Matt Reeves’ The Batman: Part II is deep into production, with Robert Pattinson back as Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson) opposite returning cast members Jim Gordon (Jeffrey Wright), Alfred Pennyworth (Andy Serkis), and Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell), alongside newcomers Scarlett Johansson and Sebastian Stan in mysterious roles. After several date changes, the sequel is now scheduled for February 18, 2028, leaving plenty of time for fans to speculate about where Reeves will take us next. One of the biggest open questions so far is who will be the main antagonist of The Batman: Part II, with Reeves previously saying that the character has never appeared in a live-action Batman movie before and that the villain connects to Bruce Wayne’s own family history.
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While fans are still trying to figure out the plot of The Batman: Part II and the roles of Johansson and Stan, all clues appear to point towards the Court of Owls as the movie’s antagonist. Created by writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo, the group debuted in Batman (vol. 2) #6 in February 2012 as an ancient secret society made up of Gotham’s oldest and wealthiest founding families, ruling the city from the shadows for centuries through masked enforcers called Talons. Because the organization controls every institution from the shadows, from police departments to the media, they challenge everything that Batman thought he knew about his own hometown, which feels like a natural escalation of the first movie’s themes. It also fits with Reeves’ promise to explore the historical sins of the Wayne dynasty. Finally, there’s a lot of visual evidence to support the coming of the Court of Owls.
4) The Owl Card From The Batman
Speculation about the Court of Owls began during the marketing for the first film, years before Reeves confirmed anything about a follow-up. In the movie’s 2020 DC FanDome trailer, Jim Gordon recovers an envelope addressed “to the Batman” at a crime scene, left behind by the Riddler (Paul Dano). Inside was a greeting card with an illustration of a wide-eyed owl reading “From your secret friend” alongside a cryptic cipher. Fans quickly cracked the code printed on the card, but the owl artwork led to many theories that Riddler was somehow using the Court of Owls in the movies.
The detail was easy to miss in a fast-cut teaser built around introducing Pattinson’s Batsuit and the Batmobile, and Reeves never addressed it directly during the film’s press cycle. Still, the card became even more visible in the movie itself. While The Batman didn’t deal with the Court of Owls, after all, Reeves’ version of Gotham is particularly interested in the city’s structural corruption, so maybe the card was an Easter egg pointing toward where the filmmaker wants to go with the franchise.
3) Owl Iconography in The Penguin
The next major sign arrived four years later in The Penguin, the HBO limited series that bridges the first film and its sequel. In the show’s finale, Oz Cobb pays a visit to a Gotham City Hall courtroom to pressure a councilman he had previously manipulated into restoring power to Crown Point. As Cobb enters the chamber, the background briefly shows a row of curtains hanging along the courtroom walls, each making a distinct owl silhouette.
The image spread quickly among fans already, who saw the curtain arrangements and their placement in City Hall as a direct tease that the Court of Owls was nearby. HBO and the production never commented on the design choice, and it is entirely possible the curtains were simply a flourish. Then again, one of the reasons The Batman: Part II took so long to be made is that Reeves is a perfectionist paying constant attention to details, so it’s unlikely the owl curtains are random.
2) The Maze Prop From The Batman: Part II‘s Production Designer
In August 2026, production designer Luke Hull, an Emmy winner for his work on Andor and Chornobyl, currently working on The Batman: Part II, posted a photograph of an elaborate labyrinth structure, offering no caption or explanation alongside it. The design’s tangled corridors bring to mind the maze the Court of Owls uses to trap and disorient Bruce in Snyder and Capullo’s original storyline. The group wants to break him physically and psychologically rather than kill him outright, and Batman roams the corridors of the maze for weeks.
Around the same period, reports claimed the Court of Owls is directly involved in the film’s plot, giving Hull’s image renewed meaning. Because the post arrived while filming was already underway on location in the United Kingdom, the maze structure should be a functional set piece by now, meaning cast and crew have likely already worked inside it. As soon as set pictures begin to emerge from official sources, we might see more of this supposed maze and learn about its use. Still, that’s yet another clue pointing to the Court of Owls.
1) Owl Masks Spotted on Set
The most direct evidence yet came from an on-set report describing background performers moving between filming locations of The Batman: Part II while wearing featureless white masks with rounded eyes and a beak-like point at the nose, matching the exact design the Court of Owls members wear in the comics to conceal their identities. The same account described a junkyard set and a ballroom set being built simultaneously nearby. Initial skepticism faded once later set photos confirmed the junkyard was real, lending credibility to the rest of the description alongside it.
Around the same stretch of filming, separate set photos captured a storefront display featuring a decorative plate stamped with both a bat and an owl positioned one above the other, tucked into the background of an otherwise unrelated shot. Any single detail could be waved away as an Easter egg for attentive fans, but it’s hard to ignore all the evidence pointing to the Court of Owls as a major player in Reeves’ Gotham City.
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