Barry Keoghan was set up to be the next Joker by a cameo in The Batman and the release of a deleted scene. However, in those scenes, he was not yet playing the Joker.
In The Batman, Barry Keoghan was not really the Joker.
Barry Keoghan's cameo in The Batman wasn't him playing the Joker, at least not yet.
In The Batman, Keoghan is only credited as "Unseen Arkham Prisoner." In the movie, his identity is hidden by bars and shadows as he talks to the Riddler through his cell door.
Late in March 2022, a cut scene from The Batman that shows a longer conversation between Keoghan and Robert Pattinson's Batman will be made public.
Even though Keoghan is still a secret, the scene shows that he has scars, acid-bleached skin, green hair, and maybe even red lipstick smudges.
Even though his profile is hidden, his blurry appearance and the way he acted differently from Batman in the scene that was cut strongly suggest that he will be the next Clown Prince of Crime.
In an interview with GQ, Keoghan talked about his Joker storyline. He said that he'd love to play the Joker again, even though it might make him a typecast.
He says that it would be "amazing" to "bring him to life... and give you [his] version, which you haven't seen."
Even though neither the movie nor the deleted scene name Keoghan as the Joker, Keoghan doesn't disprove the idea that he will play the role in the Matt Reeves Batman series.
The interesting thing about his interview, though, is that it shows that his Joker could be very different from what has been shown in the movie and in the deleted scene.
All of the talk about the new Joker has been in the form of hints and implication. This gives The Batman 2 a lot of room to make the character even more interesting.
This could make Batman's enemies more interesting than Batman himself, which is a problem that both Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale say is a problem with Batman. However, the Joker needs a strong, unique interpretation.
Keoghan has a lot to prove, especially after Jared Leto's well-known turn as the Joker in Suicide Squad.
It's a valid point to say that Keoghan's Joker came out less than three years after Joaquin Phoenix's version, which makes it seem like the role shouldn't have been played again.
In spite of this, The Batman is a smartly different movie in terms of tone, which has helped it create a more interesting version of its main bad guy, the Riddler.
Seeing how the Riddler is made, The Batman sets up its series to make a Joker that will be interesting and not feel like a rehash or a franchise requirement.
Why Keoghan's change into the Joker is so exciting
Barry Keoghan had a small part in The Batman as the Joker.
Keoghan's comments in an interview suggest that the character he plays in The Batman is either the character before he becomes the Joker or a Matt Reeves-series Joker who is still in the planning stages.
Even so, Barry Keoghan's Joker rule to make the character more human by keeping his natural blue eyes is a good sign that Keoghan's version of the Joker will change the character in a way that stays true to the Joker's core.
His hints of being the Joker are so interesting, which is a good sign for how great his character could be.
If the deleted scene from The Batman is any indication, Keoghan's performance before he became the Joker shows that his full-fledged version will be well-written, well-crafted, and just deep enough as a character to keep the Joker from being a cartoonish parody of himself.
