The Batman’s Opening Scene Secretly Revealed The Riddler’s Biggest Mistake

WARNING! This article contains spoilers for The Batman.

The Batman’s opening scene shows The Riddler (Paul Dano) hunting people through his mask, and this shows his biggest mistake in the DC movie. In Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson’s new Batman universe, Bruce Wayne/Batman encounters a fellow orphan with a different goal for the city of Gotham. However, the Riddler believes he is quite the same as the Batman, citing the latter as his inspiration – and in the end, this proves to be his downfall.

The Batman begins with the Riddler watching Mayor Don Mitchell (Rupert Penry-Jones) and his family, before breaking into his home and killing him. Throughout The Batman, the Riddler targets several corrupt authorities from Gotham City and leaves postcards for the Batman to find at the crime scenes. The Batman and Commissioner Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) believe the postcards are clues and the Riddler is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Batman. But when the two meet at the Arkham Asylum, the Riddler confesses the Batman was his inspiration: the Riddler misinterpreted the Batman’s quest for vengeance against the corrupt and has become a villain. However, he doesn’t realize the Batman is fighting precisely people like him, and becomes deeply distraught when he realizes the Batman won’t be celebrating the chaos and fear he created in Gotham.

The Batman‘s opening scene is mirrored later in the movie when the Batman follows Selina (Zoë Kravitz) to her home. Just like the Riddler, the Batman watches Catwoman from across her building, through his mask. But in this case, the Batman doesn’t kill Selina – this goes to show exactly how disillusioned the Riddler is. He believes he is the same as the Batman, a masked vigilante, out to destroy the corrupt. This might be partially true, except the Batman doesn’t kill for sport – in fact, he doesn’t kill at all, as he has a strict rule against it (just like he has a strict no gun rule). The Batman thus clues in the viewers from the very beginning on the Riddler’s big mistake: him believing he is just like the Batman eventually brings his downfall, as the Batman leaves him rotting in Arkham Asylum and goes out to save the people of Gotham from the flood.

Edward Nashton grew up an orphan, just like Bruce Wayne, except he was very poor. He eventually became an accountant, and it was through his job that he discovered what happened with Renewal, the city’s infrastructure rebuilding plan created by Thomas and Martha Wayne. After their deaths, the plan fell by the wayside and the money ended up being snatched up by John Turturro’s Carmine Falcone. The mob boss used his knowledge of his rival’s drug business to have Salvatore Maroni arrested, and then used the money to install a puppet regime in Gotham City. This left the Riddler frustrated and emotionally scarred: Renewal was supposed to benefit people like him; instead, it benefitted the rich and the corrupt. This fuelled his murderous rampage, which inspired other people frustrated with Gotham to put on Riddler masks and go on a killing spree at the mayor’s speech.

The Batman does a good job at showing the Dark Knight and the Riddler as two sides of a coin – orphans seeking vengeance against Gotham, each one by their own means. It’s exactly the Riddler’s illusion that he is just like the Batman (a masked vigilante seeking to take justice in their own hands) that shows his unstable mental health, a recurrent factor for the Batman universe villains. The Batman‘s opening scene put together with the Batman equivalent scene work as an accurate description of the Riddler’s mind – his belief and ultimately, his grand mistake.

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