Paul Dano Has “No Clue” if He’ll Play The Riddler Again

At CinemaCon back in April, The Batman 2, a sequel to Matt Reeves’ The Batman was announced with the project later confirmed to still be happening despite the changes at Warner Bros. Discovery. With the sequel on the horizon, there are already a lot of questions about where the next chapter of the story might take not only Batman, but his adversaries as well — especially when it comes to Paul Dano’s Riddler. As fans will recall, The Batman ended with the Riddler, aka Edward Nashton, being apprehended and put behind bars where he not only befriended another inmate but left the door open for the character’s potential return. However, as for whether Dano will get to return as the Riddler, that’s something even he isn’t sure about. Dano told ComicBook.com in a recent interview that he has “no clue” if he’ll ever play the character in live action again.

Speaking with us about his upcoming Riddler origin comic, The Riddler: Year One, Dano explained that while the comic he’s written is very much its own thing, it came from his work playing Riddler on screen and while he doesn’t know if he’ll get the opportunity to play the character again, be it in The Batman 2 or anything else, he’s certainly open to it.

“So, the essence of the comic does come from the work I did to give the performance … I’m sure that I’m deeper into this than ever because of writing this comic,” Dano said. “But the essence, the emotional essence of it is something I’d worked with already. And the comic has grown into its own thing, but the essence comes from the work I did going into the film. And I have no clue if I will play the Riddler in live action again or not. But like I said, I loved making The Batman, so I think I certainly would.”

Dano also said that he’s open to exploring the character’s future — particularly after Nashton’s interaction with the Joker in The Batman — but at this point, he hasn’t given too much thought to it.

“If they wanted there to be one, I’d probably be there. But I actually have not thought a whole lot about it, and I find it curious myself that I’ve somehow spent even more time with this character, because someone asked me, when we were doing Batman press, ‘Did you take anything home from the set?’ And I was like, ‘No.’ Of Edward’s. I was like, I don’t need anything of that guy in my home. Jokingly,” Dano said. “And then here I am, and I have spent, on and off, a year or two writing this comic and that was really, it felt right for the medium of comics, because it’s a really good way to explore internal monologue. Where film, I think, voiceover only holds to a certain degree. And this kind of offers the chance to get into what a person like that, that sort of obsessive thinking, almost like an inner monologue that picks up throughout the comic. And so not a lot of my attention has gone towards his future. Maybe it will someday.”

The Riddler: Year One #1, written by Dano with art by Stevan Subic, goes on sale October 25th. As for The Batman 2, the film does not yet have a release date.