Billy Dee Williams Finally Becomes Two-Face In Batman ’89

Warning! Spoilers ahead for Batman ’89 #3

In the latest issue of DC Comics’ Batman ’89, Billy Dee Williams’ Harvey Dent finally becomes Gotham villain Two-Face in the Tim Burton universe of Batman films. While Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever saw Tommy Lee Jones taking over as the corrupted Gotham DA, fans never got to see Williams have his own transformation into the classic rogue from the comics. However, the new series taking place after Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns finally reveals the dark metamorphosis of Burton’s Harvey Dent.

In Batman ’89 #3 from writer Sam Hamm and artist Joe Quinones, arsonists set a building on fire in Gotham’s borough of Burnside. Believing that the young man named Drake (the future Robin) is still trapped inside, DA Harvey Dent rushes in without a second thought to try and save him. However, he ends up falling with half his face being horribly burned by sulfuric acid. While Drake and Bruce Wayne end up dragging him out of the building to safety, Dent is rushed to the hospital for the terrible cosmetic damage.

However, Harvey Dent also suffers deep transformative mental trauma in this new issue. Remembering back to a lecture on quantum mechanics where reality splits into two whenever there’s an event with two or more possible outcomes, Dent chooses to scar and damage one side of his lucky two-headed coin. Choosing to be governed by the outcomes chosen by a coin toss, Dent decides that his reality going forward will be one that is formed with true 50/50 odds. As a result, a bad flip of the coin dictates that he’s done trying to save Gotham’s soul, resulting in his true transformation into Two-Face.

While this is largely a fairly standard origin for Harvey Dent, the new and unique elements for Billy Dee Williams’ Two-Face is the particular focus on other realities and the different Dents who exist in other timelines thanks to the different choices that could have been made. Likewise, Dent chooses to have his reality dictated by a coin after being encouraged by a version of Harvey Dent in his head who survived the fire and saved Drake, going on to have a very successful political career working to save Gotham (living as the primary Dent imagines he would have become had he not been burned). Dent also dwells on other versions of himself who received their own divergent timelines in the past had he made different choices, and it’s a fairly dynamic addition to Two-Face’s origin in the Burton-verse.

In any case, Harvey Dent has decided to give up on Gotham thanks to his coin, and a few more bad coin tosses will most likely see him looking to harm the city now that he’s become Two-Face. Furthermore, it’s going to be hard for Batman to stop him should that happen, seeing as how Bruce Wayne saving Dent has turned the billionaire into a public celebrity with the media not leaving him alone. Fans will just have to wait and see what’s next for this new future of Tim Burton’s Gotham and Billy Dee Williams’ Two-Face as Batman ’89 continues.

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Kevin Erdmann
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Kevin Erdmann is one of Screen Rant’s staff writers. With a major in Cinema Studies and a minor in Comics and Cartoon Studies from the UofO, Kevin is pretty sure he’s writing for the right site. While Kevin is a huge Marvel fan, he also loves Batman because he’s Batman and is a firm believer that Han shot first. Disney also shares a big part of his fan patronage. Kevin lives in Oregon with his wonderful wife and sinister cat who is no doubt currently plotting his demise.

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