Batman Who Laughs: Will We Ever See Him In A Movie?

In a move that has opened a lot of doors, Warner Bros. and DC have decided to embrace the philosophy of a multiverse in their films, giving intersting filmmakers who have a unique take on DC characters to make those movies without bleeding over into the main, shared timeline of the Justice League-style, standard superhero stuff. But could the Dark Multiverse — recently created in Dark Nights: Metal and, since then, the center of a lot of DC’s biggest stories on the comics side — eventually find its way to the big screen as well? Its most likely emissary would have to be The Batman Who Laughs.

The character, a version of Batman from a universe where he killed The Joker and then became a twisted Batman-Joker hybrid himself, has become so prominent in DC’s publishing line that it would actually not be surprising to see him pop up without even needing to introduce the Dark Multiverse. After all, to casual fans, the idea of an infinite multiverse likely doesn’t feel all that much different from “infinite multiverse, plus also these seven universes over here.”

The issue with The Batman Who Laughs is similar to the one we singled out last night with Damian Wayne — that he requires a lot of backstory, and right now we don’t really have a main-universe Batman that supports it all. A multiverse-fueled, all-powerful guy in a gimp suit doesn’t really speak to the grounded “detective story” feel that Matt Reeves is going for in The Batman, and having him show up in the main DC film universe is dicey since, at least right now, those movies don’t have a stable Batman situation.

Once The Flash has hit, and fans have a more concrete idea of who will be Batman going forward and what role he will have in the films, it’s possible that it will be easier to guess where, if anywhere, a character like The Batman Who Laughs might fit (assuming we don’t get a quick blink-and-you-miss-it cameo in The Flash, like what they did with the Legion of Super-Heroes and Jon Wesley Shipp’s Flash in the first season of The CW’s The Flash).

Actually, the question that was suggested for this article is what movie the character might show up in. For that, we don’t yet have any real good answer. Certainly if things continue to be cosmic following the events of Zack Snyder’s Justice League and The Flash, anything can happen, but right now, there’s no obvious place to PUT a character like this.

But on TV? That’s a whole other thing. The Batman Who Laughs is exactly the kind of crazy, continuity-porn character that would do really well with the Arrowverse audience, and give the new-and-improved Batwoman an opportunity to really level up its villain game.

But where we’d really like to see him? Doom Patrol. C’mon. Tell us that isn’t a great fit.

Are we missing an obvious choice? Hit us up in the comments or on Twitter to let us know. And if there’s another DC film/TV question like this that you’d like us to mull over to kill some quarantine downtime, hit up @russburlingame on Twitter with ideas!