Did Blake become Batman after ‘The Dark Knight Rises’?
In the years since its release, The Dark Knight Rises has become an epitomising example of a movie that is cool to hate, albeit unfairly. If nothing else, in an era where franchises frequently never end, and those that often fail to stick the landing, The Dark Knight Rises deserves a lot of credit for being a strong narrative conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
The film ends with a thoroughly moving climactic montage that explains the fates of most of the trilogy’s key characters, although it also leaves a fair few unanswered questions and is reasonably open-ended – but this is no bad thing. The trilogy itself might be over, but viewers have pondered over what happened to the characters later, allowing the story to live on within its audience.
One aspect that may have been misinterpreted, however, was the ending for John Blake, a Gotham City Police Department cop who serves as an ally to both Batman and Commissioner James Gordon.
Although the character’s introduction, in which he works out Batman’s true identity somewhat randomly, was shaky, Blake was ultimately a solidly engaging addition to the story. In his second collaboration with Christopher Nolan after Inception, Joseph Gordon-Levitt did fine work as the character, too.
Still, it’s possible that some might’ve found him to be a somewhat unnecessary addition, given that this was already a film with a lot of characters, and Blake doesn’t actually affect the plot. At the end of the movie, Blake’s purpose in the story finally becomes clear: he is Batman’s heir.
After Bruce Wayne fakes his death, he leaves the Batcave to Blake, and the final shot of the trilogy is Blake entering. Just before this moment, when picking up what was left to him, his legal name is revealed to be Robin, and some seemed to believe that this implied he would become Robin, the divisive sidekick from the Batman comics who was last played in live-action form by Chris O’Donnell in 1997’s hideous Batman & Robin.
But was Blake intended to become Robin? No. This is almost certainly not the case, and it seemed more like an in-joke for fans of the comics than anything else. The true implication of the ending is that Blake will become the new Batman.
Blake is introduced as an idealistic, justice-minded orphan and thus was set up as something of a kindred spirit for Batman. As aforementioned, how he worked out Batman’s true identity never felt believable, but that conversation between him and Bruce Wayne very much established this thematic link, and it set Blake up as someone who really understands Batman.
Furthermore, although Blake was upset that James Gordon refused to reveal Batman’s true identity after his apparent death, this decision showed that Gordon understood what Batman was always meant to be. He was always supposed to be a symbol of hope, far bigger than just one man.
Someone new taking the mantle really hammers this thematic point home. Besides, Blake was clearly established as a very decent, emphatic and uncorruptible man throughout the film, and as Wayne himself no doubt realized, he would probably make a very good Batman.
