Dent’s wife Gilda.
While Reeves previously said that The Batman II would focus on villain that’s “never really been done in a movie before,” reimagining Two-Face’s origins must have proved too tempting to resist. It’s one of the most iconic parts of The Long Halloween, and one of the most familiar — but knowing that Gilda will also play a role in The Batman II, Reeves could be adapting more of The Long Halloween than we’ve ever seen in live-action.
Gilda Dent could finally get the spotlight in The Batman II.
The Long Halloween depicts a tumultuous year in Gotham, the year in which the city’s corrupt mob bosses are slowly but surely replaced by “freaks” like Joker, Poison Ivy, and Two-Face. Batman has his hands full with each member of his rogues gallery, but none gives him more trouble than Holiday, a serial murderer who strikes on each holiday throughout the year. Though a killer is eventually unmasked and convicted for every crime, he isn’t the only one who originated the “Holiday” identity.
The true Holiday is actually Gilda: in a perverse attempt to make Harvey’s life easier, she stages a slaughter of every big-time criminal he’s been fighting in court. Though she escapes Gotham before anyone can implicate her, Gilda’s true nature is an open secret between Batman, Two-Face, and a handful of other villains.
It’s hard to imagine The Batman II exploring this aspect of Gilda to the letter, as The Batman already co-opted the Holiday storyline into a new origin for the Riddler (Paul Dano). That said, there’s no way that Gilda won’t play a big role in the sequel: you don’t cast Scarlett Johansson to play a character who lives on the sidelines. Reeves and his co-writer, Mattson Tomlin, will likely take inspiration from The Long Halloween in their exploration of Harvey Dent — but they may be looking to the sequels, maybe even last year’s The Last Halloween, in building out the character of Gilda.
Will Gilda be a sympathetic villain who stoops to unthinkable means to protect Harvey? Will she have a hand in his origins as Two-Face? Will The Batman II reveal that she was in league with the Riddler? Time will tell, but Reeves’ Batman duology is poised to continue its own version of The Long Halloween, maybe even finish the story.
