As is true with any new installment in a live-action or animated superhero-related franchise, The Batman: Part 2’s casting has always been highly anticipated. Who is cast and what role they’re playing is an early, presumptuous glimpse at what characters will appear, as well as how they may be portrayed.
That said, predicting what a character’s portrayal will be like isn’t always as simple as matching an actor to a character, even if they seem like they are cast perfectly based on how they look or what previous roles they’ve had.
It wasn’t obvious what Robert Pattinson’s Batman would be like, for example, and it turned out that Matt Reeves and Mattson Tomlin’s take on the character would feature far less of Bruce Wayne since the nihilistic, bat-silhouetted vigilante was the focal point. For The Batman: Part 2, there hopefully won’t be a take like Paul Dano’s Riddler when it comes to Sebastian Stan’s Harvey Dent.
The Batman: Part 2’s Two-Face Has Officially Been Cast
Following Scarlett Johansson’s mysterious casting in The Batman: Part 2, it has now reportedly been revealed that Sebastian Stan will be playing Harvey Dent. Sebastian Stan’s Harvey Dent casting is exciting because, on paper, he seems like a great choice: he’s conventionally attractive; he naturally gravitates toward roles where the character has a dark or troubled side; and he’s only several years older than Robert Pattinson, which could sell the concept of The Batman’s Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne having been childhood friends, if that is the route Matt Reeves wanted to go with their dynamic.
However, this last point bears the root of the problem here: we don’t know the direction Matt Reeves will take with the character, and a worst-case scenario may be if such wonderful casting is once again underutilized or disfigured, as was arguably the case with Paul Dano’s Riddler in The Batman.
The Batman’s Riddler Casting is Inspired, But the Character Underwhelmed
Paul Dano as the Riddler with his mouth open
On paper, Paul Dano was a phenomenal casting choice for Edward Nashton’s Riddler if the character had been more faithful to traditional, classic depictions of the question mark-clad conundrum artist. In DC Comics and most other iterations across all DC-inspired media, Riddler is brilliant yet petty—a fantastic narcissist and megalomaniac with severe obsessive-compulsion who must prove he can outsmart Batman.
But while the villain was superb as a mysterious serial killer who skulks about Gotham City in a costume—like Batman, as the movie frequently parallels—the character in The Batman is debatably undone when he is unmasked and his 4chan-esque livestreamer antics froth to the surface. Thankfully, Harvey’s descent into villainy is typically more nuanced due to his relationships with Bruce and Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, and his development should support that.
Aaron Eckhart’s Two-Face, eclipsed by Heath Ledger’s Joker, in The Dark Knight proved how smoothly and tragically Harvey can be adapted in live-action, especially as an idyllic public figure who is secretly quite ill. Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face, eclipsed by Jim Carrey’s Riddler, in Batman Forever was appropriately eccentric given the movie’s vibrant whimsy.
In defense of how this Riddler was depicted, his potential for his development as a trauma-riddled orphan was undercut by a subplot tangent with Selina Kyle’s Catwoman and her father, Carmine Falcone—not to mention a subplot within this subplot where Bruce is momentarily and wrongly led to believe that his father was morally ambiguous—that later makes its way back to the main plot with Riddler.
Sebastian Stan’s Harvey Dent is Hopefully a Slow (Chemical) Burn
It is unknown whether Harvey will remain ‘Harvey’ for the entirety of the sequel, possibly teasing his role in a DC Elseworlds HBO project like The Penguin, where he could be active as a district attorney or mayor long before becoming Two-Face. Likewise, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not he’ll already be exhibiting symptoms of a Big Bad Harv or Two-Face persona, let alone if he’ll be splashed with acid in a courtroom.
If this DC Elseworld continuity preserves Harvey and can refrain from immediately diving headlong into a Two-Face origin, it could be fantastic and allow an eventual Two-Face transformation to simmer instead of burn. Regardless, how Harvey and Two-Face are tackled will be make-or-break for the character, as it was for Riddler.
Harvey isn’t as big an issue, inherently, and Sebastian Stan’s role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is ironically something of a parallel to Dent. Sebastian Stan’s portrayal of James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes might demonstrate the level of warmth and conviction that Harvey has, while his portrayal of Bucky under the brainwashed and menacing guise of Winter Soldier is a great glimpse of how Harvey’s dissociative identity disorder could manifest itself in moments of grief, rage, and vulnerability.
So, unless what’s planned for the character is bewildering and unprecedented, Sebastian Stan could be an astonishing Harvey. Of course, the same could be said about Paul Dano as Riddler, and only time will tell how zany or novel The Batman: Part 2 is compared to its predecessor.