If the DC Universe franchise goes on long enough, fans should expect to see Man-Bat play a role in it. On Saturday, DCU mastermind James Gunn mentioned the Batman villain in a post on Bluesky, in his answer to a fan asking why Man-Bat didn’t appear in Creature Commandos. “I’d be disappointed if we never see MB in the DCU,” Gunn wrote. This has fans theorizing about which Man-Bat storyline might make its way to the screen, and how they’d like to see the character utilized. It also raised fans’ hopes that Batman will appear in the DCU sooner rather than later.
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This conversation started with a fan paraphrasing an interview or statement by Gunn where he supposedly mentioned using Man-Bat in Creature Commandos, but we now know that he didn’t make the final cut. Gunn acknowledged that Man-Bat was “one of the many characters I considered” for the series, but also shared his own love for the character. He didn’t say when or where, but he assured his followers that he intends to bring Man-Bat into the story one way or another.
Man-Bat — a.k.a. Dr. Robert Kirkland Langstrom — was first introduced in 1970 as an enemy of Batman. He was a zoologist experimenting with ways of giving the sonar abilities of bats to humans, and he got carried away by experimenting on himself. The result was his transformation into an anthropomorphic hybrid of a human and a bat, which also made him partially feral and dulled his sapience.
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Over the years, Man-Bat has often had moments of sanity and compassion during which he becomes a temporary ally of Batman and other DC heroes. He has been tied into several prominent stories with Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins, and in more recent comics, he was a founding member of the new Justice League Dark team. We’ve also seen Man-Bat adapted to screen before in Batman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Batman Beyond, The Batman, Beware the Batman, Harley Quinn, and even an episode of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?
The real question is where Man-Bat will be introduced to the DCU. The most likely place on the slate right now seems to be Clayface, which is scheduled to premiere on September 11th, 2026. He wouldn’t fit in well in Superman, which already has a stacked cast, and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow seems unlikely too. After Clayface comes The Authority, followed by The Brave and the Bold and Swamp Thing, both of which might be good places for Man-Bat. However, none of these have release dates yet. On the TV side, Man-Bat seems unlikely to appear in Lanterns, but perhaps Waller could add him to the rogues gallery.
We can only speculate, but the style of the DCU should become much more clear this year. The franchise gets its first movie with Superman, debuting on July 11th, 2025.
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Image courtesy of Max
