Everything we thought we knew about The Batman: Part II‘s villains may be wrong, and a new rumor just made the body in Matt Reeves’ first shot a lot more interesting.
Scooper Jeff Sneider dropped a bombshell report via The InSneider claiming that Sebastian Stan is not playing Harvey Dent/Two-Face in the sequel, as has been assumed for months.
Instead, Sneider’s sources say Stan is playing Victor Zsasz, the serial killer who poses his victims’ corpses and carves a tally mark into his own skin for every kill.
Harvey Dent is still in the movie, per the report, just played by someone else.
Sneider says Eternals and Atlanta star Brian Tyree Henry, already confirmed by Reeves to be in the cast, is taking on Gotham’s District Attorney. And that’s before you get to the Court of Owls.
Usual grain of salt applies as this is a rumor, not a studio announcement, and it directly contradicts earlier trade reporting (more on that below). But Sneider has a solid track record and sounds confident, so it’s worth taking seriously.
That Body In The First Shot Suddenly Makes Sense
Here’s where it gets good. When Reeves posted the first shot from the set, the blurred background appeared to show a figure laid out on a table under a hard overhead light, what looked an awful lot like a body on a slab.
We flagged it as a hint that Reeves was doubling down on the noir murder mystery.
If Sneider is right, it’s more specific than that. Victor Zsasz’s entire signature in the comics is arranging his victims into lifelike, posed displays, so a corpse staged on a table in the literal first shot of the movie isn’t just atmosphere. It may be a Zsasz crime scene, and Scene 26 may be Batman walking into one.
Nothing’s confirmed, and a blurry background is a blurry background. But the first villain rumor of the shoot lining up this cleanly with the first image of the shoot is the kind of thing that tends not to be a coincidence.
Wait — Wasn’t Sebastian Stan Playing Two-Face?
This is the part worth slowing down on, because the “Stan is Two-Face” narrative was never as solid as it was treated.
The idea originally traces back to reporting in January that Stan would play Harvey Dent, which then snowballed into the assumption that Scarlett Johansson was Dent’s wife Gilda and Charles Dance was Dent’s father, a whole family tree built on the first domino.
Then came the quote everyone ran with. Asked about the movie, Stan told Deadline he’d play “many roles in this one” — and the internet (us included) read that as him all but confirming a Harvey Dent-to-Two-Face arc.
But go back and look at it: Stan never actually says the words “Harvey Dent” or “Two-Face.”
He was talking around his role and his look, and “many roles” got reverse-engineered into a specific character that was never named. If anything, “many roles” arguably fits a corpse-posing serial killer staging elaborate scenes just as well as it fits a split-personality DA.
The other “evidence” making the rounds is Stan’s nearly-shaved head, which does look more Zsasz than Dent. Except Stan has had that buzzcut since at least 2025 — long before cameras rolled — so it proves exactly nothing in either direction. That’s the problem with a lot of this: people are reading tea leaves and calling it confirmation.
Brian Tyree Henry As Harvey Dent
If the report holds, Harvey Dent isn’t gone, he’s recast. Brian Tyree Henry’s involvement in the film is already confirmed; Sneider’s wrinkle is that he’s the one playing Gotham’s DA.
Billy Dee Williams also played Dent in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman before Tommy Lee Jones and Aaron Eckhart took their swings, so this wouldn’t be the first time the role has been race-swapped, much like Jeffrey Wright as Gordon.
One caveat: the reporting suggests Dent may not fully complete his Two-Face transformation in this film. That would track with Reeves clearly setting up a longer game across his Bat-verse rather than burning every villain in one movie.
The Court Of Owls — And A Script Sources Call “Crazy”
The bigger swing in Sneider’s report is the Court of Owls, the secret society of Gotham aristocrats who’ve quietly controlled the city for centuries.
Created by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo in 2011, they’ve been the most-requested addition to Reeves’ universe since the first film, and they’d fit his vision of Gotham as a city rotten from the top down.
Sneider says one source described the script as having “some weird and interesting takes,” while another told him Reeves’ use of Zsasz “fits in with everyone telling me the movie is f—ing crazy.” Take that how you want, but “crazy” from a Reeves Batman movie is more promise than warning.
As for Scarlett Johansson and Charles Dance — previously pegged as Gilda and Christopher Dent — Sneider’s sources say they “aren’t playing big names” but rather a “meld” of different characters.
Their real roles are apparently being kept quiet because revealing them would give too much away. If we had to bet, Dance feels like a natural fit for the Court of Owls.
Sneider also claims The Penguin Season 2 isn’t happening.
How Much Of This Should You Believe?
This is a rumor, and it contradicts previous reporting from Variety, which had Stan as Dent. So one of these is wrong, or the casting genuinely changed at some point, both can happen.
What’s actually confirmed: Brian Tyree Henry is in the movie, and as of this week, Reeves is officially shooting it. Everything else — who’s playing Zsasz, who’s playing Dent, whether the Court of Owls is in it — is unconfirmed, single-source rumor, no matter how many outlets reprint it in the next 48 hours.
That said, the Zsasz angle has a logic the Two-Face assumption never did. Reeves has built his Gotham on serial-killer detective fiction, the first film’s spine was the Riddler’s body count, and now the first image of the sequel appears to show a posed corpse.
Sometimes the rumor that “feels right” is right. We’ll keep tracking it.
The Batman: Part II stars Robert Pattinson, Colin Farrell, Jeffrey Wright, Andy Serkis, Sebastian Stan, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, and Charles Dance. Matt Reeves directs from a script he co-wrote with Mattson Tomlin, with Erik Messerschmidt shooting.
The Batman: Part II hits theaters October 1, 2027.
